Includes bibliographical references (pages 335-355) and index.

Print version record.

Machine generated contents note: rethinking of the socialist past -- Darhad as a foil for the twentieth-century Mongolian nation -- "Shamanism" as heterogeneous discourses -- Chapter arrangement -- intrusion of shamans' spirits in the guides' life -- Rethinking the ethnographic field -- Exploring the field of travel encounters -- Notions of "rapport" and "conspiracy" in arrival anecdotes -- Why a white horse should be devoted to the spirits -- emergence of "shaman-ism" as a belief system -- Armchair anthropologists' theories on shamanism -- Shamanism in Mongol Studies -- new focus on practice, marginality, and the state -- production of explanations during my fieldwork -- On god as the main spiritual counterpart -- on god's relations to lus savdag and tenger -- absence of the tripartite world concept -- on god as hybrids between "nature" and "culture" -- Yura's healing séances in Mörön -- Rising poverty in a postsocialist economy of risk -- Unemployment and informal work -- Worsening and bettering of health problems -- Postsocialist risk and the re-imagination of socialism -- resurgence of traditional healing -- Shamanic diagnoses -- Commentaries on social disorder -- Shamans' practices adapting to historical circumstances -- Trance and the production of the authenticity of the shaman's séance -- Staging the relations between humans and non-humans -- enactment of on god visiting a family -- séance of Umban's daughter Höhrii -- Shamanizing as ritualized communication -- elusive meaning of the chants -- staging of power relations -- Power deriving from the performance of powerlessness -- Failed attempts to shamanize -- inspirational exercises of Othüü -- further unsuccessful séance -- Failings despite multiple authorizations -- Authentication instead of categorization -- How the young man Tulgat started to shamanize -- How Batmönh's ancestors hindered her -- Shamanic inheritance -- Authorization by a scholarly genealogy -- Inheritance as contested field -- Teacher and disciples legitimizing each other -- How shamans are belittled in local arenas -- Traveling south to the capital -- institutionalization of the urban scene -- Associations authorizing shamans -- Nationalizing shamanism -- Darhad shamanism as a "national" tradition -- Criticism of shamans' remuneration -- Gendered features -- Enhtuya's economy of reputation -- Performance of chiefly power -- Marginalizing shamans -- Mend and Zönög zairan as heroic outcasts -- Agarin Hairhan as powerless resistance fighter -- Magical competitions between shamans and monks -- Scholarly perceptions of the Buddhist past -- identification of the Darhad with shamans -- Glorification of "socialist" shamans -- "white" shaman Chagdar -- Scholarly doubts about shamans' authenticity -- Questioning of shamans' power in the past.

This book offers an in-depth insight into post-socialist rural shamans in Mongolia thereby making a rare but important contribution to the ethnography of both Inner Asia and Southern Siberia. It examines the social making of shamans, in particular those of the Shishget depression of the northernmost borders of Mongolia.

English.