Animism beyond the Soul

Katherine Swancutt is a 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 2012). Her main area of interest is Inner Asia, and she has conducted fieldwork among Buryat Mongols, Deed Mongols, and, more recently, the Nuosu of Southwest China. A major theme running through her work has been the rise of innovative religious practices, especially among animistic or shamanic groups.Mireille Mazard is a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Ethnic and Religious Diversity. She received her doctorate in socio-cultural anthropology in 2011 from the University of Cambridge, where she explored ethno-politics and Nusu identity in Southwest China. She is currently writing a monograph about religious and political transformations among the Nusu, 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 WillerslevIntroduction: Anthropological Knowledge Making, the Reflexive Feedback Loop, and Conceptualizations of the SoulKatherine Swancutt and Mireille MazardChapter 1. The Algebra of Souls: Ontological Multiplicity and the Transformation of Animism in Southwest ChinaMireille MazardChapter 2. Recursivity and the Self-Reflexive Cosmos: Tricksters in Cuban and Brazilian Spirit Mediumship PracticesDiana EspiritoChapter 3. Santo Spirit of the Future: Movement, Kinetic Distribution, and Personhood among Siberian EvenyOlga UlturgashevaChapter 4. The Art of Capture: Hidden Jokes and the Reinvention of Animistic Ontologies in Southwest ChinaKatherine SwancuttChapter 5. Narratives of the Invisible: Autobiography, Kinship, and Alterity in Native AmazoniaVanessa Elisa Grotti and Marc BrightmanChapter 6. Technological Animism: The Uncanny Personhood of Humanoid MachinesKathleen RichardsonPostscript: Anthropologists and Healers: Radical EmpiricistsEdith Turner

“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