Tragic Spirits
Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia
Hardcover | 1 November 2013 | Edition Number 1
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Attributing their current misfortunes to returning ancestral spirits who are vengeful over being abandoned under socialism, the Buryats are now at once trying to appease their ancestors and recover the history of their people through shamanic practice. Thoroughly documenting this process, Buyandelger situates it as part of a global phenomenon, comparing the rise of shamanism in liberalized Mongolia to its similar rise in Africa and Indonesia. In doing so, she offers a sophisticated analysis of the way economics, politics, gender, and other factors influence the spirit world and the crucial workings of cultural memory.
Industry Reviews
"Tragic Spirits, by the Harvard trained Buryat-Mongolian scholar Buyandelger, is based on the author's immersion into the social and spiritual relations in the rural district of Bayan-Uul in eastern Mongolia between 1996 and 2000. Her ethnography reflects the author's unique ability to successfully merge her insiders' familiarity with postsocialist ruptures with estrangement by anthropological analysis. Her representation provides a complex account intertwining fieldwork experiences with historical narratives and theoretical concepts. By relating her discussion to theories not only on shamanism and magic but also on neoliberal capitalism, gender, and postsocialism, the author creates a dense, multilayered analysis with inspiring new insights."
-- "Anthropos"
"As this work poignantly captures, what the Buryats want from the shamans are stories and rituals that both make sense of their past and ongoing trials and tribulations. By capturing in fascinating detail the long, complicated, and negotiated process of this shamanic narrativization and its ritualization, Buyandelger not only reveals how the shamans create meaning, but also
how the clients of these religious specialists engage these new traditions precisely in order to make sense of their current lives. Thus by moving beyond the by-now fetishized shaman, and both their venality within the capitalist system and their clients' supposed gullibility, the author reveals the ongoing process whereby memory is reclaimed in new ways in order to rebuild a shattered community."
-- "Religious Studies Review"
"Packed with interwoven personal narratives which the author ties together to show the fragility and molding of Buryat memory and Buryat shamanism's purpose during the transition from state socialism to neoliberal capitalism in Mongolia. . . . Buyandelger has created an emotive, accessible, and well-researched ethnography sure to arouse sympathy and interest in readers."
--Michael Warren "LSE Review of Books"
ISBN: 9780226086552
ISBN-10: 0226086550
Published: 1st November 2013
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number of Pages: 336
Audience: General Adult
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: US
Edition Number: 1
Dimensions (cm): 23.26 x 16.09 x 2.6
Weight (kg): 0.58
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