Dialogues with the Dead: The Discussion of Mortality among the Sora of Eastern India

Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology #88

by Piers Vitebsky

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.

Genres: Anthropology

314 pages, Hardcover

First published August 27, 1993

About the author

Piers Vitebsky is an anthropologist and is the Head of Social Science at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, England.

Reviews

[Nandini Dogra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful. Splendid.
Absolutely enthralling this work is.

Really helpful if someone is researching death and dead

[Bryn Hammond]

Here's a fuller description from the flap:
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Piers Vitebsky's study of religion and psychology in tribal India focuses upon a unique form of dialogue between the living and the dead, conducted through the medium of a shaman in trance. The dead sometimes nurture their living descendants, yet at other times they inflict upon them the very illnesses from which they died. Through intimate dialogue, the Sora use the occasion of death to explore their closest emotional attachments in all their ambivalence. Dr Vitebsky analyses the actors' words and relationships over several years and develops a typology of moods among the dead and of kinds of memory among the living. In comparing Sora shamanism with the treatment of bereavement in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, he highlights a contrast in their assumptions which has far-reaching consequences for the social and professional scope of the two kinds of practice.
'...no other study of a tribe in India in recent decades can compare with Vitebsky's in its grasp in its grasp of linguistic and cultural detail and nuance... students of comparative religion and of bereavement or loss in psychology will find his book of extreme interest.' - Professor Ronald Inden, Unviersity of Chicago
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I have heard things of this book that made it worth quite a hunt to get it. I've read and respect his wider-audience works, The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia and Shamanism.