What is a reindeer? Indigenous perspectives from northeast Siberia

ABSTRACTThe reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) is the mainstay of most of the indigenous cultures and economies of the Eurasian north. Yet much of the literature ignores indigenous perspectives in favour of ecological perspectives based on a resource-oriented model. While acknowledging the role of scientific writing on reindeer, here we explore the meaning of reindeer economies that are also reindeer cultures. We show how reindeer can be endowed with a personhood which parallels that of humans, leading to a working partnership which encompasses both ecological and spiritual dimensions. Even when reindeer herders qualify in veterinary science, this does not wipe out their indigenous understanding of the nature of the reindeer. We relate this to the physical, social and moral demands of life in the taiga.This version is the author accepted manuscript and will appear in a revised by Cambridge University Press in Polar Record. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 The article can also be viewed on the Polar Record website here: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9293359&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S003224741400033

Dialogues with the dead: The experience of mortality and its discussion among the Sora of Central India.

Living Sora hold frequent dialogues with the dead, who speak with them through mediums in trances. The thesis explores the problems of understanding which this presents to the anthropologist. It takes the awareness of mortality as a universal human experience which is however discussed differently in different cultures, according to their underlying metaphysical assumptions. Sora trance is considered as a technique for operating on this experience by means of a postulate (sonum, conventionally translated as 'spirit') which represents the continuing influence of a dead person on the living. The thesis is built on the analysis of extensive tape- recorded dialogues between mourners and the dead. It falls into three parts. Part I outlines the relevant areas of Sora ethnography and metaphysics. After sketching in something of Sora politics and social structure, it discusses their view of the person, of relations between persons and of "subjective" and "objective" reality. This leads to the crucial Sora dichotomy between the Ancestor and Experience aspects of the dead suid the mapping of these on to incompatible areas of the landscape. Part II examines a funeral dialogue in which the deceased is cross-examined to establish the nature of his Ancestor and Experience aspects. The subsequent attempts to transform the terms of this verdict in order to modify his future influence on the survivors leads to a discussion of the grammar of verbs of experience and suffering and thence to a provisional English translation of the word sonum. Part III develops the implications of this translation across time. A series of linked case-studies explores the healing of private emotion, the arguing out of ambiguities in inheritance and in the unfolding of the lineage, and finally the Sora sense of the interplay between transience, permanence and repetition and with this the counterbalancing of grief with joy. A final chapter discusses the inadequency of any translation of sonum by making a comparison with Freud's theory of bereavement

The Covid‐19 app and the fire spirit: Receiving messages in Britain and Siberia

The UK's National Health Service Covid‐19 ‘track and trace’ app was designed as a critical public health technology. So why has it encountered so much resistance? The authors compare alerts on the phone regarding exposure to possible Covid‐19 infection with messages from a Siberian nomad's domestic fire, which sometimes crackles warnings of potential illnesses or accidents. Though these prediction technologies may seem radically different, they are both instruments for thinking about possible futures and adjusting behaviour. The authors interpret them as forms of divination that differ not so much in their logic as in their embeddedness in wider cosmologies of person, fate and society. The Siberian fire generates meaning as a focal point of coherence within many narrative strands concerning family and landscape; acceptance of its messages is rooted in intimacy and entanglement. This highlights how the Covid‐19 app belongs to a state of emergency and exception. Its statistical idiom of risk and its culturally hyper‐valued focus on privacy conceal the identities of people caught in the chain of infection, blocking social and narrative coherence and thereby encouraging suspicion and cynicism

Conférence de M. Piers Vitebsky

Vitebsky Piers. Conférence de M. Piers Vitebsky. In: École pratique des hautes études, Section des sciences religieuses. Annuaire. Tome 100, 1991-1992. 1991. pp. 83-84

Conférence de M. Piers Vitebsky

Vitebsky Piers. Conférence de M. Piers Vitebsky. In: École pratique des hautes études, Section des sciences religieuses. Annuaire. Tome 100, 1991-1992. 1991. pp. 83-84

Birth, Entity and Responsibility : The Spirit of the Sun in Sora Cosmology

Vitebsky Piers. Birth, Entity and Responsibility : The Spirit of the Sun in Sora Cosmology. In: L'Homme, 1980, tome 20 n°1. pp. 47-70

From parasitic feudalism to responsible hierarchy: The emergence of a “political” vocabulary among the Sora of Tribal India

The Sora language reveals a sharp division between the vocabulary of command and rule, with no terms of indigenous origin for such positions or procedures, and an indigenous vocabulary of intimate negotiation among horizontal equals to regulate daily life. Historically, vertical relations with distant rajas passed through predatory local agents with little redress, using terms derived from outside languages. Christianity introduced literacy and created a new administrative and moral terminology derived from Sora roots, but also offered a model of patronage which likened Jesus to a benevolent classic Hindu king. This redistributive reciprocal relationship with authority figures had never before been experienced by the Sora; but as they move from a parasitic to a hierarchical experience of verticality, it is now readily transferred to political leaders as young Sora participate in the modern electoral state and incorporate non-Sora terms into their lives as agents, rather than victims, of their political situation