Family-Borne Efficacy: Shamanic Healing in Contemporary Xibo Households in Xinjiang
Haiyan Xing, Shuyi Jia, Dongzhi Sangji
Religions August 26, 2026 DOI: 10.3390/rel17080972 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Contemporary Xibo families in Qapqal Xibo Autonomous County, Yili, Xinjiang |
| Duration | 2017-2026 fieldwork period |
| Topics | Shamanism |
| Keywords | Shamanic healing Family ritual Ritual efficacy Xibo |
| Key findings | Argues that ritual efficacy in Xibo shamanic healing is determined by the family as a relational unit, driven by responsibility and reciprocity, and recognized incrementally through shared observation and retrospective interpretation rather than at the ritual's end. |
Abstract
This article examines how patients and their relatives in contemporary Xibo families come to understand whether shamanic healing has “worked.” Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2026 in Qapqal Xibo Autonomous County, Yili, Xinjiang, it analyzes two closely observed healing rituals performed by the same shaman for two members of one family: a mother suffering from severe emotional distress and her adolescent son during a period of intense educational pressure. Drawing on Thomas Csordas’s tripartite framework of procedure, process, and outcome, the article relocates the analysis of ritual efficacy from the individual patient to the family as a relational unit. Three arguments follow. First, participation in healing is driven less by individual belief than by family responsibility, obligation, and affective reciprocity. Second, the family does not merely host the ritual but actively organizes, sustains, and helps confirm it. Third, efficacy is recognized incrementally through shared observation, retrospective interpretation, and everyday relational adjustment in the months and years following the ritual, rather than being determined now the ritual ends. Understood in this way, contemporary Xibo shamanic healing persists not as a survival of premodern medicine, but as a family-borne mode of acting, waiting, and making sense of uncertainty.
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on shamanism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Plantas con madre": plants that teach and guide in the shamanic initiation process in the East-Central Peruvian Amazon. Curanderos, apprentices, and herbalists in East-Central Peru, including Mestizo,... | 2011 | Qualitative study | n = 36 |
| Purging and the body in the therapeutic use of ayahuasca Healers and participants in shamanic tourism contexts of the Peruvian Amazon and... | 2019 | Ethnography with literature review | n = 227 |
| The Globalization of Ayahuasca Shamanism and the Erasure of Indigenous Shamanism Western tourists and indigenous peoples in Iquitos, Peru | 2016 | Ethnography | |
| Shamanism and Rock Art in Far Western North America Historic hunter-gatherer cultures of California and the Great Basin | 1992 | Ethnographic review and analysis | |
| Working with “La Medicina”: Elements of Healing in Contemporary Ayahuasca Rituals Ayahuasqueros and Western participants in shamanic tourism in Iquitos, Peru | 2012 | Ethnography |
Citations in the library
Cites 6
- Slippage: An Anthropology of Shamanism Annual Review of Anthropology October 21, 2021
- The Contemporary Shamanic Healing: A Case Study of the Daur Shamanic River Spirit lʊs Ritual Religions April 15, 2024
- Shamanic Healing or Scientific Treatment?—Transformation of Khorchin Mongolian Bone-Setting in China Religions July 14, 2023
- The Changes of Chinese Oroqen Shaman Culture in the Context of Social Transformation Religions July 3, 2023
- Spiritual transformation, relation and radical empathy: core components of the ritual healing process. Transcultural Psychiatry December 1, 2006
and 1 more in the library