Abram's writing is informed by his studies among indigenous peoples in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Americas, as well as by the American nature-writing tradition that stems from Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Mary Austin. His philosophical work is informed by the European tradition of phenomenology — especially by the writings of the French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Abram's evolving work has also been influenced by his friendships with the archetypal psychologist James Hillman, the iconoclastic evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, and the social critic and radical historian Ivan Illich — as well as by his esteem for the American poet Gary Snyder and the agrarian novelist, poet, and essayist Wendell Berry.
