Shamanic Ritual as Identity Politics in North Asian Mongolic People

Caijilahu Saijirahu (Osaka, Japan)

Shamanic Ritual as Identity Politics in North Asian Mongolic People

(57th Annual Meeting of the PIAC Vladivostok, 2014)

Shamanism has revived and coexisted with other cultures in Mongolian area in recent several decades. Geopolitically, shamanism among the people in both Mongolia and China’s Inner Mongolia has its own social and cultural character to survive in the different environment. But, how does it have existed in the modernizing world of North Asia, and what is the different way of revitalization between these two areas’ shamanism?

This presentation will analyze the realities of shamanism and demonstrate its strategic vitalization under state policies by an approach of comparative research. First, it will analyze the historical perspective of shamanism in Darkhad and Buriyat in Mongolia, and Qorchin and Hulun-Buyir in Inner Mongolia, make clear how it has existed in the history. Second, it will consider the shamanic ritual as the spiritual communication and its interaction between shaman and client. Third, it will examine the healing ritual assustainable preservative folk medicine in the medical pluralism. Finally, according to above-mentioned analysis, this study will make clear how the ethnicity identity works in shamanic activities and how it resolves the identity crisis happened in the boundary between majority and minority.