What does Siberian Shamanism do for the Academic Study of Religion?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.23253Keywords:
Siberian shamanism, shamanism, Sakha religion, critical study of religion, SiberiaAbstract
This article will problematize shamanism as an analytical category and challenge it through a critical reading of scholarship about the area that has attracted scholars and travelers in search of Siberian shamanism—Sakha Sire [Sakha: ‘Sakha Land’], currently known as the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic. The term ‘shaman’ entered European and then global imaginations and vocabularies through the writings of eighteenth-century travelers and missionaries. I argue that the term was initially reserved for Siberian practitioners to mark their assumed ethnic and civilizational differences. With the added -ism, shamanism became one of the imagined commonalities of people grouped by Eurocentric thinkers into “tribal,” “primitive,” and “aboriginal.” The translation and categorization of Sakha practitioners oiuun to shamans resulted not only in exotification and dehumanization of Sakha practitioners, but also in their imprisonment during the Soviet regime. As this article will argue, the study of Siberian shamanism tells us more about colonial scholarships on shamanism than about the practices and people who inhabit the imagined region of Siberia.
References
Alberts, Thomas Karl. 2016. Shamanism, Discourse, Modernity. New York: Routledge.
Alekseev, N.A. 1984. Shamanism turkoyazychnykh narodov Sibiri. Novosibirsk: Nauka.
Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Balzer, M. M. 1996a. “Nationalism, Interethnic Relations and Federalism: The Case of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia).” Europe-Asia Studies 48(1): 101–120.
———. 1996b. “Flights of the Sacred: Symbolism and Theory in Siberian Shamanism.” American Anthropologist 98(2): 305–318.
———. 2016. “Shamans Emerging from Repression in Siberia: Lightning Rods of Fear and Hope.” In Horizons of Shamanism: A Triangular Approach to the History and Anthropology of Ecstatic Techniques, edited by P. Jackson, 1–34. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press.
Bremmer, J. N. 2016. “Shamanism in Classical Scholarship: Where are We Now?” In Horizons of Shamanism: A Triangular Approach to the History and Anthropology of Ecstatic Techniques, edited by P. Jackson, 52–78. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press.
Castaneda, Carlos. 1998 [1968]. The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2007. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Ewing: Princeton University Press.
Clifford, James. 2013. Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Crate, Susan. 2006. “Ohuokhai: Sakha’s Unique Integration of Social Meaning and Movement.” Journal of American Folklore 119(472): 161–183.
Cotter, Christopher, and David G. Robertson, eds. 2016. After World Religions: Reconstructing Religious Studies. Abingdon: Routledge.
Dressler, Markus, and Arvind-Pal S. Mandair, eds. 2011. Secularism and Religion-Making. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dressler, Markus. 2013. Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Drobin, Ulf. 2016. Introduction. In Horizons of Shamanism: A Triangular Approach to the History and Anthropology of Ecstatic Techniques, edited by P. Jackson, vi–x. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press.
———. 2016. Afterword. In Horizons of Shamanism: A Triangular Approach to the History and Anthropology of Ecstatic Techniques, edited by P. Jackson, vi–x. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press.
Efremova, N., A. Varlamova, I. Rozhyna, and S. Feoktistov. 2018. “Stages of Translation Activity Development in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) (On the Material of Folkloric Texts, Translated Fiction in the Context of Historical Coverage).” Filologicheskie Nauki, Voprosy Teorii I Praktiki 2(80): 312–317.
Eliade, Mircea. 1964 (1951). Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Filatov, Sergei. 2000. “Yakutia (Sakha) Faces a Religious Choice: Shamanism or Christianity.” Religion, State and Society 28(1): 113–122.
Fitzgerald, Timothy. 2007. Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History of Religion and Related Categories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ginzburg, C. 2016. “Travelling in Spirit: From Friuli to Siberia. In Horizons of Shamanism: A Triangular Approach to the History and Anthropology of Ecstatic Techniques, edited by P. Jackson, 35–51. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press.
Hall, Stuart. 1986. “On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 10(2): 131–150.
Harner, Michael. 1990 [1980]. The Way of the Shaman. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Harvey, Graham. 2003. “General Introduction.” In Shamanism: A Reader, edited by Graham Harvey, 1–25. London: Routledge.
Hutton, Ronald. 2001. Shamans: Siberian spirituality and the Western Imagination. London: Hambledon Contimuun.
Il’yakhov, Petr N. 1997. Shamanstvo na Severe Yakutii (1920–1930gg). Yakutsk: Bichik.
Jackson, Peter, ed. 2016. Horizons of Shamanism: A Triangular Approach to the History and Anthropology of Ecstatic Techniques. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press.
———. 2016. Preface. In: Horizons of Shamanism: A Triangular Approach to the History and Anthropology of Ecstatic Techniques.vi–x. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press.
Jochelson, Waldemar. 1906. Kumiss Festivals of the Yakut and the Decoration of Kumiss Vessels. In Boas Anniversary Volume: Anthropological Papers written in Honor of Franz Boas, 257–271. New York: G.E. Stechert.
Johnson, Greg. 2008. “Authenticity, Invention, Articulation: Theorizing Contemporary Hawaiian Traditions from the Outside.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 20(3): 243–258.
Kehoe, Alive Beck. 2000. Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking. Long Grove, Il: Waveland Press.
Khudyakov, Ivan A. 1969 [1860s]. Kratkoe opisanie Verkhoyanskogo okruga. Leningrad: Nauka.
———. 1890. “Verkhoyanskii sbornik. Yakutskie skazki, pesni, zagadki, poslovitsy, a takzhe russkie skazki I pesni zapisannye v Verkhoyanskom okruge.” Zapiski Vostochno-Sibirskogo otdeleniia Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva po etnografii 1 (3). Irkutsk: Tipografia K.I. Vitkovskoi.
Kraft, Siv Ellen. 2021. Indigenous Religion(s) in Sápmi: Reclaiming Sacred Grounds. Milton: Taylor and Francis.
Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2005. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Mignolo, Walter. 2018. On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analysis, and Praxis. Durham: Duke University Press.
Nikanorova, Liudmila. 2019. “Religion and Indigeneity at Yhyakh.” Unpublished PhD thesis, UiT – the Arctic University of Norway.
———. 2020. “Religion-Making at the Sakha Yhyakh.” Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia 59(1): 29–51.
———. 2022. “The Role of Academia in Finding, Claiming, and Authorizing Sakha Religions.” In Religions around the Arctic: Source Criticism and Comparison, edited by H. Rydving and K. Kaikkonen, 255–275. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press.
Nongbri, Brent. 2013. Before Religion: A History of Modern Concept. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Peers, Eleanor and Stepan Kolodeznikov. 2015. “How to Enjoy a Teetotal All-Night: Abstinence and Identity at the Sakha People’s Yhyakh.” Electronic Journal of Folklore 61: 117–134.
Radlov [Radloff], Wilhelm. 1884. Aus Sibirien, Vol. 1: Lose Blätter aus Meinem Tagebuche. Leipzig.
Romanova, Ekaterina. 2012. “The Yakut [Sakha] National Festival Ysyakh in Transition.” Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia 50 (4): 42–55.
Rydving, Håkan. 2011. “Le chamanisme aujourd’hui: constructions eteligionctionss d’une illusion scientifique.” Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines 42. file:///C:/Users/lni020/Downloads/emscat-1815%20(3).pdf (accessed 27 March, 2022).
Said, Edward. 2003 [1978]. Orientalism. London: Penguin Books.
Seroshevsky [Sieroszewski], Waclaw. 1896. Yakuty: Opyt etnograficheskogo issledovaniia. Saint-Peterburg: Tipografiia Glavnogo Upravleniia Udelov.
Smith, Jonathan Z. 1982. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press
———. 1993[1978]. Map is Not Territory. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
———. 2004. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York: Zed Books.
Stammler-Gossmann, Anna. 2009. “Who Is Indigenous? Construction of ‘Indigenousness’ in Russian Legislation.” International Community Law Review 11(1): 69–102.
Sundström, Olle. 2012. “Is the Shaman Indeed Risen in Post-Soviet Siberia?” Post-Secular Religious Practices 24: 350–387.
Tafjord, Bjørn Ola. 2017. “Scales, Translations, and Siding Effects: Uses of indígena andeligionn in Talamanca and Beyond.” In Religious Categories and the Construction of the Indigenous, edited by C. Hartney and D. J . Tower, 138–177. Leiden: Brill.
Troshchansky, Vasily F. 1902. Evolutsiia chernoi very (shamanstva) u yakutov. Kazan: Tipo-litografia Imperatorskogo Universiteta.
Vasil’eva, N. 2000. Yakutskoe shamanstvo 1920–1930-e gody. Yakutsk: Bichik.
Vitebsky, Piers. 2003. From Cosmology to Environmentalism: Shamanism as ocal Knowledge in a Global Setting. In Shamanism: A Reader, edited by G. Harvey, 276–299. London: Routledge.
Znamensky, Andrei A. 2007. The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and the Western Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
