Manduhai Buyandelger
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226086552
- eISBN:
- 9780226013091
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226013091.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
The chapter explores connections among postsocialism, neoliberal capitalism, and shamanism. The author traces the multiple contexts behind current misfortunes by revealing the cumulative ...
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The chapter explores connections among postsocialism, neoliberal capitalism, and shamanism. The author traces the multiple contexts behind current misfortunes by revealing the cumulative repercussions of the socioeconomic procedures that have been implemented as modernization projects in Mongolia since the advent of socialism in 1921. These include, during socialism, forced collectivization and semi-sedentarization of nomads, and the neoliberal reforms that were pushed by the international community after socialism. The chaos and corruption of privatization in particular, with the inheritance of risks and liabilities that Verdery has noted, led to economic devastation and inequality. The author argues that while these external processes and projects constitute sources of misfortune, they have also transformed the local world itself into an additional source that generates more calamity. The author uses the concept of genealogy to highlight the ways in which shamanic epistemology explains misfortunes not as individual mistakes or karma, but as intimately linked with the life-events of ancestors in longue durée, as part of larger historical processes. At the same time, in everyday life, shamanic competition together with gossip, mistrust, and the assumption of ill-intention by others tend to undo the Buryats’ efforts to deal with misfortune, and in fact exacerbate it.Less
The chapter explores connections among postsocialism, neoliberal capitalism, and shamanism. The author traces the multiple contexts behind current misfortunes by revealing the cumulative repercussions of the socioeconomic procedures that have been implemented as modernization projects in Mongolia since the advent of socialism in 1921. These include, during socialism, forced collectivization and semi-sedentarization of nomads, and the neoliberal reforms that were pushed by the international community after socialism. The chaos and corruption of privatization in particular, with the inheritance of risks and liabilities that Verdery has noted, led to economic devastation and inequality. The author argues that while these external processes and projects constitute sources of misfortune, they have also transformed the local world itself into an additional source that generates more calamity. The author uses the concept of genealogy to highlight the ways in which shamanic epistemology explains misfortunes not as individual mistakes or karma, but as intimately linked with the life-events of ancestors in longue durée, as part of larger historical processes. At the same time, in everyday life, shamanic competition together with gossip, mistrust, and the assumption of ill-intention by others tend to undo the Buryats’ efforts to deal with misfortune, and in fact exacerbate it.
Paul Gifford
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190495732
- eISBN:
- 9780190618506
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190495732.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The religions of Africa historically have understood reality to be governed primarily by spiritual forces and have considered causality principally in that realm. This religious imagination has ...
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The religions of Africa historically have understood reality to be governed primarily by spiritual forces and have considered causality principally in that realm. This religious imagination has persisted into much African Pentecostalism, which identifies causes of misfortune as witches, marine spirits, spirit spouses and ancestral curses. The chapter considers Daniel Olukoya’s Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries as an example of this religious imagination.Less
The religions of Africa historically have understood reality to be governed primarily by spiritual forces and have considered causality principally in that realm. This religious imagination has persisted into much African Pentecostalism, which identifies causes of misfortune as witches, marine spirits, spirit spouses and ancestral curses. The chapter considers Daniel Olukoya’s Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries as an example of this religious imagination.
