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Amazonia and Siberia, classic regions of shamanism, have long challenged 'western' understandings of man's place in the world. By exploring the social relations between humans and non-human entities credited with human-like personhood (not only animals and plants, but also 'things' such as artifacts, trade items, or mineral resources) from a comparative perspective, this volume offers valuable insights into the constitutions of humanity and personhood characteristic of the two areas. The contributors conducted their ethnographic fieldwork among peoples undergoing transformative processes of their lived environments, such as the depletion of natural resources and migration to urban centers. They describe here fundamental relational modes that are being tested in the face of change, presenting groundbreaking research on personhood and agency in shamanic societies and contributing to our global understanding of social and cultural change and continuity.

The first book to address the classic anthropological theme of property through the ethnography of Amazonia, Ownership and Nurture sets new and challenging terms for anthropological debates about the region and about property in general. Property and ownership have special significance and carry specific meanings in Amazonia, which has been portrayed as the antithesis of Western, property-based, civilization. Through carefully constructed studies of land ownership, slavery, shamanism, spirit mastery, aesthetics, and intellectual property, this volume demonstrates that property relations are of central importance in Amazonia, and that the ownership of persons plays an especially significant role in native cosmology.

The Imbalance of Power demonstrates that the indigenous societies of the Guiana region of Amazonia do not fit conventional characterizations of 'simple' political units with 'egalitarian' political ideologies and 'harmonious' relationships with nature.

Amerindian societies have an iconic status in classical political thought. For Montaigne, Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Rousseau, the native American 'state of nature' operates as a foil for the European polity. Challenging this tradition,The Imbalance of Power demonstrates ethnographically that the Carib speaking indigenous societies of the Guiana region of Amazonia do not fit conventional characterizations of 'simple' political units with 'egalitarian' political ideologies and 'harmonious' relationships with nature. Marc Brightman builds a persuasive and original theory of Amerindian politics: far from balanced and egalitarian, Carib societies are rife with tension and difference; but this imbalance conditions social dynamism and a distinctive mode of cohesion.The Imbalance of Power is based on the author's fieldwork in partnership with Vanessa Grotti, who is working on a companion volume entitledLiving with the Enemy: First Contacts and the Making of Christian Bodies in Amazonia.

Conflicts about wildlife are usually portrayed and understood as resulting from the negative impacts of wildlife on human livelihoods or property. However, a greater depth of analysis reveals that many instances of human-wildlife conflict are often better understood as people-people conflict, wherein there is a clash of values between different human groups. Understanding Conflicts About Wildlife unites academics and practitioners from across the globe to develop a holistic view of these interactions. It considers the political and social dimensions of 'human-wildlife conflicts' alongside effective methodological approaches, and will be of value to academics, conservationists and policy makers.

Background: The anthropology of sustainability documents and interprets diverse visions of sustainable and liveable futures. Islamic scholars and financiers are now debating the distinctive contribution of Islamic finance to global sustainability. While mainstream global finance has only recently begun to pay explicit attention to social and environmental sustainability, Islamic economics has always emphasised the need to benefit society, the community, and the environment. Objectives: We ask what has been the influence of the emergence of green and social finance upon Islamic finance in Malaysia, the global centre of Islamic finance. Methods: The study is based on collaborative, co-productive ethnography and autoethnography, and textual analysis of working documents of the Securities Commission Malaysia, focusing on how environmental requirements are expressed in new financial products, known as green sukuks, or green Islamic bonds. Results and conclusions: We have found that much of the moral debate in Islamic finance has revolved around the distribution of financial risk: when investors share the risk of failure, they can participate in society rather than merely exploiting social relations, yet the emergence of ‘green’ Islamic finance appears to shift the centre of moral gravity away from risk structuring towards technical criteria of sustainability, replicating the growth-oriented anthropocentric managerialism of mainstream finance.

Creativity and Control: Property in Guianese Amazonia. This article introduces the anthropology of property relations to indigenous Amazonia, where property has long been assumed to be absent, and shows that focusing on Amazonian forms of property can lead to greater understanding of native practices and institutions. The article begins by showing that the Trio, Wayana and Akuriyo of southern Suriname have a wide range of practices and values which can usefully be understood in terms of property. This provides the basis for a discussion of the analytical importance of the anthropology of property for Amazonia, followed by a consideration of the place of Amazonian forms of property in the context of anthropological theory.

Engaging with the recent interest in materiality in the anthropology of Amazonia, this article focuses on objects which might seem to present a challenge to indigenous systems of thought. Maps and clocks separate and abstract space and time from each other, and from the phenomena of experience, by reducing them to plane and number. Partly for this reason, and partly because of their association with Christian conversion, they may be seen as symbols and instruments of colonialism and of the technological foundations of European power. The article offers an analysis of an Amazonian group's strong interest in these objects and in the modes of thought which they represent. It concludes with reflections on native historicity and the modalities of cultural change in a context of sustained contact with alterity. Dans la ligne du récent intérêt de l'anthropologie amazoniste envers la matérialité, l'auteur examine des objets qui semblent poser un défi aux systèmes de pensée autochtones. Cartes et horloges dissocient l'espace et le temps et les séparent des phénomènes perceptibles en les réduisant à des plans et des nombres. Pour cette raison, et aussi à cause de leur association à la conversion au christianisme, elles apparaissent comme symboles et instruments du colonialisme et des fondements technologiques de la puissance européenne. Le présent article analyse le vif intérêt d'un groupe amazonien pour ces objets et les modes de pensée qu'ils représentent. Il se conclut par des réflexions sur l'historicité indigène et les modalités du changement culturel, dans un contexte de contact permanent avec l'altérité.

In this article we consider the afterlife of the remains of unidentified migrants who have died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean from Albania and North Africa to Italy. Drawing on insights from long term, multi-sited field research, we outline paths taken by human remains and consider their multiple agencies and distributed personhood through the relational modalities with which they are symbolically and materially engaged at different scales of significance. The rising number of migrant deaths related to international crossings worldwide, especially in the Mediterranean, has stimulated a large body of scholarship, which generally relies upon a hermeneutics of secular transitional justice and fraternal transnationalism. We explore an alternative approach by focusing on the material and ritual afterlife of unidentified human remains at sea, examining the effects they have on their hosting environment. The treatment of dead strangers (across the double threshold constituted by the passage from life to death on the one hand, and the rupture of exile on the other) raises new questions for the anthropology of death. We offer an interpretation of both ad hoc and organised recovery operations and mortuary practices, including forensic identification procedures, and collective and single burials of migrant dead, as acts of hospitality. Hosting the dead operates at different scales: it takes the politically charged form of memorialisation at the levels of the state and the local community; however, while remembrance practices for dead strangers emphasise the latter's status as a collective category, forensic technologies of remembrance are directed towards the reconstruction of (in)dividual personhood. These ritual and technological processes of memorialisation and re-attachment together awaken ghosts of Italian fascism and colonialism.