Animism beyond the Soul

Katherine Swancutt is a Senior Lecturer in the Anthropology of Religion in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London. She is the author of Fortune and the Cursed: The Sliding Scale of Time in Mongolian Divination (Berghahn Books, 2012). She has conducted fieldwork on shamanic and animistic religions across Inner Asia for two decades, with a particular focus on Southwest China and Mongolia. Her newest work is on the anthropology of dreams.

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