Shamans have long fascinated academicians, however, there has been many debates on what a shaman is. Recent studies on shamanism have not only been emerging from anthropologists, but also from scholars of religious studies and psychology. The largest debate in the academic study of shamanism is one of definition. Are new age neo-shamans authentic? Does the study of shamans need to be confined to circumpolar region? Is shamanism a technique or a religion? Can it be argued that there is academic political reasons that color scholar's decisions? There are four main camps of academic shamanistic studies; a narrow definition confining the term to the northern Arctic practices, as the oldest form of religion, as a prevalent type of indigenous practice and finally as an almost all encompassing term that includes all native and new age forms.
A narrow definition of shaman is popular with Russian and Scandinavian scholars, concentrating their study to the Arctic, Siberia and Mongolia. Fiona Bowie defines shamanism in this case as consisting of “trace, direct contact with spiritual beings and guardian spirits, and mediation in a ritual setting” (Bowie 179). Many scholar subscribing to this school of thought think that the label shaman is too widely used and by being so widely spread around, it loses meaning. Bowie quotes E. E. Evans-Pritchard stating:
One can standardize a word taken from a primitive vernacular, like totem, and use it to describe phenomena among other peoples which resemble what it refers to in its original home; but this can be the cause of great confusion, because of the resemblances many be superficial, and the phenomena in question so diversified that the term loses all meaning (Evans-Pritchard quoted by Bowie, 179).
Many other scholars would prefer to argue for a larger definition, but a strong response could come from the idea that the west built the idea of what is modern on the back of what is considered traditionally indigenous or premodern (Pigg 161). Arctic scholars are masters of spirits and normally have special social positions in their communities. They act as a healer of souls and a mediator with animal's guardian spirits in order to help the hunt. They are called to their career often through a life-changing event and are initiated then trained in their jobs. Training can take over ten years (Bowie 181-191). There are elements present in this definition of shamanism that can be found in a wider context.
Those that would argue that shamanism is a traditional indigenous practice might come from the idea that shamanism is the oldest form of religion. Scholars look back to the Stone Age, thinking that a “specialist in the human soul” but also a “mystical, priestly, and political figure” can be seen as far back as the Upper Paleolithic (Halifax quoted in Bowie, 177). It is difficult to look back into the past and make accurate statements on behavior that is not put in any context, so academicians often look towards modern small-scale cultures for the basis of their ideas regarding the origins of religion. Mircea Eliade is often said to belong to this camp of thought, describing shamanism in the most simple terms as a “technique of ecstasy” (Eliade 4). A variation on this argument is that shamans are often said to be seeking union with a Supreme Being , but this shows an ethnocentric view of the world with an Abrahamic monotheistic slant (Bowie 178).
The third academic camp, with many similarities to the second, argues that shamanism is a form of indigenous practice, common throughout the world. This is a popular approach for English-speaking and western European scholars. Bowie quotes Joan Halifax as saying that shamanism is “an ecstatic complex of particular and fixed elements with a specific ideology that has persisted though millennia and is found in many different cultural settings” (Bowie 176). Most scholars in this camp would argue that shamanism does not always form the only religious idea in a society and that shamanism can be found in any small-scale society in history. Some of these practices make little sense out of the culture they evolved in, though some common elements include an initiation ritual, ecstatic trances and the ability to mediate between the spirit and material worlds.
Can people follow a practice even outside the cultural context it originated in? If the answer is yes regarding shamanism, the argument rests on two premises: “1. Shamanism is nearly universal in scope and 2. Shamanism is primarily a technique, not a religion” (Johnson 163). In this final, broadest definition of shamanism, any one could be a shaman with some training. This approach is “both individualistic and universalizing” encompasses both traditional forms of shamanism and neo-shamanism. Kocku von Stuckard talks of Magali Demanget's work, “Instead of deciding where (real) shamanism and (imitating, colonializing) neo-shamanism differ, she pictures 'how problematic the demarcation between the two can sometimes be” (Stuckard 124). Neo-shamanism has become popular in the industrialized western in the last fifty years. Many are introduced to shamans by movies or books. A popular book is Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan which details the life of a Yaqui Indian. While derided by some as being fictional, other ethnographers argue that fictive accounts are an acceptable form of ethnography. He is considered by many as the father of neo-shamanism, but Michael Harner and his Foundation for Shamanic Studies might be more well-known today. He wrote such texts as The Elements of Shamanism and The Way of the Shaman. Harner's training was as an anthropologist and much of neo-shamanism is based on the work of anthropologists, however many think that Harner went too far outside academia. He resigned from university life and concentrates on his foundation. The foundation's website states, “Since the West overwhelmingly lost its shamanic knowledge centuries ago due to religious oppression, the Foundation’s programs in core shamanism are particularly intended for Westerners to reacquire access to their rightful spiritual heritage through quality workshops and training courses” (http://www.shamanism.org/fssinfo/index.html).
There are some differences between traditional shamans and neo-shamans. One is that traditional shamanism is restricted to a few individuals who are part of a larger community with a job to do for the community and “may be regarded as a menace as much as a blessing” (Bowie 194). In neo-shamanism, shamans are more individuals that are looking way to gain control in an overwhelming world. Almost anyone, according to most neo-shaman groups, can become a shaman. While techniques and attitudes may vary, shamans and neo-shamans are seen by this group as a way to deal with a world that is often unexplainable.
Most of the academic differences in what shamans are boil down to academic politics in defining what a shaman is. The closer the academician is to the origin of the word, the more likely they are to want to keep shaman to the original meaning of a spirit specialist in arctic regions. Western European and American scholars often want to define what shamanism is based on their own ideas of modernity and indigenous cultures. Others want to define shamanism based on the techniques it uses and not on the culture it arises from. Neo-shamanism puts an interesting spin on the debate with arguments about religious practices needing cultural support to truly make sense and the perceived selfishness in a practice that puts so much emphasis on the individual. Neo-shamanism likely owns much of it's popularity to the obsession the west has with the 'exotic other'. However shamanism is defined and delimitated, it will continue to be the subject of academic fascination among anthropologists, religious studies scholars and psychologists for years to come.
Bibliography
Bowie, Fiona. The Anthropology of Religion: An Introduction. Second Edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006.
Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton: Princeton Unversity Press, 1974.
Johnson, Paul C. . "Shamaniam from Ecuador to Chicago: A Case Study in New Age Ritual Appropriation." Religion. 25. (1995): 163-178.
Pigg, Stacy Leigh. "The Credible and the Credulous: The Question of "Villagers' Beliefs" in Nepal." Cultural Anthropology. 11.2 (1996): 160-201.
von Stuckrad, Kocku. "Constructions, Normativities, Identities: Recent Studies on Shamanism and Neo-Shamanism." Religious Studies Review. 31.3, 4 (2005): 123-128.
