Anthropology of religion : religious specialists, Shamanism

Résumé du document

This essay is based on the articles of Margery Wolf's "The woman who didn't become a Shaman? and Victor Turner's "one Religious Specialists?. In his study of the religious specialists, Victor W.Turner tries to give us a mere definition of this phenomenon in order to show that they all share the ability to "manipulate the supernatural to their own or society's ends" and that they all have a culturally defined status coming from a social recognition. Then he tries to make a comparative study and distinctions between the different religious specialists according to the scale and the complexity of the societies where they live. His opinion was that the social organization has an impact on the role and the status of the religious specialist. Margery Wolf´s work focuses on the specific case of a woman from northern Taiwan who didn't succeed in becoming a shaman. Her study is conducted on a structural- functional approach. This means that she tries to prove that "a shaman cannot function as a shaman without the continual appreciation of clients". According to Margery Wolf, religious specialists can be so only if they reach the necessary social criteria and she demonstrates that Mrs. Chen had too many social burdens to be accepted as a shaman and to achieve religious authority.

Extraits

[...] On the opposite in complex societies, religion is not common to the whole society but to the religious group. In those groups, the religious functions are strongly organized and specialized to people who devote their whole life to that. Finally between those two extremes points there are medium-scale societies such as many of the larger, politically centralized societies of west and east Africa, Asia, Polynesia and pre-Columbian Central and South America. What seem disappointing on that work is that we don't find the main and underlying reasons of the connections between a certain kind of society and a certain kind of religious specialist. [...]

[...] May be there was one yet and his work was sufficient or he even may have tried to contest here legitimacy because he didn't want to share his job. I would say that may be individuals decided it was not worth to take the risk because there was no social need for such a religious specialist in the society. As far as I'm concerned I think that this conclusion has to be treated in such a study with a structural- functional approach. [...]

[...] The second burden was her social rank: she was considered as an outsider in the village because she wasn't living here for long enough. Those burdens mainly explain why she has lack of the credibility and legitimacy to be able to become a tang-ki and that's interesting to see how the social pressure can decide on the nature of the religious specialists. However I would say that it would have been interesting to see if there was a need for a new religious specialist in this village. [...]

[...] On the opposite, prophets obtain their role thanks to a personal call`` and their authority comes from their own charisma. Prophets take part in the religion as a discontinued force for social and dynamic changes. - The second distinction is between the priest and the shaman. Once again shamanistic rites are less regular, more contingent and concern fewer people than the priestly cult organization. Shamans have a direct communication with the supernatural being whereas priests have the ability to conduct rituals. [...]

[...] Those distinctions are a way to focus on the common characteristics shared by the different religious specialists, but I would say that the distinction between Shamans, Mediums and prophet is not so clear sometimes because of the emphasis on the common points. However his distinction leads to a useful study on the social role of the religious specialists. The priest is necessary to preserve the stability of the society whereas the Prophet is a radical innovator. The Shaman is no a radical reformer but he is always working in flexible and mobile societies that are most of the time of small scales. [...]