Symbolic Immortality
Description
Decades after its initial publication, Symbolic Immortality retains its status as the most comprehensive analysis of the mortuary practices of the Tlingit Indians of southeastern Alaska-or any other indigenous culture of the Northwest Coast. This updated and expanded edition furthers our understanding of the potlatch (koo.éex') as a total social phenomenon, with emotional and religious as well as economic and sociopolitical dimensions. The result is a major contribution to both Northwest Coast ethnology and theoretical literature on the anthropology of death.
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Person
Sergei Kan is professor of anthropology and Native American studies at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity through Two Centuries and A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in Alaska, and editor of Sharing Our Knowledge: The Tlingit and Their Coastal Neighbors.
Content
Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments
Tlingit Alphabet
Tlingit Technical Sound Chart
Map of Southeast Alaska, the Land of the Coastal Tlingits
Introduction
1. Outline of the Mortuary Rites
Part One | The Person and the Social Order
2. The ?Outside? and the ?Inside?: The Tlingit View of the Human Being
3. Shagóon and the Social Person: The Cultural Ideal
4. The Aristocrat as the Ideal Person
Part Two | The Funeral
5. Cosmology, Eschatology, and the Nature of Death
6. The Deceased, the Mourners, and the Opposites: Actors in the Ritual Drama
7. Grief, Mourning, and the Politics of the Funeral
Part Three | The Potlatch
8. The Potlatch as a Mortuary Ritual
9. Competition and Cooperation, Hierarchy and Equality
Part Four | Death in Northwestern North America and Beyond
10. The Tlingit Mortuary Complex: A Comparative Perspective
Conclusion: The Tlingit Mortuary Complex and the Anthropology of Death
Epilogue
Notes
Glossary
References
Index
