Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia [Hardcover]

Amazonia and Siberia, classic regions of shamanism, have long challenged “western” understandings of man’s place in the world. By exploring the social relations between humans and non-human entities credited with human-like personhood (not only animals and plants, but also “things” such as artifacts, trade items, or mineral resources) from a comparative perspective, this volume offers valuable insights into the constitutions of humanity and personhood characteristic of the two areas. The contributors conducted their ethnographic fieldwork among peoples undergoing transformative processesof their lived environments, such as the depletion of natural resources and migration to urban centers. They describe here fundamental relational modes that are being tested in the face of change, presenting groundbreaking research on personhood and agency in shamanic societies and contributing to our global understanding of social and cultural change and continuity.

Marc Brightman is Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. His research, based on fieldwork among the Trio, Wayana, and Akuriyo of southern Suriname and French Guiana, covers subjects including indigenous leadership, native Amazonian forms of ownership, and the politics of conservation.

Vanessa Elisa Grotti is currently British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at ISCA (Oxford). She has also been Research Fellow at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale (EHESS-Collège de France, Paris) and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Olga Ulturgasheva is Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at the Scott Polar Research Institute and Clare Hall College, University of Cambridge. She has carried out fieldwork for a decade in Siberia on childhood and youth, religion and reindeer herding, and her new monograph with Berghahn is titled Narrating the Future in Siberia: Childhood, Adolescence and
Autobiography among the Eveny (Berghahn Books, forthcoming).