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

227 Pages·2012·2.688 MB·English

by  Marc Brightman, Vanessa Elisa Grotti, Olga Ulturgasheva (eds.)

Animism in Rainforest
and Tundra

Animism in Rainforest and
Tundra
Personhood, Animals, Plants and
Things in Contemporary Amazonia
and Siberia
Edited by
Marc Brightman, Vanessa Elisa Grotti
and Olga Ulturgasheva
Berghahn Books
New York • Oxford
Published in 2012 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2012 Marc Brightman, Vanessa Elisa Grotti and Olga Ulturgasheva
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Animism in rainforest and tundra : personhood, animals, plants and things in
contemporary Amazonia and Siberia / edited by Marc Brightman, Vanessa Elisa
Grotti and Olga Ulturgasheva.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-85745-468-3 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-85745-
469-0 (ebook)
1. Shamanism--Amazon River Region. 2. Shamanism--Russia (Federation)--
Siberia. 3. Human-plant relationships--Amazon River Region. 4. Human-plant
relationships--Russia (Federation)--Siberia. 5. Human-animal relationships--
Amazon River Region. 6. Human-animal relationships--Russia (Federation)--
Siberia. I. Brightman, Marc. II. Grotti, Vanessa Elisa. III. Ulturgasheva, Olga.
GN564.A47A55 2012
306.0957--dc23
2011043517
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper
ISBN 978-0-85745-468-3 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-85745-469-0 (ebook)
Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgements ix
Foreword xi
Stephen Hugh-Jones
Maps xv
Introduction
Animism and Invisible Worlds: The Place of Non-humans
in Indigenous Ontologies 1
Marc Brightman, Vanessa Elisa Grotti and Olga Ulturgasheva
1 Too Many Owners: Mastery and Ownership in Amazonia 29
Carlos Fausto
2 Revisiting the Animism versus Totemism Debate:
Fabricating Persons among the Eveny and Chukchi
of North-eastern Siberia 48
Rane Willerslev and Olga Ulturgasheva
3 Animism and the Meanings of Life: Reflections
from Amazonia 69
Laura Rival
4 Stories about Evenki People and their Dogs:
Communication through Sharing Contexts 82
Tatiana Safonova and István Sántha
5 Making Animals into Food among the Kanamari of
Western Amazonia 96
Luiz Costa
6 ‘Spirit-charged’ Animals in Siberia 113
Alexandra Lavrillier
vi Contents
7 Shamans, Animals and Enemies: Human and Non-human
Agency in an Amazonian Cosmos of Alterity 130
Casey High
8 Expressions and Experiences of Personhood: Spatiality
and Objects in the Nenets Tundra Home 146
Vera Skvirskaja
9 Humanity, Personhood and Transformability in
Northern Amazonia 162
Vanessa Elisa Grotti and Marc Brightman
10 Masked Predation, Hierarchy and the Scaling of
Extractive Relations in Inner Asia and Beyond 175
Katherine Swancutt
Afterword 195
Piers Vitebsky
Notes on Contributors 200
Index 203
Figures
0.1 Lowland South America xv
0.2 Siberia and Central Asia xvi
6.1 Evenki taxonomy 118
6.2 The category of wild animals in the taxonomy 120
6.3 Direction of the ritual gestures and invisible acts of the main
categories of the taxonomy 121
6.4 The constituents of humans and animals 125
6.5 W orlds of socialization of ‘spirit-charged’ and other
categories of beings 126
8.1 Layout of a choom 151
10.1 The Nuosu soul-spider 182

Acknowledgements
Many of the papers presented in this volume were originally presented at a con-
ference held at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, in June 2008. The editors would
like to thank warmly the Director of Research at the Musée, Anne-Christine
Taylor, as well as Laurent Berger and Myrlande Jean-Pierre, for their financial,
logistical and personal support. We would also like to acknowledge the signifi-
cant contribution made by the four discussants on our panels: Roberte Hamayon,
Stephen Hugh-Jones, Anne-Christine Taylor and Piers Vitebsky. Katie Swancutt
deserves special thanks for agreeing to contribute a chapter at short notice and for
her comments on an early draft of the Introduction. We would like to thank the
publishers at Berghahn for their patience and receptiveness, and the anonymous
reviewers for their constructive comments. Finally, we are grateful to all of the
conference participants for their part in the lively and productive discussion, and
we wish especially to mention those who unfortunately were unable to contribute
to the present volume: Damien Davy, Andrea-Luz Gutierrez Choquevilca, Mette
High, Marc Lenaerts and Emilie Maj, whose presentations and interventions
nevertheless formed an important part of the dialogue that grew into this book.