Research Catalog

Title

Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century / Sergei Kan.

Author

Kan, Sergei.

Publication

Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press, c1989.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xi, 390 p. : ill.; 24 cm.

Summary

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.

Series Statement

Smithsonian series in ethnographic inquiry

Uniform Title

Smithsonian series in ethnographic inquiry.

Subject

• Indians of North America > Northwest Coast of North America > Funeral customs and rites
• Tlingit Indians > Funeral customs and rites
• Potlatch > Northwest Coast of North America
• Indians of North America > Funeral customs and rites > Northwest Coast of North America

Note

• Includes index.

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.

ISBN

• 0874746868 (alk. paper)
• 1560983094

LCCN

^^^88038200^//r90

OCLC

18780826

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library