The forms of contemporary society and politics are often
understood to be diametrically opposed to any expression of the
supernatural; what happens when those forms are themselves regarded
as manifestations of spirits and other occult phenomena? In Not
Quite Shamans, Morten Axel Pedersen explores how the Darhad
people of Northern Mongolia's remote Shishged Valley have
understood and responded to the disruptive transition to
postsocialism by engaging with shamanic beliefs and practices
associated with the past.
For much of the twentieth century, Mongolia's communist rulers
attempted to eradicate shamanism and the shamans who once served as
spiritual guides and community leaders. With the transition from a
collectivized economy and a one-party state to a global capitalist
market and liberal democracy in the 1990s, the people of the
Shishged were plunged into a new and harsh world that seemed beyond
their control. "Not-quite-shamans"-young, unemployed men whose
undirected energies erupted in unpredictable, frightening bouts of
violence and drunkenness that seemed occult in their excess- became
a serious threat to the fabric of community life. Drawing on
long-term fieldwork in Northern Mongolia, Pedersen details how, for
many Darhads, the postsocialist state itself has become shamanic in
nature.
In the ideal version of traditional Darhad shamanism, shamans
can control when and for what purpose their souls travel, whether
to other bodies, landscapes, or worlds. Conversely, caught between
uncontrollable spiritual powers and an excessive display of
physical force, the "not-quite-shamans" embody the chaotic
forms-the free market, neoliberal reform, and government
corruption-that have created such upheaval in peoples' lives. As an
experimental ethnography of recent political and economic
transformations in Mongolia through the defamiliarizing prism of
shamans and their lack, Not Quite Shamans is an attempt to
write about as well as theorize postsocialism, and shamanism, in a
new way.
eISBN: 978-0-8014-6093-7
Subjects: Anthropology
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