Title:
Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century
JLCTITLE245:
Sergei Kan.
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press, c1989.
Physical Description:
xi, 390 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
ISBN:
9780874746860
General Note:
Includes index.
Abstract:
This study of the potlatch or memorial feast of the Tlingit Indian peoples of southeast Alaska gives a detailed account of the anthropology of death and ritual in this region in the nineteenth century.
Bibliography Note:
Bibliography: p. 357-384.
Contents:
Outline of the Mortuary Rites -- The Person and the Social Order -- The "Outside" and the "Inside": The Tlingit View of the Human Being -- Shagoon and the Social Person: The Cultural Ideal -- The Aristocrat as the Ideal Person -- The Funeral -- Cosmology, Eschatology, and the Nature of Death -- The Deceased, the Mourners, and the Opposites: Actors in the Ritual Drama -- Grief, Mourning, and the Politics of the Funeral -- The Potlatch -- Potlatch as a Mortuary Ritual -- Competition and Cooperation, Hierarchy and Equality -- Death in Northwestern North America and Beyond -- Tlingit Mortuary Complex, a Comparative Perspective -- Conclusion: Tlingit Mortuary Complex and the Anthropology of Death.