Piers Vitebsky is an

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

and is the Head of Social Science at the

Scott Polar Research Institute The Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) is a centre for research into the polar regions and glaciology worldwide. It is a sub-department of the Department of Geography in the University of Cambridge, located on Lensfield Road in the south o ...

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, England.

Education

Vitebsky studied his undergraduate degree in Classics with Modern and Medieval Languages at the

, graduating in 1971. He then went on to take a diploma in Social Anthropology at the

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

. In the late seventies he was an affiliated student at the

Delhi School of Economics Delhi School of Economics (DSE), popularly referred to as "D School", is a Higher Educational Institution within the University of Delhi. The Delhi School of Economics is situated in University of Delhi's North Campus in Maurice Nagar. Establ ...

. Eventually he completed his PhD at the

School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury ar ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in 1982.

Career

Since the 1980s, Vitebsky has carried out long-term fieldwork among with the

Evens The Evens ( eve, эвэн; pl. , in Even and , in Russian; formerly called ''Lamuts'') are a people in Siberia and the Russian Far East. They live in regions of the Magadan Oblast and Kamchatka Krai and northern parts of Sakha east of the ...

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

, and among shamans and shifting cultivators in tribal

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

. In the Russian Arctic, he was the first westerner since the Revolution to live long-term with an indigenous community. Only after working for several months at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

was he allowed to fly out to

Yakutsk Yakutsk (russian: Якутск, p=jɪˈkutsk; sah, Дьокуускай, translit=Djokuuskay, ) is the capital city of the Sakha Republic, Russia, located about south of the Arctic Circle. Fueled by the mining industry, Yakutsk has become one of ...

in 1988. Vitebsky has been Head of Anthropology and Russian Northern Studies at the

since 1986. His current focus is on reindeer herders' perceptions of and responses to

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

Media work

Vitebsky's numerous documentary film collaborations include 'Arctic aviators' (

National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly the ''National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as NAT GEO) is a popular American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. Known for its photojournalism, it is one of the most widely ...

) and 'Flightpaths to the gods' (

BBC2 BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...

, on the

Nazca lines The Nazca Lines are a group of geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor, removing pebbles and le ...

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...

), and 'Siberia: after the shaman' (

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

), which won first prize at the Film Festival of the European Foundation for the Environment and was screened at the

Margaret Mead Film Festival The Margaret Mead Film Festival is an annual film festival held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It is the longest-running, premiere showcase for international documentaries in the United States, encompassing a broad spe ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Awards

Vitebsky has won the Gilchrist Expedition Award from the

Royal Geographical Society The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...

. In 2006 he won the

Kiriyama Prize The Kiriyama Prize was an international literary award awarded to books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia. Its goal was to encourage greater understanding among the peoples and nations of the region. Established in 1996, the prize was last awa ...

for non-fiction. He was also runner up for the

Victor Turner Victor Witter Turner (28 May 1920 – 18 December 1983) was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals, and rites of passage. His work, along with that of Clifford Geertz and others, is often referred to as ...

Prize for Ethnographic Writing in 2007 - awarded annually by Society for Humanistic Anthropology,

American Anthropological Association The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...

Works

Books

* ''Dialogues with the dead: the discussion of mortality among the Sora of eastern India'' (Cambridge University Press 1993; reprinted Delhi: Foundation Books 1993); * ''The shaman: voyages of the soul from the Arctic to the Amazon'' (London: Duncan Baird; Boston: Little Brown 1995; reprinted as 'Shamanism' by University of Oklahoma Press 2001; translated into 15 languages); * Vitebsky, P.G. and Monosi, R., 2011. Indigenous knowledge: a handbook of Sora culture (in Sora), Visakhapatnam.

Journal articles

2015

Vitebsky, P. and Alekseyev, A., 2015. Siberia. Annual Review of Anthropology, v. 44, p. 439-455. doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155546. Vitebsky, P. and Alekseyev, A., 2015. Casting Timeshadows: Pleasure and Sadness of Moving among Nomadic Reindeer Herders in north-east Siberia. Mobilities, v. 10, p. 518-530. doi:10.1080/17450101.2015.1062298. Vitebsky, P. and Alekseyev, A., 2015. What is a reindeer? Indigenous perspectives from northeast Siberia. Polar Record, v. 51, p. 413-421. doi:10.1017/S0032247414000333. Willerslev, R., Vitebsky, P. and Alekseyev, A., 2015. Sacrifice as the ideal hunt: a cosmological explanation for the origin of reindeer domestication. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, v. 21, p. 1-23. doi:10.1111/1467-9655.12142. Willerslev, R., Vitebsky, P. and Alekseyev, A., 2015. Defending the thesis on the ‘hunter's double bind’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, v. 21, p. 28-31. doi:10.1111/1467-9655.12146. 2014 Vitebsky, P.G. and Anatoly, A., 2014. Nomadismes d’Asie centrale et septentrionale. Diogène, v. 246-247, p. 258-264. 2010 Vitebsky, P.G., 2010. From materfamilias to dinner-lady: the administrative destruction of the reindeer herder's family life. Anthropology of East Europe Review, v. 28, p. 38-50. Vitebsky, P.G., 2010. Introducing the 'Natural dimension' into Arctic humanities research. Northern Notes, v. 34, p. 13-14. 2008 Vitebsky, P.G., 2008. Loving and forgetting: moments of inarticulacy in Tribal India. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, v. 14, p. 243-261. Vitebsky, P.G., Rees, W.G., Stammler, F.M. and Danks, F.S., 2008. Vulverability of European reindeer husbandry to global change. Climatic Change:, v. 87, p. 199-217. Book chapters Vitebsky, P.G., 2012. Afterword, in Brightman, M., Grotti, V.E. and Ulturgasheva, O. (eds.) Animism in rainforest and tundra: personhood, animals, plants and things in contemporary Amazonia and Siberia, Berghahn. v. 2133, p. 202-219. Vitebsky, P.G., 2011. Historical time and ethnographic present: an anthropologist's experience of comparing change and loss in the Siberian Arctic and the Indian jungle, in Ziker, J.P. and Stammler, F. (eds.) Histories from the North: environments, movements and narrative, Boise State University. p. 71-77. Vitebsky, P.G., 2011. Repeated returns and special friends: from mythic encounter to shared history, in Howell, S. and Talle, A. (eds.) Returns to the field: multitemporal research and contemporary anthropology, Bloomington. p. 180-202. Vitebsky, P.G., Habeck, J.O., Comaroff, J., Costopoulos, A. and Navarette, F., 2010. Ethnographic researches in the North and their contribution to global anthropology, in Oktyabrskaya, . (ed.) North and South: dialogue between cultures and civilizations, Novosibirsk: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography. p. 63-66.

References

External links

'Loving and Forgetting: a farewell to ancestors' Sora attitudes toward the dead. A presentation given at Cambridge 4 May 2007 based on the Henry Myers Lecture given at EASA Biennial Conference 2006 (film)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vitebsky, Piers British anthropologists Academics of the University of Cambridge Anthropologists of religion Living people Year of birth missing (living people) People of the Scott Polar Research Institute People associated with The Institute for Cultural Research