Tragic Spirits
Regular price
€96.99
20th century
A01=Manduhai Buyandelger
ancestral spirits
anthropology
Author_Manduhai Buyandelger
buryats
Category=JHMC
Category=KC
contemporary
cultural memory
culture
customs
east asia
economic conditions
economics
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
faith
gender and sexuality
government
history
impoverishment
liberalism
mongolia
nation
nomads
poverty
practitioner
religion
religious practices
revolution
shaman
shamanic
shamanism
social changes
socialism
socialist
spirit world
spirituality
trances
Product details
- ISBN 9780226086552
- Weight: 567g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 Nov 2013
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The collapse of socialism at the end of the twentieth century brought devastating changes to Mongolia. Economic shock therapy - an immediate liberalization of trade and privatization of publicly owned assets - quickly led to impoverishment, especially in rural parts of the country, where Tragic Spirits takes place. Following the travels of the nomadic Buryats, Manduhai Buyandelger tells a story not only of economic devastation but also a remarkable Buryat response to it - the revival of shamanic practices after decades of socialist suppression. 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.
Manduhai Buyandelger is assistant professor of anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
