Healers, Leaders and Entrepreneurs: Shamanic Revival in Southern Siberia

Abstract

While it is generally agreed that in the postmodern world all tradition is invented, in many post-colonial contexts the emerging identities are spelled out in the idiom of ‘traditional heritage’. This article considers the social field of ‘shamanism’ as it has been shaped in the post-Soviet years in Tuva, an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation in Southern Siberia, and analyses Tuvan shamanism as a product of local historical and social forces, and global processes. Based on both the ethnography of the organisational structure of contemporary Tuvan shamanism, and portraits of different categories of practitioners, the article analyses continuity and change in various aspects of what is locally seen as ‘traditional knowledge’, and discusses different skills, orientations, and divisions of labour among the practitioners. Shamanism in post-Soviet Siberia is seen as a postmodern religious movement enmeshed in global structures and processes, and it is only in this context that a local tradition can become alive and meaningful again.