Margins of Power The constitution and contestation of Darhad shamans’ power in contemporary Mongolia Inauguraldissertation der Philosophisch-historischen Fakultät der Universität Bern zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde vorgelegt von Judith Hangartner Altstätten SG Selbstverlag, Bern 2007 Von der Philosophisch-historischen Fakultät auf Antrag von Prof. Dr. Heinzpeter Znoj (Hauptgutachter) und Prof. Dr. Hans-Rudolf Wicker (Zweitgutachter) angenommen. Bern, den 5. Oktober 2007 Die Dekanin: Prof. Dr.Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz The picture on the title page shows the shaman Moko’s son who, the morning after his father’s seance, donned his father’s shamanic headgear and shamanized with a cooking pot lid (Ulaanbaatar, 29.10. 2003). Contents Chapter 1: Introduction: power of the margins..........................................................11 Darhad shamans emerging in postsocialist Mongolia.......................................................................13 A rethinking of the socialist past........................................................................................................16 The Darhad as a foil for the twentieth-century nation-state.............................................................18 “Shamanism” as heterogeneous discourses.......................................................................................21 Chapter arrangement.........................................................................................................................23 Chapter 2: Intruding into people’s lives.....................................................................27 The intrusion of shamans’ spirits in the guides’ life..........................................................................31 Rethinking the field of fieldwork.......................................................................................................32 Exploring the field of travel encounters............................................................................................36 Notions of “rapport” and “conspiracy” in arrival anecdotes.............................................................42 Critique on the notion of conspiracy..................................................................................................47 Why a white horse should be devoted to the spirits..........................................................................49 Chapter 3: Exploring inspirational ontologies...........................................................51 The emergence of “shaman-ism” as a belief system..........................................................................54 Shamanism as a subject of armchair anthropologists.......................................................................56 The rational production of an irrational survival..............................................................................57 The representations of shamanism in Mongol Studies.....................................................................58 A new focus on practice, marginality, and the state..........................................................................62 The production of explanations during my fieldwork.......................................................................64 The ongod dwelling in shamans’ homes and in the mountains.......................................................68 Animal and human qualities of ongod..............................................................................................70 Images of ongod.................................................................................................................................72 Lus savdag and tenger.......................................................................................................................74 The blurring of categorical distinctions.............................................................................................74 The absence of the three-world concept............................................................................................76 The tripartite world as being imported from Buddhism...................................................................78 The ongod as hybrids between “nature” and “culture”.....................................................................79 Chapter 4: Topographies of affliction in postsocialism.............................................83 Yura’s healing seances in Mörön.......................................................................................................85 Mongolia’s postsocialist economy of risk..........................................................................................90 A postsocialist economy of risk: 1. Poverty and “nouveaux riches”..................................................91 A postsocialist economy of risk: 2. Unemployment and informal work..........................................93 A postsocialist economy of risk: 3. Health........................................................................................96 A postsocialist economy of risk: 4. Livestock herding......................................................................98 Postsocialist risk and the re-imagination of socialism......................................................................99 Postsocialist distress and the resurgence of traditional healing.....................................................102 The etiology of shamans’ diagnoses.................................................................................................104 Pollution as a commentary on social disorder.................................................................................106 Shamans’ support of households in changing circumstances.........................................................109 Chapter 5: Performance of inspirational power.......................................................113 Trance and the production of the authenticity of the shaman’s seance..........................................114 The seance as performance of relations between humans and non-humans.................................118 The enactment of ongod visiting a family........................................................................................122 The seance of Umban’s daughter Höhrii..........................................................................................125 The enigmatic character of the communication..............................................................................138 Negotiations of the meaning of the ongod’s messages....................................................................141 The staging of power relationships..................................................................................................142 Power deriving from the performance of powerlessness: the cataleptic trance.............................145 The performance of ongod as cognatic ancestors............................................................................147 Chapter 6: Legitimization by illness and ancestor shamans....................................151 Failed attempts to shamanize...........................................................................................................153 The inspirational exercises of Othüü...............................................................................................154 A failed seance of the young man Ganbaa.......................................................................................158 Failings despite multiple authorizations..........................................................................................161 Authentication instead of categorization.........................................................................................163 How the young Tulgat became a shaman........................................................................................166 How Batmönh’s ancestors hindered her shamanizing....................................................................172 Shamanic genealogies.......................................................................................................................177 Ovog, clans, and the inheritance of shamanship.............................................................................185 How present-day shamans refer to their ovog affiliation...............................................................187 Authorization by scholarly genealogies............................................................................................191 Various traces of inheritance............................................................................................................193 Contestation of the inheritance of shamanship...............................................................................196 Teacher and disciples as legitimization...........................................................................................198 Chapter 7: The shamans’ economy of reputation....................................................201 How shamans are belittled in local arenas......................................................................................202 Traveling south to the capital..........................................................................................................207 The institutionalization of the urban scene....................................................................................209 Authorizing shamans........................................................................................................................215 Nationalizing