The purpose of this talk is to clarify some of the basic premises of the ‘ontological turn’ in recent anthropological theory. Drawing on a forthcoming book co-authored with Martin Holbraad,  I suggest that the ontological turn must be understood as a strictly methodological proposal, and above all as a technique of anthropological description. Thus understood, the ontological turn involves deepening and intensifying four features that have always been present in mainstream anthropological research, namely reflexivity, conceptualization, experimentation and critique.