Animism in Rainforest and Tundra Animism in Rainforest and Tundra Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia Edited by Marc Brightman, Vanessa Elisa Grotti and Olga Ulturgasheva Berghahn Books New York • Oxford Published in 2012 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2012 Marc Brightman, Vanessa Elisa Grotti and Olga Ulturgasheva All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Animism in rainforest and tundra : personhood, animals, plants and things in contemporary Amazonia and Siberia / edited by Marc Brightman, Vanessa Elisa Grotti and Olga Ulturgasheva. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-85745-468-3 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-85745- 469-0 (ebook) 1. Shamanism--Amazon River Region. 2. Shamanism--Russia (Federation)-- Siberia. 3. Human-plant relationships--Amazon River Region. 4. Human-plant relationships--Russia (Federation)--Siberia. 5. Human-animal relationships-- Amazon River Region. 6. Human-animal relationships--Russia (Federation)-- Siberia. I. Brightman, Marc. II. Grotti, Vanessa Elisa. III. Ulturgasheva, Olga. GN564.A47A55 2012 306.0957--dc23 2011043517 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN 978-0-85745-468-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-85745-469-0 (ebook) Contents List of Figures vii Acknowledgements ix Foreword xi Stephen Hugh-Jones Maps xv Introduction Animism and Invisible Worlds: The Place of Non-humans in Indigenous Ontologies 1 Marc Brightman, Vanessa Elisa Grotti and Olga Ulturgasheva 1 Too Many Owners: Mastery and Ownership in Amazonia 29 Carlos Fausto 2 Revisiting the Animism versus Totemism Debate: Fabricating Persons among the Eveny and Chukchi of North-eastern Siberia 48 Rane Willerslev and Olga Ulturgasheva 3 Animism and the Meanings of Life: Reflections from Amazonia 69 Laura Rival 4 Stories about Evenki People and their Dogs: Communication through Sharing Contexts 82 Tatiana Safonova and István Sántha 5 Making Animals into Food among the Kanamari of Western Amazonia 96 Luiz Costa 6 ‘Spirit-charged’ Animals in Siberia 113 Alexandra Lavrillier vi Contents 7 Shamans, Animals and Enemies: Human and Non-human Agency in an Amazonian Cosmos of Alterity 130 Casey High 8 Expressions and Experiences of Personhood: Spatiality and Objects in the Nenets Tundra Home 146 Vera Skvirskaja 9 Humanity, Personhood and Transformability in Northern Amazonia 162 Vanessa Elisa Grotti and Marc Brightman 10 Masked Predation, Hierarchy and the Scaling of Extractive Relations in Inner Asia and Beyond 175 Katherine Swancutt Afterword 195 Piers Vitebsky Notes on Contributors 200 Index 203 Figures 0.1 Lowland South America xv 0.2 Siberia and Central Asia xvi 6.1 Evenki taxonomy 118 6.2 The category of wild animals in the taxonomy 120 6.3 Direction of the ritual gestures and invisible acts of the main categories of the taxonomy 121 6.4 The constituents of humans and animals 125 6.5 W orlds of socialization of ‘spirit-charged’ and other categories of beings 126 8.1 Layout of a choom 151 10.1 The Nuosu soul-spider 182 Acknowledgements Many of the papers presented in this volume were originally presented at a con- ference held at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, in June 2008. The editors would like to thank warmly the Director of Research at the Musée, Anne-Christine Taylor, as well as Laurent Berger and Myrlande Jean-Pierre, for their financial, logistical and personal support. We would also like to acknowledge the signifi- cant contribution made by the four discussants on our panels: Roberte Hamayon, Stephen Hugh-Jones, Anne-Christine Taylor and Piers Vitebsky. Katie Swancutt deserves special thanks for agreeing to contribute a chapter at short notice and for her comments on an early draft of the Introduction. We would like to thank the publishers at Berghahn for their patience and receptiveness, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. Finally, we are grateful to all of the conference participants for their part in the lively and productive discussion, and we wish especially to mention those who unfortunately were unable to contribute to the present volume: Damien Davy, Andrea-Luz Gutierrez Choquevilca, Mette High, Marc Lenaerts and Emilie Maj, whose presentations and interventions nevertheless formed an important part of the dialogue that grew into this book.