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SHAMANISM-HDM Finished Alberts, Thomas Karl (2013) Shaminism: history, discourse and modernity. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/16642 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. SHAMANISM: HISTORY, DISCOURSE, AND MODERNITY Thomas Karl Alberts Dissertation Doctor of Philosophy in the Study of Religions School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 18 May 2013 Declaration I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________ 2 Abstract This research considers the emergence in history of a discourse about shamans. Beginning with the prevalent claim that shamans have existed in all human societies throughout history, the initial question is: how did a kind of ritual specialist first reported in Siberia in the seventeenth century become the eponymous category of a universalisable religiosity? My project is anchored by the argument that the simultaneity of epistemological practice that tends to produce universal structures with an ontological practice that tends to deconstruct universals into embodied contingencies, together illustrate the double-hinge on which pivots modern subjectivity. According to Foucault’s reading of Kant, this double-hinged subjectivity is instantiated in a practical limit attitude that in turn establishes a self- perpetuating dialectic, a perpetual motion dynamo animating and innervating modern history. This thesis argues that the simultaneously particularising and universalising tendencies of statements about shamans are part and parcel of modernity’s practical limit attitude, and can be seen in the proliferations and intensifications of shamanism discourse since the eighteenth century. Chapter Two considers this problem from a genealogical perspective, with reference to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia. Subsequent chapters consider shamanism’s imbrications with other discursive fields. With reference to the indigenist movement for human rights (Chapter Three), environmentalist critiques of anthropocentrism (Chapter Four), and neoliberal governmentality in self-conduct as much as the conduct of states (Chapter Five), structural transformations in these respective fields have variously sustained and stimulated new proliferations, intensifications and circulations of shamanism, and have contributed to the reported revival of shamanic religiosity since the 1990s. This argument takes seriously Arjun Apparudai’s recommendation to pay attention to the ‘mundane discourses’ of global cultural flows, and is conceived as a contribution towards both the sociology of religion and critical-theoretical approaches to studying religion. Regarding the former, this research demonstrates shamanism is a highly adaptive and productive discourse for a diverse assemblage of actors with interests in tapping shamanism’s significatory potential. Regarding the latter, shamanism is demonstrated to be a highly productive subject for reflexive studies of contemporary religiosity, including strategies for circumscribing interests, authorising representations, and legitimating practices. 3 Table of Contents Declaration.............................................................................................................................. 2 Abstract................................................................................................................................... 3 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgements................................................................................................................. 7 Orthography ........................................................................................................................... 8 Notes on style..................................................................................................................... 8 List of abbreviations........................................................................................................... 8 Chapter One: Introduction ................................................................................................. 10 The Problem..................................................................................................................... 10 The Terrain....................................................................................................................... 15 Modernity’s Double-hinge............................................................................................... 20 Genealogy and Archaeology............................................................................................ 31 Field and Habitus ............................................................................................................. 36 Trends in Recent Shamanism Research........................................................................... 40 Structure and Outline ....................................................................................................... 59 Chapter Two: Shamanism................................................................................................... 61 Discovering Shamans....................................................................................................... 63 Between Occident and Orient .......................................................................................... 66 Wilhelm Radloff and Bai-Ülgen...................................................................................... 68 Regionalists in Eden......................................................................................................... 75 Arctic Hysteria ................................................................................................................. 81 Emigration........................................................................................................................ 86 Genealogy and the Double-Hinge.................................................................................... 91 Chapter Three: Indigenism................................................................................................. 95 Indigenism........................................................................................................................ 98 Indigenous, indigenist, indigenism ........................................................................... 98 The changing field of human rights discourse........................................................ 100 Human rights and the moral transcendence of politics........................................... 102 Indigenism’s double-hinge ..................................................................................... 105 4 Transnational identity formation at the UN ................................................................... 108 Beginnings .............................................................................................................. 108 UN Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations ....... 110 UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations..................................................... 114 UN report on indigenous peoples’ relationship to land .......................................... 117 From self-determination to autonomy............................................................................ 120 Diversity at the WGIP............................................................................................. 120 Self-determination vs autonomy............................................................................. 122 The Awas Tingni case.................................................................................................... 125 Trial and Judgment ................................................................................................. 125 Jurisprudence and precedent................................................................................... 129 Discursive Imbrications ................................................................................................. 132 Chapter Four: Environmentalism .................................................................................... 135 Ramunangi Land Claim ................................................................................................. 139 Phiphidi Falls .........................................................................................................
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