Description
Book Synopsis How might we envision animism through the lens of the ‘anthropology of anthropology’? The contributors to this volume offer compelling case studies that demonstrate how indigenous animistic practices, concepts, traditions, and ontologies are co-authored in highly reflexive ways by anthropologists and their interlocutors. They explore how native epistemologies, which inform anthropological notions during fieldwork, underpin the dialogues between researchers and their participants. In doing so, the contributors reveal ways in which indigenous thinkers might be influenced by anthropological concepts of the soul and, equally, how they might subtly or dramatically then transform those same concepts within anthropological theory.
Trade Review “The authors in this collection have cooperated in making a bold and meaningful attempt to provide in-depth research on animism through their honest awareness of the significance of reflexivity. They have met the goal they have set themselves of illustrating the different understandings of the spiritual and invisible aspects of personhood they describe.” • JASO
“In a very short space (138 pages of text) with only six essays, Animism Beyond the Soul makes an outsized contribution to our understanding of animism and to the more general issue of the construction of ethnographic knowledge. Stressing the danger of imposing one religion’s language on other cultures, as well as the inevitable multiple reflexivities of cultural encounter, the contributors open our eyes to a much wider vista of soul and person concepts and point to a rich literature that challenges our narrow assumptions about exotic and familiar religions and ontologies.” • Reading Religion
Table of Contents Foreword: The Anthropology of Ontology Meets the Writing Culture Debate—Is Reconciliation Possible?
Rane Willerslev
Introduction: Anthropological Knowledge Making, the Reflexive Feedback Loop, and Conceptualizations of the Soul
Katherine Swancutt and Mireille Mazard
Chapter 1. The Algebra of Souls: Ontological Multiplicity and the Transformation of Animism in Southwest China
Mireille Mazard
Chapter 2. Recursivity and the Self-Reflexive Cosmos: Tricksters in Cuban and Brazilian Spirit Mediumship Practices
Diana Espírito Santo
Chapter 3. Spirit of the Future: Movement, Kinetic Distribution, and Personhood among Siberian Eveny
Olga Ulturgasheva
Chapter 4. The Art of Capture: Hidden Jokes and the Reinvention of Animistic Ontologies in Southwest China
Katherine Swancutt
Chapter 5. Narratives of the Invisible: Autobiography, Kinship, and Alterity in Native Amazonia
Vanessa Elisa Grotti and Marc Brightman
Chapter 6. Technological Animism: The Uncanny Personhood of Humanoid Machines
Kathleen Richardson
Postscript: Anthropologists and Healers—Radical Empiricists
Edith Turner
