Animism beyond the Soul (eBook)

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.

Mireille Mazard is an Independent Researcher who recently completed a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Her area of interest are ethnopolitics and identity among the Nusu of Southwest China. She is currently writing a monograph about Nusu religious and political transformations, which explores their engagement with Christian and Communist ideologies in creating new ontological frameworks for experiencing the world.

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