Personhood and" frontier" in contemporary Amazonia and Siberia

The adage that anthropology is comparative if it can be defi ned as anything at all has been tested in recent years to great effect—particularly on the theme of the body (Gregor and Tuzin 2001; Lambek and Strathern 1998)—and with greater confidence than it had been a decade previously (Holy 1987). The body has provided a useful starting point for cross-cultural comparison because, at some level, the physically existing, universal human body can be considered a common factor among all cultures. While the apparent universality and constancy of the body may be questioned in light of ethnographic evidence, and while the body can be politicized in differing ways, when politics and history themselves are taken as points of comparison, a new and somewhat different challenge is set. Taking up both challenges and placing them alongside each other, this paper explores comparatively the themes of “frontier” and “personhood” in two regions, Amazonia and Siberia.