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Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism, and Personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs
This is an insightful, highly original ethnographic interpretation of the hunting life of the Yukaghirs, a little-known group of indigenous people in the Upper Kolyma region of northeastern Siberia. Basing his study on firsthand experience with Yukaghir hunters, Rane Willerslev focuses on the practical implications of living in a "hall-of-mirrors" world―one inhabited by humans, animals, and spirits, all of whom are understood to be endless mimetic doubles of one another. In this world human beings inhabit a betwixt-and-between state in which their souls are both substance and nonsubstance, both body and soul, both their own individual selves and reincarnated others. Hunters are thus both human and the animals they imitate, which forces them to steer a complicated course between the ability to transcend difference and the necessity of maintaining identity.
246 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
13 people are currently reading
447 people want to read
About the author
Rane Willerslev
18 books36 followersRane Willerslev is a Danish anthropologist. In his academic career, he has travelled extensively and has a particular interest in primitive tribal cultures, both present and prehistoric. On 1 July 2017, he was appointed director of the National Museum of Denmark by Culture Minister Mette Bock.
In Denmark, Willerslev is a popular media personality, engaging in TV and radio shows, public panel debates, and interviews relating to his academic interests and his opinions on society and education at large. He has written and co-authored several books, including academic, fictional and biographic works.
In Denmark, Willerslev is a popular media personality, engaging in TV and radio shows, public panel debates, and interviews relating to his academic interests and his opinions on society and education at large. He has written and co-authored several books, including academic, fictional and biographic works.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
November 30, 2021
This ethnography of a tribe of Yukaghir hunters in the Sakha Republic’s extreme northeast region is almost a re-evaluated addition to Vladimir Jochelson’s the Yukaghir and the Yukaghirized Tungus (1926), that the author quotes all through the first part of the book to introduce us to the scene.
The book’s central premise is a careful exploration of how hunters view their connection with their target animals, based on eighteen months of fieldwork between 1999 and 2000. The author provides a compelling case for the unsuitability and difficulty of developing a single clear cosmology of animals and spirits in this region of Siberia, drawing on a wide range of thinkers from Martin Heidegger to Jacques Lacan. To cast doubt on Jochelson’s attempt, he uses Michael Taussig’s (1993) theory of mimesis to suggest that a successful hunter tries to attract rare game species by imitating them while maintaining his sense of identity. He elevates this practical example of imitation (evocatively depicted in a beautiful ethnographic narrative of a Yukaghir elder shooting an elk, where the author was also hunting) to a broader concept about identity and existence.
Because of the mimesis, the Yukaghirs believe that people can take on various forms, such as rivers or animals, all of which have intellectual, emotional, and spiritual qualities similar to those of humans. They also believe that humans and animals can temporarily inhabit each other’s bodies to experience different perspectives. Willerslev refers to these beliefs and practices as animism, emphasizing that mimesis is at the heart of Yukaghir animism. In contemporary anthropology, animism is seen as either “erroneous thinking” or a “symbolic construction of nature” founded on Cartesian theory, which the author highly criticizes and even abandons. Furthermore, he charges that many anthropologists see indigenous statements concerning the presence of nonhumans as a cultural construct with no genuine basis. Willerslev, arguing against this academic tendency, advocates phenomenologically studying animism from Heidegger’s “dwelling” viewpoints, which is the most vital part of the book. When siding with Heidegger’s theory, he also agrees with Tim Ingold’s account on Koyukon people in Alaska (2011), where he also criticizes the contradiction between humanity and animality, which has thus been placed among those between objectivism and subjectivism, person and thing, mind and the body, intentionality, and instinct, and, most importantly - culture and nature. And this idea also relates to Philippe Descola’s (2013) discussion on reincarnates.
While Descola and Ingold can agree with the author, one component of this ethnography is particularly ironic. The empirical backdrop of the book is exceedingly limited, given the book’s theoretical solid attitude against “mapping cosmologies and establishing clear theoretical descriptions of existence and also being “in the world.” The book then focuses on a succession of little ethnographic stories of hunting ― luck and prophetic dreams, interspersed with relatively extensive theoretical reflection and reference parts. The reader is not provided much information on the history and geography of this part of Siberia, let alone the microecology of the valley where he hunted. The biggest downfall was the thin layer of the empirical data in comparison to the philosophical part of the book while executing it literary flawlessly.
The author also fails to account effectively for Yukaghir village life and their political-economic interactions with Russians, neighboring Sakha people, nongovernmental organizations, and the concept of the nation-state in the global system. And throughout the book, there was a minimal quotation of Yukaghir hunters. Finally, this leads to the author omitting descriptions of life and animism practices of males and women in the community other than hunters. While also writing it from the perspective of male hunters alone. As a result, more study on these areas is required.
While searching for the additional account of Yukaghirs, it is possible to conclude that there are very few modern ethnographies or studies of Siberian hunter-gatherer indigenous religions. As a result, this book is a valuable addition to both. Willerslev shows how Cartesian body-soul dualism fails to account for Yukaghir animism beliefs and practices and emphasizes the importance of mimesis in animism activities. He also questions the widely held concept that any faith or religion is methodically arranged in human cultures using evidence from Yukaghir beliefs.
While one of the author’s purposes was to criticize the Cartesian body-soul dualism idea and the presence of nonhumans as a cultural construct with no factual basis, he succeeds in this flawlessly by providing several examples from not only Yukaghirs but also other hunter-gatherer tribes and doing in a readably enjoyable way. While the second purpose is to carefully explore how hunters view their connection with their target animals, he passes the bar marginally, where, as stated before, this ethnography falls short on the empirical part.
While being exceptionally theoretically hard to understand, this book is an excellent analysis of animism.
The book’s central premise is a careful exploration of how hunters view their connection with their target animals, based on eighteen months of fieldwork between 1999 and 2000. The author provides a compelling case for the unsuitability and difficulty of developing a single clear cosmology of animals and spirits in this region of Siberia, drawing on a wide range of thinkers from Martin Heidegger to Jacques Lacan. To cast doubt on Jochelson’s attempt, he uses Michael Taussig’s (1993) theory of mimesis to suggest that a successful hunter tries to attract rare game species by imitating them while maintaining his sense of identity. He elevates this practical example of imitation (evocatively depicted in a beautiful ethnographic narrative of a Yukaghir elder shooting an elk, where the author was also hunting) to a broader concept about identity and existence.
Because of the mimesis, the Yukaghirs believe that people can take on various forms, such as rivers or animals, all of which have intellectual, emotional, and spiritual qualities similar to those of humans. They also believe that humans and animals can temporarily inhabit each other’s bodies to experience different perspectives. Willerslev refers to these beliefs and practices as animism, emphasizing that mimesis is at the heart of Yukaghir animism. In contemporary anthropology, animism is seen as either “erroneous thinking” or a “symbolic construction of nature” founded on Cartesian theory, which the author highly criticizes and even abandons. Furthermore, he charges that many anthropologists see indigenous statements concerning the presence of nonhumans as a cultural construct with no genuine basis. Willerslev, arguing against this academic tendency, advocates phenomenologically studying animism from Heidegger’s “dwelling” viewpoints, which is the most vital part of the book. When siding with Heidegger’s theory, he also agrees with Tim Ingold’s account on Koyukon people in Alaska (2011), where he also criticizes the contradiction between humanity and animality, which has thus been placed among those between objectivism and subjectivism, person and thing, mind and the body, intentionality, and instinct, and, most importantly - culture and nature. And this idea also relates to Philippe Descola’s (2013) discussion on reincarnates.
While Descola and Ingold can agree with the author, one component of this ethnography is particularly ironic. The empirical backdrop of the book is exceedingly limited, given the book’s theoretical solid attitude against “mapping cosmologies and establishing clear theoretical descriptions of existence and also being “in the world.” The book then focuses on a succession of little ethnographic stories of hunting ― luck and prophetic dreams, interspersed with relatively extensive theoretical reflection and reference parts. The reader is not provided much information on the history and geography of this part of Siberia, let alone the microecology of the valley where he hunted. The biggest downfall was the thin layer of the empirical data in comparison to the philosophical part of the book while executing it literary flawlessly.
The author also fails to account effectively for Yukaghir village life and their political-economic interactions with Russians, neighboring Sakha people, nongovernmental organizations, and the concept of the nation-state in the global system. And throughout the book, there was a minimal quotation of Yukaghir hunters. Finally, this leads to the author omitting descriptions of life and animism practices of males and women in the community other than hunters. While also writing it from the perspective of male hunters alone. As a result, more study on these areas is required.
While searching for the additional account of Yukaghirs, it is possible to conclude that there are very few modern ethnographies or studies of Siberian hunter-gatherer indigenous religions. As a result, this book is a valuable addition to both. Willerslev shows how Cartesian body-soul dualism fails to account for Yukaghir animism beliefs and practices and emphasizes the importance of mimesis in animism activities. He also questions the widely held concept that any faith or religion is methodically arranged in human cultures using evidence from Yukaghir beliefs.
While one of the author’s purposes was to criticize the Cartesian body-soul dualism idea and the presence of nonhumans as a cultural construct with no factual basis, he succeeds in this flawlessly by providing several examples from not only Yukaghirs but also other hunter-gatherer tribes and doing in a readably enjoyable way. While the second purpose is to carefully explore how hunters view their connection with their target animals, he passes the bar marginally, where, as stated before, this ethnography falls short on the empirical part.
While being exceptionally theoretically hard to understand, this book is an excellent analysis of animism.
March 4, 2018
I've been reading a lot of theoretical anthropology lately (Ingold for example). This book really seemed to tie everything together for me and give me a deeper understanding of the theory.
January 2, 2024
Damn, feeling terribly conflicted again. Willerslev's philosophical approaches of language, mimesis and reality have been extremely interesting to follow, working with Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty in a much more earthly epistemology. But regarding the Yukhagur themselves... well, I haven't been able to stablish an emotional bond with them. They just give me bad vibes, with all that terrible killing, all that trickery, and their senseless, contaminated half-Christian cosmologies. The work is good, nonetheless, and mimesis as the practice of animism is quite something.
March 15, 2023
Willerslev achieves what Viveiros de Castro established as the goal of a new anthropology: to write ethnography in terms that would be intelligible to those that it is sourced from, and that would respect them. He succeeds, I think, in taking animism seriously without resorting to either some fetishization and extreme othering while also not falling into the classic Cartesian traps. Great read!
November 29, 2012
A challenging and rewarding ethnography of a little known people and an even lesser know human-animal relationship. Really out there on the edge of the new interdisciplinary field of animal history/studies.
December 30, 2020
Great read, and a great piece of ethnography. I was not expecting the kinds of philosophical challenges the author engaged us in (navigating ground between Descartes, Heidegger, Walter Benjamin and many others). Though, being a "western" thinker this opened up a more nuanced and enlightened understanding of the Yukaghir world than may have been possible without it, at least for me.
Unfortunately, the author was only able to write a limited piece on shamanism (my motivation for buying the book). The constraints are not on him so much as they are on history and circumstance itself. Overall it remains a fascinating and eye opening discussion.
A recommended read.
Unfortunately, the author was only able to write a limited piece on shamanism (my motivation for buying the book). The constraints are not on him so much as they are on history and circumstance itself. Overall it remains a fascinating and eye opening discussion.
A recommended read.
April 28, 2019
This is an amazingly insightful presentation of the culture of the Yukaghir. The author uses Castro's concept of Perspectivism to show how they understand human and non-human beings assume the other to apprehend reality. The idea of a hunter having to become a caribou in order to kill is fascinating. The idea that it's an insult to not kill an animal that allows itself to be found goes against all concepts of modern environmental activism, and stereotypes of aboriginal perspectives. His discussion of the Yukaghir attitude towards Stalin, and their willingness to shift identity for practical reasons are likewise a revelation. Read it, and learn
November 8, 2018
Beautiful and captivating from the start, this book is great reading for any philosophically-inclined people who wish to understand the practical beliefs of indigenous people in the Arctic Circle. After reading about people turning into reindeer, attempting to trick the grandfather of shadows, and having sexual liaisons with river spirits in their dreams, your views of so-called 'primitive' religion - as well as your own assumptions as a 'modern' Westerner - will not be the same again.
August 28, 2024
I studied this ethnography for an anthropology unit at Uni. Completely mind bending as I tried to understand the notion of personhood among the Yukaghir, of which being a human is only one.
Studying other cultures’ understanding of the world is fascinating, humbling and at some points, quite confusing.
Studying other cultures’ understanding of the world is fascinating, humbling and at some points, quite confusing.
September 7, 2019
Willerslev strays into the world of symbolic anthropology quite a bit in this book, which is an unfamiliar realm for me, so parts were difficult for me to understand. Otherwise an excellent ethnography on the mindset of hunters towards their prey suggested to me by Alex Kim.
May 28, 2022
A theory-heavy ethnography, but most theories were well utilized. The Heidegger application, not me not not me construction , and the spirits parts are all amazing. The only thing I wish I have not read was Lacan.
June 27, 2022
Willerslev’s work is perhaps one of the best ethnographies I have ever read. It is both informative and engaging, a read I would recommend to anyone interested in the lives of indigenous circumpolar peoples.
July 17, 2021
A very interesting culture.
Glad for the chance to be able to learn about the Yukaghirs.
Glad for the chance to be able to learn about the Yukaghirs.
August 19, 2022
Læste ikke denne men en bog der mangler på Goodreads: En historie om mennesket. Homo Sapiens og meningen ved tilværelsen. Af Rane Willerslev og tre andre forskere ved Nationalmuseet. Grønningen1 2022
May 16, 2023
One of the best anthropology books I've read. Well researched and thoughtful; in not over-reaching with any conclusions, the observations and ideas come across as even more profound.
May 23, 2023
i loved this. subject was fascinating, writing was engaging, and approach was inspiring
October 31, 2024
For skole, men veldig kul da?
November 25, 2024
Fabulous!!
December 17, 2024
3.5 Stars
July 31, 2025
Wow wow wow
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews