Living without the Dead

Living without the Dead
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 397
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780226407876
ISBN-13 : 022640787X
Rating : 4/5 (76 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Living without the Dead by : Piers Vitebsky

Download or read book Living without the Dead written by Piers Vitebsky and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just one generation ago, the Sora tribe in India lived in a world populated by the spirits of their dead, who spoke to them through shamans in trance. Every day, they negotiated their wellbeing in heated arguments or in quiet reflections on their feelings of love, anger, and guilt. Today, young Sora are rejecting the worldview of their ancestors and switching their allegiance to warring sects of fundamentalist Christianity or Hinduism. Communion with ancestors is banned as sacred sites are demolished, female shamans are replaced by male priests, and debate with the dead gives way to prayer to gods. For some, this shift means liberation from jungle spirits through literacy, employment, and democratic politics; others despair for fear of being forgotten after death. How can a society abandon one understanding of reality so suddenly and see the world in a totally different way? Over forty years, anthropologist Piers Vitebsky has shared the lives of shamans, pastors, ancestors, gods, policemen, missionaries, and alphabet worshippers, seeking explanations from social theory, psychoanalysis, and theology. Living without the Dead lays bare today’s crisis of indigenous religions and shows how historical reform can bring new fulfillments—but also new torments and uncertainties. Vitebsky explores the loss of the Sora tradition as one for greater humanity: just as we have been losing our wildernesses, so we have been losing a diverse range of cultural and spiritual possibilities, tribe by tribe. From the award-winning author of The Reindeer People, this is a heartbreaking story of cultural change and the extinction of an irreplaceable world, even while new religious forms come into being to take its place.


Living without the Dead Related Books

Living without the Dead
Language: en
Pages: 397
Authors: Piers Vitebsky
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-10-19 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Just one generation ago, the Sora tribe in India lived in a world populated by the spirits of their dead, who spoke to them through shamans in trance. Every day
Living Without the Dead
Language: en
Pages: 397
Authors: Piers Vitebsky
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-10-19 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

To the underworld with Ononti the shamaness -- Leopard power and police power, the jungle and the state -- What the living and the dead have to say to each othe
How the Dead Live
Language: en
Pages: 417
Authors: Will Self
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-10-03 - Publisher: A&C Black

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

It's 1988 and Lily Bloom, a 65-year-old American lies dying of cancer in a London hospital. As her two daughters buzz around her and the nurses pump her full of
American Book of the Dead
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors:
Categories: Body, Mind & Spirit
Type: BOOK - Published: 2005 - Publisher: Gateways Books & Tapes

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

With over 120,000 copies sold, this unique contemporary work brings the timeless Tibetan Bardo teaching into current American culture and language, with 49 days
If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?!
Language: en
Pages: 244
Authors: Cynthia Heimel
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2002-10-09 - Publisher: Grove Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Heimel has been described by the "Chicago Tribune" as "perhaps our funniest war correspondent on the war between the sexes." Her new book shows Heimel at her wi