Eternal Blue Sky 2.0
Inner Asia November 17, 2023 DOI: 10.1163/22105018-02502023 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Websites of two Irkutsk-area 'shamanic centres' and two Russian news stories involving Siberian shamans |
| Key findings | Argues that the internet reproduces non-digital shamanic narratives and practices while giving them global, immediate reach, thereby amplifying, legitimising, and contesting shamanic power. Digitalisation contributes to the institutionalisation of Buryat shamanism and reproduces post-socialist hierarchies, while the over-amplification of shamanic power online, discussed through the Buryat concept of khel am ('omnipresent witchcraft'), can challenge shamans' and their institutions' claims to power. |
Abstract
Abstract The revival of shamanism in Southern Siberia is increasingly characterised by online forms of representation. Through digital ethnographic research conducted in Russian, this paper argues that the internet reproduces non-digital narratives and practices endowing them with global, immediate reach in a very widely recognisable form, thus contributing to the amplification, legitimisation and contestation of shamanic power. Analysing the websites of two Irkutsk-area ‘shamanic centres’, I consider how digitalisation is contributing to the process of institutionalisation of shamanism, reproducing and further legitimising post-socialist hierarchies and structures of power in Buryat shamanism, while highlighting the malleable nature of shamanic power and the web alike. Conversely, I recur to the Buryat concept of khel am (a form of ‘omnipresent witchcraft’) in relation to two recent news stories of national relevance in Russia involving Siberian shamans, to illustrate the challenge posed by the over-amplification of shamanic power through digitalisation to shamans and their institutions’ claims to power.