Living Without the Dead ─ Loss and Redemption in a Jungle Cosmos

Piers Vitebsky’s work is characterized by deep involvement with the people he writes about—often over decades, involving the mastery of several languages, and built on extensive and deep friendships that blur the lines between outsider and insider. Living without the Dead is a testament to what can be learned through such sustained involvement. Following the Indian tribal community of the Sora over forty years, Vitebsky tells a heartbreaking story of cultural change and the slow extinction of a profound religious system.

The Sora are a pre-Hindu tribal society in the highland jungles of southeastern India who once engaged in highly advanced shamanistic practices that, through trance rituals, continuously connected the living with the dead. Over the decades, however, evangelical Christianity and fundamentalist Hinduism have slowly encroached on their culture, giving them the benefits of state-sponsored modernization—but at the cost of their traditional beliefs and practices. With sensitivity and insight, Vitebsky explores the ramifications of the loss of this tradition as one for greater humanity: just has we have been losing our wildernesses, so, too, have we been losing, tribe by tribe, a diverse range of cultural and spiritual possibilities.

Piers Vitebsky is Emeritus Head of Anthropology and Russian Northern Studies at the Scott Polar Research Institute in the University of Cambridge. He is the author of many books and has collaborated on television documentaries on BBC, Channel 4 and National Geographic. His book The Reindeer People won the Kiriyama Prize for nonfiction in 2006.