Not Quite Shamans

An ethnography of recent societal transformations in Mongolia and their impact on local belief systems.

Morten Axel Pedersen is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen.

It is tricky to define anything using a negative, especially in a book title. Yet Morten Pedersen has succeeded in making his theme of perpetual transitional instability in Mongolia one that centers on the concept of not quite shamans. He argues that those Mongolian shamans of the Darhad region conventionally trained to control dark spirit worlds have all but disappeared, given the repressions and pressures of communists, and before them, Buddhists.... Pedersen's work is a fine contribution to the anthropological literature on Mongolia....

Bumochir Dulam:

In this book, the author claims that the agsan ataman is a typical image of a rural village in postsocialist Mongolia. As the instrument of occult forces whose manifestation is beyond his control, the agsan person is like a shaman, but not quite (p. 4). The author calls his study 'shamanism without shamans', because he studied not proper shamans but half-shamans and shaman-like cases.... [T]his work is an enormous contribution to studies deconstructing shamanism.

A fascinating journey through the hitherto little remarked complexities of post-socialist rural Mongolia, where formerly suppressed and semi-destroyed shamanic and Buddhist traditions have resurfaced to compete with one another and also with modernity.... Composed with scholarly erudition, thoughtful reflection, and true storyteller acumen, this engaging account fills a significant void in understanding contemporary Mongolian society. Its wealth of useful ethnographic and linguistic detail offers much to anthropologists and social historians alike. Summing up: Highly recommended.

Franck Billé:

Not Quite Shamans is a beautifully written, rich, and detailed ethnographic account of a remote corner of postsocialist Mongolia. Empathetic but never apologetic, Pedersen presents a balanced account of what was certainly a very arduous, evenlife-threatening, fieldwork research.... [N]ot Quite Shamans will certainly become a seminal text, not only for Mongolian and Inner Asian specialists but indeed as a detailed and perceptive analysis of postsocialism and shamanism.

Anna Tsing, author of Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection:

This is anthropology at its best: full of both theoretical and ethnographic surprises. In northern Mongolia, where the institutions of encompassing social order, both Buddhist and socialist, have collapsed or fragmented into shards, rowdy drunks are almost shamans, jokes are discerning, and elections resemble séances. Not Quite Shamans is a theoretically sophisticated ethnography of one post-socialist hinterland; it is also a provocative evocation of the unsettled spirits that shake all of us in the wake of twentieth-century modernity.