Dialogues with the Dead
Dialogues with the Dead
Out of Print
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.
- An original study of shamanism and spirit possession in a tribal Indian community, where people conduct dialogues with the dead through a shaman
- Covers recent anthropological trends, including the anthropology of psychotherapy
- Will appeal to non-anthropologists, those general readers who are interested in a psychoanalytic approach to bereavement
Reviews & endorsements
"This extraordinarily sensitive ethnography analyzes in rich and personal detail the social relations between the living and the dead among the Lanjia-Sora....Dialogues with the Dead is one of the most original South Asian ethnographies to appear in recent years; and as an ethnography of death and psychology in a tribal society, it is absolutely unique." Chicago South Asia Newsletter
"Dialogues with the Dead is an important ethnography of the Sora, a tribal people living on the borders of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh....The study will be of interest to anthropologists, historians of religions, and South Asianists, but it deserves a broader audience, because of the comparative issues it raises....This is a fascinating study of the narrative (or, better, the dialogical) construction of reality, but here the dead have a real voice, and that makes a world of difference." Gary L. Ebersole, Journal of Religion
Product details
August 1993Hardback
9780521384476
314 pages
234 × 157 × 22 mm
0.606kg
12 b/w illus.
Unavailable - out of print August 2006
Table of Contents
- Part I. Sonum: The Continuation of Consciousness After Death:
- 1. Dialogues between the living and the dead
- 2.The Sora people
- 3. The formation of the Sora person
- 4. Interpreting and persuading the dead
- Part II. Responding to a New Death:
- 5. Transcription of a dialogue: the inquest on JAMANO
- 6. Redeeming the dead and protecting the living
- Part III. Operating the Calculus of All Previous Deaths:
- 7. Transcription of a dialogue with nineteen dead persons
- 8. States of mind among the dead and the living
- 9. Forgetting the dead
- 10. Dialogues with the self: Sora bereavement and the presuppositions of contemporary psychotherapy.
