Hi All,

There follows details of a conference on shamanism that might be of interest:



NORDIC NETWORK FOR AMERINDIAN STUDIES
Seminar

Rethinking Shamanism
Perceptions of Body and Soul in multidimensional Environments

The University of Copenhagen
May 27, 2010



'Shamanism' is a contested concept, and until recently the exoticism implied
by the classification of shamanism as a form of magic, individualistic,
non-religion, has remained a hindrance to developing an adequate theory of
shamanism. Shamanism was seen as techniques aimed at the manipulation of
events and of people’s consciousness, supposedly based on a faulty
perception of reality. From the point of view of positivist science,
shamanism, and the ‘primitive mentality’ on which it was based, would go
away with the spread of modernization and development. Shamanism, however,
has not disappeared. It has proliferated and appears to thrive well in
modern, globalized society. Today, we find versions of shamanism anywhere
across a vast range of socio-cultural settings from the executive offices in
the world’s metropolis, across the rural markets in developing countries, to
isolated Amazonian settlements and hunters’ camps in the Siberian taiga. The
phenomena are know as traditional shamanism, neo-shamanism, urban shamanism,
New-Age shamanism, and the practitioners are labeled as shamans, healers,
curanderos, herbalistas, vegetalistas, or simply designated by local native
terms, each with their own constituencies, ideologies and sets of practices.
Some are concerned primarily with diagnosing disease, healing, and
prescribing cures; some are there to ensure good working relations with the
extra-human keepers of game animals and plants; some diagnose the future, or
the past; some teach people about proper relations with the types of
environment, social, moral, natural, etc. seen as relevant to the particular
person, problem, situation. As a belief system, shamanism implies a vision
of different realities linked through principles of energy to form an
undivided universe. As a cultural institution shamanism is a mode of
addressing and handling these energies as they affect human well-being.
The varieties of shamanisms appear indefinite and constantly changing as
traditional shamanism is being influenced by global neo-shamanism and vice
versa in dynamic processes that highlight the need for an explanatory
paradigm that may help us understand the various forms and expressions of
shamanism as a dynamic, cultural-social complex in societies that vary over
time and space. Rethinking shamanism calls for investigation, among other
things, into ‘the effectiveness of symbols’, an issue that has been central
to anthropology for as long as the discipline has existed. Yet, the relation
between symbols and the body, the bodily experience of shamanistic healing,
and shamanistic healing mechanisms in general remain fields in need of
further exploration. What we do know at this point is that all forms of
shamanism make the human body a battlefield of knowledge and practices
crucial to understanding not only the nature of corporeality but the
insertions of human bodies and souls in particular social, natural, and
cosmological environments.





Participants (the invitation is still open and we expect more participants
to join the seminar)


Jean Langdon, associate professor of anthropology, Universidade Federal de
Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil. Will talk about ’New Perspectives of
Shamanism: Shamanisms and Neo-Shamanisms as Dialogical Categories’.

Susan Greenwood, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, University of Sussex. Will
talk about the concept of ‘Magical Consciousness’, that she is developing in
her latest book ‘The Anthropology of Magic’ (Berg 2009)

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Ph.D., Latin American Studies. University of
Helsinki. Will talk about Manchineri Ayahuasca Shamanism.

Peter Westh, Ph.D. candidate at the History of Religions section. Dept. of
Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies. ToRS, University of Copenhagen. Will
talk about shamanisme and healing.

Merete Demant Jakobsen, anthropologist and author of ’Shamanism: Traditional
and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing. (Berghahn
1999)

Dorthe Brogård Kristensen, Antropolog, post doc. At the University of
Southern Denmark
Ann Ostenfeld-Rosenthal, ph.d. Assistant Professor. Dept. Of Anthropology
and Ethnography,
 Aarhus University, Moesgaard

Annie Oehlerich de Zurita, anthropologist, Moesgaard Museum, Aarhus

Hanne Veber, Project Coordinator, Ph.D., American Indian Languages and
Cultures Section.
Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies. ToRS, University of Copenhagen,

Minna Opas, Ph.D. Junior Researcher in Comparative Religion, University of
Turku, Finland
Anne-Christine Hornborg, Fil. Dr. Associate Professor at the Department of
Culture and Communication. Linköping University. Sweden.

Jesper Nielsen, Ph.D. Associate Professor at the American Indian Languages
and Cultures Section.
Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies. ToRS, University of Copenhagen,

Maj-Lis Follér, Ph.D., Director of the Institute of Ibero-American Studies,
Göteborg University.

Anna K. Jäger, Associate Professor. Pharmacognosy. Department of Medicinal
Chemistry
Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. University of Copenhagen.



Keynotes, Jean Langdon and Susan Greenwood, will be allocated 40 minutes for
their presentation other presentations are allocated 20 minutes.

The seminar will be a full day event that takes place at the Ocean Hotel, a
small conference center near the beach of Amager, not far from the airport
and within easy access of the city of Copenhagen.

Lunch, refreshments, and dinner will be provided by the Netindis Network.


Participants are kindly asked to provide extended abstracts of their
presentation, of no less than one A4 page. Please send it to the
coordinator, Hanne Veber, no later than April 12th 2010


For further information contact the coordinator, Hanne Veber at [log in to unmask]