Paper short abstract:

We will argue that the post-soviet Shamanism in Tuva (South Siberia) could be seen as a creative response to the idioms of control and power elaborated in USSR and Post-Soviet Russia. Shamanism evolves through the bricolage of concepts, both at the level of the organisation of practice and in the exercise of authority.

Paper long abstract:

The relationship between Shamanism and the State has been object of debate in anthropology (for ex. Hamayon 1994, Humphrey 1994). We will argue that the post-soviet Shamanism in Tuva (South Siberia) could be seen as a creative response to the idioms of control and power elaborated in USSR and Post-Soviet Russia. Shamanism evolves through the bricolage of concepts, both at the level of the organisation of ritual practice and in the exercise of new forms of authority.

Rather than going back to the local pre-Soviet traditions when the shamans practised alone, the Tuvan Shamanism has developed at the beginning of the 1990s a network of "societies" that regulates the practice of the shamans under the control of directors. The emergence of these religious organisations reflects a change of perspective in the relationship with the State. Inherited from the oppressive system of control on the spiritual life of the URSS, they are used today by the shamans to obtain the support of the State and to establish links with other important partners such as foreign neoshamanic networks or touristic organisations.

The network of societies is also structured by power struggles for the control of the field and its resources. Through the case study of a transfer of power we will see how the new forms of leadership feed on idioms and concepts originally strange to Shamanism, borrowed from the academic or political discourse: "Shamanism as a traditional confession", "the supreme Shaman", "the vertical of power".