1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910784419403321

Autore

Willerslev Rane <1971->

Titolo

Soul hunters [[electronic resource] ] : hunting, animism, and personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs / / Rane Willerslev

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2007

ISBN

1-282-77222-8

9786612772221

0-520-94100-4

1-4337-0878-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (247 p.)

Classificazione

LC 30326

Disciplina

305.89/46

Soggetti

Yukaghir - Hunting - Russia (Federation) - Siberia

Animism - Russia (Federation) - Siberia

Yukaghir - Russia (Federation) - Siberia

Ethnology - Russia (Federation) - Siberia

Siberia (Russia) Social life and customs

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Animism as Mimesis -- 2. To Kill or Not to Kill: Rebirth, Sharing, and Risk -- 3. Body-Soul Dialectics: Human Rebirth Beliefs -- 4. Ideas of Species and Personhood -- 5. Animals as Persons -- 6. Shamanism -- 7. The Spirit World -- 8. Learning and Dreaming -- 9. Taking Animism Seriously -- Notes -- References -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

This is an insightful, highly original ethnographic interpretation of the hunting life of the Yukaghirs, a little-known group of indigenous people in the Upper Kolyma region of northeastern Siberia. Basing his study on firsthand experience with Yukaghir hunters, Rane Willerslev focuses on the practical implications of living in a "hall-of-mirrors" world-one inhabited by humans, animals, and spirits, all of whom are understood to be endless mimetic doubles of one another. In this world human beings inhabit a betwixt-and-between state in which their souls are both substance and nonsubstance, both body and soul, both their own individual selves and reincarnated others. Hunters are thus both



human and the animals they imitate, which forces them to steer a complicated course between the ability to transcend difference and the necessity of maintaining identity.