DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Evil Spirits and Rocket Debris

In Search of Lost Souls in Siberia

Ludek Broz author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Berghahn Books

Published:2nd Feb '24

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Evil Spirits and Rocket Debris cover

The Altai Republic in southern Siberia is renowned for excavations of frozen mummies from high-altitude burial sites. Less well-known is the fact that it hosts fallout zones for the second stages of rockets launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome. Local inhabitants blame ‘evil spirits’ released by archaeological work and toxic fuel from rocket debris for their misfortunes. This book explores the divergent fates of such claims when confronted with state-fostered ‘rationalisms’ of science and governance.

“At the core of this text is the single best message that anthropology has always delivered: that there is much at stake in not just learning how to listen, but in how to hear what people are trying to tell us, and how to be fully open to new worlds.”• Bruce Grant, New York University

ISBN: 9781805392606

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

256 pages