A voyage of discovery into the life of a remote aboriginal community in the Siberian Arctic, where the reindeer has been a part of daily life since Palaeolithic times. The reindeer, along with the dog, was probably the first species to be drawn into a close relationship with man. This book, by an eminent British anthropologist, is the beautifully written story of how that relationship works and of the intimacy between the nomadic reindeer people and the landscape they inhabit. What to the Western eye looks like a vast, uninhabited Arctic wilderness is in fact filled with animals, humans and spirits -- and the memory-traces of their interactions down the ages. No other Western author has had such access (since before the Cold War ended) to these distant regions of the Siberian taiga. Living and travelling with the reindeer people over a period of a dozen years, Piers Vitebsky has seen how, first, Communism and collectivization threatened the way of life of the nomadic tribesmen, and then the marketplace continued to transform their existence. Through all the changes of the late 20th century the reindeer has retained its central place in the physical and spiritual life of the people (Siberia is considered to be the original heartland of shamanism.) The book is also a celebration of human love at an elemental level.

Reindeer People : Living With Animals and Spirits in Siberia

Politics & Social Sciences

Vitebsky, Piers

Sociology

Houghton/Mifflin

A voyage of discovery into the life of a remote aboriginal community in the Siberian Arctic, where the reindeer has been a part of daily life since Palaeolithic times. 
The reindeer, along with the dog, was probably the first species to be drawn into a close relationship with man. This book, by an eminent British anthropologist, is the beautifully written story of how that relationship works and of the intimacy between the nomadic reindeer people and the landscape they inhabit. What to the Western eye looks like a vast, uninhabited Arctic wilderness is in fact filled with animals, humans and spirits – and the memory-traces of their interactions down the ages. 
No other Western author has had such access (since before the Cold War ended) to these distant regions of the Siberian taiga. Living and travelling with the reindeer people over a period of a dozen years, Piers Vitebsky has seen how, first, Communism and collectivisation threatened the way of life of the nomadic tribesmen, and then the marketplace continued to transform their existence. Through all the changes of the late 20th-century the reindeer has retained its central place in the physical and spiritual life of the people. The book is also a celebration of human love at an elemental level.

Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Harper-perennial

Living without the Dead: Loss and Redemption in a Jungle Cosmos

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.

History

Americas

University of Chicago Press

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.

Looks at the different ways the worlds religions translate their beliefs into architecture, and discusses site selection, feng shui, celestial alignments, and consecration

Sacred Architecture (Living Wisdom Series)

Arts & Photography

Humphrey, Caroline

Architecture

Little,Brown & Co

Examines historic and modern manifestations of shamanism in different regions of the world, discussing such key themes as healing, visions, initiation, and cosmology, and explores the relevance of shamanism to contemporary Western culture

The Shaman: Voyages of the Soul. Trance, Ecstasy and Healing from Siberia to the Amazon (Living Wisdom Series)

Social Sciences

Macmillan in association with Duncan Baird Publishers

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. A good, clean & sound copy.

The Shaman

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Alternative Medicine

Piers Vitebsky's study of religion, healing and psychology in tribal India focuses on a unique dialogue between the living and the dead, conducted through a shaman. By exploring memories of emotional attachments, the Sora people negotiate the meaning of particular deaths. Vitebsky analyzes these relationships over a period of years, and develops a typology of moods of the dead. He contrasts Sora procedures with the treatment of bereavement in psychoanalysis, and shows how Sora dialogues with the dead serve to negotiate relationships with other members of the community.

Dialogues with the Dead: The Discussion of Mortality among the Sora of Eastern India (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Series Number 88)

Cambridge University Press

Since the last Ice Age, the reindeer's extraordinary adaptation to cold has sustained human life over vast tracts of the earth's surface, providing meat, fur, and transport. Images carved into rocks and tattooed on the skin of mummies hint at ancient ideas about the reindeer's magical ability to carry the human soul on flights to the sun. These images pose one of the great mysteries of prehistory: the "reindeer revolution," in which Siberian native peoples tamed and saddled a species they had previously hunted. Drawing on nearly twenty years of field work among the Eveny in northeast Siberia, Piers Vitebsky shows how Eveny social relations are formed through an intense partnership with these extraordinary animals as they migrate over the swamps, ice sheets, and mountain peaks of what in winter is the coldest inhabited region in the world. He reveals how indigenous ways of knowing involve a symbiotic ecology of mood between humans and reindeer, and he opens up an unprecedented understanding of nomadic movement, place, memory, habit, and innovation. The Soviets' attempts to settle the nomads in villages undermined their self-reliance and mutual support. In an account both harrowing and funny, Vitebsky shows the Eveny's ambivalence toward productivity plans and medals and their subversion of political meetings designed to control them. The narrative gives a detailed and tender picture of how reindeer can act out or transform a person's destiny and of how prophetic dreaming about reindeer fills a gap left by the failed assurances of the state. Vitebsky explores the Eveny experience of the cruelty of history through the unfolding and intertwining of their personal lives. The interplay of domestic life and power politics is both intimate and epic, as the reader follows the diverging fate of three charismatic but very different herding families through dangerous political and economic reforms. The book's gallery of unforgettable personalities includes shamans, psychics, wolves, bears, dogs, Communist Party bosses, daredevil aviators, fire and river spirits, and buried ancestors. The Reindeer People is a vivid and moving testimony to a Siberian native people's endurance and humor at the ecological limits of human existence.

The Reindeer People: Living With Animals And Spirits in Siberia

Russia

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

The Reindeer People: Living With Animals and Spirits in Siberia

Mariner Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vitebsky, Piers. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Vitebsky, Piers

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vitebsky, Piers. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Reindeer People : Living With Animals and Spirits in Siberia

Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia

Living without the Dead: Loss and Redemption in a Jungle Cosmos

Living without the Dead: Loss and Redemption in a Jungle Cosmos

Sacred Architecture (Living Wisdom Series)

The Shaman: Voyages of the Soul. Trance, Ecstasy and Healing from Siberia to the Amazon (Living Wisdom Series)

The Shaman

Dialogues with the Dead: The Discussion of Mortality among the Sora of Eastern India (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Series Number 88)

The Reindeer People: Living With Animals And Spirits in Siberia

The Reindeer People: Living With Animals and Spirits in Siberia