Animals and Ancestors

Ever since the emergence of human culture people and animals have co-existed in close proximity. Humans have always recognized both their kinship with animals and their fundamental differences as animals have always been a threat to humans' well-being. The relationship therefore has been complex intimate reciprocal personal and -- crucially -- ambivalent. It is hardly surprising that animals evoke strong emotions in humans both positive and negative. This companion volume to Morris' important earlier work The Power of Animals is a sustained investigation of the Malawi people's sacramental attitude to animals particularly the role that animals play in life-cycle rituals their relationship to the divinity and to spirits of the dead. How people relate to and use animals speaks volumes about their culture and beliefs. This book overturns the ingrained prejudice within much ethnographic work which has often dismissed the pivotal role animals play in culture and shows that personhood religion and a wide range of rituals are informed by and even dependent upon human-animal relations.