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Shamanism/Indigenous Peoples Record Type: Review ID: 631 |
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Shamans, Priest and Witches: A Cross-Cultural Study of Magico-Religious PractitionersWinkelman, Michael James | |
This work is based primarily on the author’s dissertation and other scholarly articles he has written. In the Preface he says it "integrates the findings of a cross-cultural study on types of magico-religious practitioners within the context of anthropological and sociological studies of magico-religious phenomena." He notes that it differs from other general efforts to provide a theoretical framework to explain such phenomena in that it uses "a formal cross-cultural sample and statistical analysis of data to reveal an empirical structure related to the institutional bases of magico-religious practices." He adds that "this approach has determined a typology of magico-religious practitioners with universal applicability. The correlation of this typology with existing data on the socioeconomic conditions has provided a basis for developing a general theory of magico-religious phenomena, their origins, and their emergence and transformation under socioeconomic change. These findings are integrated with other studies on magico-religious phenomena to provide a general organizational framework for integrating a diverse set of magico-religious phenomena" (p. vii). The study emphasizes the types of magico-religious practitioners and the evolution of their practices, as well as the role of altered states, rather than the magico-religious phenomena or types of exceptional experience themselves, but those that appear to be associated with magico-religious practices in this study are healing, divination (which can involve clairvoyance, telepathy, and precognition), protection, and finding game animals or other lost or missing persons, animals, or objects; weather control, ability to fly (OBE), fire-immunity, communication with spirits of the dead (postmortem communication) and with animal spirits (human-animal communication), and being able to transform themselves into an animal (shape shifting). They also experience death and rebirth experiences and other mystical experiences. Shamans and related magico-religious practition-ers are the primary subject of this volume, and anthropologist Winkelman treats them from several viewpoints. He begins with a review of the anthropological approach to magic and religion and an overview of this study. In the second chapter he presents his methods, including a description of the sample, coding format, and statistical methods. His results are reviewed in the subsequent two chapters which deal with magico-religion, practitioner types and their socioeconomic condi-tions/characteristics; and then their interrelations, social conditions, selection as practitioners, their magico-religious activities, and the evolution of their practice. There follow chapters devoted to Shamanism, including a description of the universal basis of shamanism, Shamanistic Healers, the Priest, the Sorcerer/Witch, Altered States of Consciousness, Thera-peutic Aspects of Shamanistic Healing, including further discussion of the role played by altered states, and Conclusions, including a discussion of the universal features of magico-religious practice and magic and religion. There are appendices on Magico-Religious Practitioners, Methodology, and altered states variables. | |
Publisher Information: | Tempe: Arizona State University, 1992 (Anthropological Research Papers No. 44). 194p. Bibl: 179-191; Chap. notes: 173-177; 11 figs; 4 tables |
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