Paper short abstract:

This presentation picks up Latour's conception of a symmetrical anthropology and examines its challenging consequences for thinking shamanism.

Paper long abstract:

Many people all over the world refer to practices labeled as shamanism when trying to cope the uncertainty and disquiet which often accompany unusual bodily experiences. The development of shamanism is decisively shaped by anthropology, not only in the way that anthropological theories serves as source of inspiration for religious practitioners but also in the way that anthropologists themselves become religious practitioners. Through the spreading of the anthropological term shamanism around the world, certain anthropological concepts and attitudes have also spread. These concepts are ordinarily based on an asymmetric anthropology through dividing modernism and a universal archaism and according to this, dividing shamanism and neoshamanism. This presentation shows how the anthropological concepts become bodily tangible actants and influence and irritate the shamanic practices. In doing so it explores how the adaptation of a symmetrical anthropology proposed by Latour challenge the way of thinking shamanism.