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Hinduism and Tribal Religions pp 1–4Cite as

Shamanism

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Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Indian Religions ((EIR))

Shamanism is a contested term with missionary overtones that conceptually describes expressions of ecstatic religiosity in the non-Christian worlds of Asia, Africa, Australia, and non-Christianized America. Nevertheless, despite its Christian overtones, this term has enjoyed vast descriptive significance for anthropological research. While an exhaustive range of anthropological definitions remains outside the scope of this article, it suffices to mention that Shamanism was conceptually defined as a product of the Eurocentric and anthropological gaze that inverted its own non-ecstatic, scriptural, and intellectual Christian expression, by projecting ecstatic religion into the non-Christian Shamanism, thereby essentializing and fetishizing non-Christianity.

Debates on Shamanism began in the 1950s [1], when scholars associated Shamanism with “possession” and traced its etymological origin to Central Asian tribes [2]. The term, as originally formulated by Mircea Eliade, was described as a...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany

    Deepra Dandekar

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  1. Deepra Dandekar
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Correspondence to Deepra Dandekar .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept of Anthropology, The University of North Texas Dept of Anthropology, Denton, Texas, USA

    Pankaj Jain

  2. The Graduate Theological Union , Berkeley, California, USA

    Rita Sherma

  3. Jamia Millia Islamia, Centre for the Study of Comparative Reli Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

    Madhu Khanna

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Dandekar, D. (2018). Shamanism. In: Jain, P., Sherma, R., Khanna, M. (eds) Hinduism and Tribal Religions. Encyclopedia of Indian Religions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1036-5_6-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1036-5_6-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-024-1036-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-024-1036-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities

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