Shamanism, Discourse, Modernity [Paperback]

Shamanism, Discourse, Modernity considers indigenous peoples struggles for human rights, anxieties about anthropocentric mastery of nature, neoliberal statecraft, and entrepreneurialism of the self. The book focuses on four domains - shamanism, indigenism, environmentalism and neoliberalism - in terms of interrelated historical processes and overlapping discourses. In doing so, it engages with shamanisms manifold meanings in a world increasingly sensitive to indigenous peoples practices of territoriality, increasingly concerned about humans integral relationship with natural environments, and increasingly encouraged and coerced to adjust self-conduct to comport with and augment government conduct.

Introduction; Shamanism; Indigenism; Environmentalism; Neoliberalism; Imbrications; References; Index.

Shamanism, Discourse, Modernity considers indigenous peoples struggles for human rights, anxieties about anthropocentric mastery of nature, neoliberal statecraft and entrepreneurialism of the self. In doing so, it engages with shamanisms manifold meanings in a world increasingly sensitive to indigenous peoples practices of territoriality, increasingly concerned about humans integral relationship with natural environments, and increasingly encouraged and coerced to adjust self-conduct to comport with and augment government conduct.Thomas Alberts was born and educated in Cape Town, South Africa, where he held various roles at the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa, University of Cape Town and the Human Sciences Research Council. He completed his PhD at SOAS, University of London.This brilliant book treats shamanism as a total social fact - religious, political, and economic - embedded in modern discourses of subjectivity and alterity. Against representations of shamanism as pre-modern or anti-modern, Thomas Alberts locates shamanism at the center of crucial mediations of modernity. David Chidester, University of Cape Town, Soulã7