John Blair at LitHub:
How can whole societies come to believe that the dead walk among them? Understanding that requires moving beyond theoretical approaches and engaging with tangible human communities and their world-views. We will first visit two very different societies in which the veil between life and death has been thin. The dead have been close: sometimes to be revered, sometimes to be feared, but regularly to be interacted with, if not unambiguously in a bodily form. Both case-studies manifest an endemic layer of anxiety, capable of intensifying under stress into something more concentrated and physical.
The Sora of the Indian East Coast
The Sora are an indigenous, long-stable society. They are slash-and-burn farmers, with linguistic and cultural affinities looking outwards to South-East Asia. Their strong sense of sociability, mutual sharing, and interdependence crosses the life/death boundary. The engagement of the living with the dead is continuous and immensely complex, to the point of influencing large areas of social and ethical practice.
more here.
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