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Shamanism: A Reader
Shamanism has been practised amongst communities all over the world for millennia, and continues to survive today in both modern and ancient forms. A Reader unites perspectives from disciplines including anthropology, psychology, musicology, and botany to provide an unique overview of modern writing on shamanism. Juxtaposing the traditional practices of indigenous peoples with their new and often radically urban reinterpretations, experts including Michael Harner, Mihály Hoppál, Marjorie M Balzer and Piers Vitebsky raise questions about constructions of shamanism, its efficacy, its use and misuse as a cultural symbol, and its real nature.
Locating its material in the encounter between traditional and contemporary, and within many forms of response to the image of the shaman, A Reader is an essential tribute to the vitality and breadth of shamanic tradition both among its original practitioners of Europe, tribes of America and Asia, and within seemingly familiar aspects of the modern west. Representing the best of classic and current scholarship, and highlighting the diversity of approaches to shamanism in an accessible and user-friendly way, this clearly introduced and organized collection sets a new standard for shamanic study in terms of the breadth and depth of its coverage.
Locating its material in the encounter between traditional and contemporary, and within many forms of response to the image of the shaman, A Reader is an essential tribute to the vitality and breadth of shamanic tradition both among its original practitioners of Europe, tribes of America and Asia, and within seemingly familiar aspects of the modern west. Representing the best of classic and current scholarship, and highlighting the diversity of approaches to shamanism in an accessible and user-friendly way, this clearly introduced and organized collection sets a new standard for shamanic study in terms of the breadth and depth of its coverage.
478 pages, Paperback
First published November 8, 2002
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About the author
Graham Harvey
22 books1 followerGraham Harvey, Ph.D. (University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1991), is a religious studies scholar specializing in modern Paganism, indigenous religions and animism. He was was head of the religious studies department at the Open University (2013–17), reader and principal lecturer in religious studies at the King Alfred's College, Winchester (1996–2003), and taught religious studies at his alma mater (1991–95).
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October 11, 2014
4.4 stars, really: an excellent resource not just for students and those interested in native cosmologies and the changing Western response thereto, but for open-minded and curious people in general.
The reader compasses pertinent snippets tracking changes in anthropological approaches and tackles sticky questions of New Age and other cultural appropriation with admirably little bias, often fielding both original articles and their rebuttals. I have an entrenched ambivalence towards archaeology's sister dicipline, but this textbook is as reflective as a source can get whilst retaining its focus on what shamanism is and does.
Although I make it sound extremely dry, most of the articles are anything but: a previously hard-atheist anthropologist accidentally ending up a shaman subsequent to a near-lethal dose of hallucinogens, for instance, or the fascinating overlap between the mind-breakingly ancient Bear Cult and the perception of transgender or/and genderqueer individuals as better suited for a shaman's life.
Well worth the time to find in a library and dip into at will, though the cumulative knowledge - and understanding that there is vastly more to know, and still more that is lost - makes a cover-to-cover reading equally worthwhile.
warning: may result in a tendancy to ask misusers of the word 'shaman' "where's your reindeer, then?" and do the kind of research that makes one giggle uncontrollably at the sight of Santa-themed light displays.
The reader compasses pertinent snippets tracking changes in anthropological approaches and tackles sticky questions of New Age and other cultural appropriation with admirably little bias, often fielding both original articles and their rebuttals. I have an entrenched ambivalence towards archaeology's sister dicipline, but this textbook is as reflective as a source can get whilst retaining its focus on what shamanism is and does.
Although I make it sound extremely dry, most of the articles are anything but: a previously hard-atheist anthropologist accidentally ending up a shaman subsequent to a near-lethal dose of hallucinogens, for instance, or the fascinating overlap between the mind-breakingly ancient Bear Cult and the perception of transgender or/and genderqueer individuals as better suited for a shaman's life.
Well worth the time to find in a library and dip into at will, though the cumulative knowledge - and understanding that there is vastly more to know, and still more that is lost - makes a cover-to-cover reading equally worthwhile.
warning: may result in a tendancy to ask misusers of the word 'shaman' "where's your reindeer, then?" and do the kind of research that makes one giggle uncontrollably at the sight of Santa-themed light displays.
Displaying 1 of 1 review