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Title

New co-edited volume by Sophie Roche and Davide Torri

Date:

Date: 

23 November 2020

For a long time, scholars dealing with shamanism focused mainly on its male declinations. Alternatively, shamanism has been analyzed as a "neutral category," which inherently blinded ethnographers and their audiences to the gendered implications of the subject. With their edited book "
Female Shamanism in Asia: Gender, Religion and the State," HCTS associate member
PD Dr. Sophie Roche and former HCTS lecturer
Dr. Davide Torri intend to offer an alternative perspective on gender and shamanism that challenges male-dominated narratives.
The book features an international range of contributors and covers a broad geographical scope, encompassing Europe and Asia. Several key themes are considered, including the role of official religions in integrating, challenging, and fighting shamanic practices, the position of women within shamanic complexes, and the perception of the body within shamanism. The collection opens with an introductory chapter by the editors on "
The shamaness at the threshold: gender, religions and the state in Asia", yielding a detailed account of the figure of the shamaness. The following chapters expand and enrich the discussion in a variety of forms, ranging from historically informed accounts to ethnographic reports.
Sophie Roche´s contribution, "
Shamanism and gender construction among the Kavalan of Taiwan: Men and women’s illness caused by different spirits," focuses on the system of symbolic representations that connects causes of illness and the female deity/wild animal spirits beliefs of the Kavalan people. Davide Torri´s piece, titled "
The shamaness’ new clothes: On the qualities of resisting bodies," delves into an exploration of the intricacies between the sphere of the sacred and the realms of politics and society in a variety of shamanic contexts.
The volume is part of Routledge´s series "
Vitality of Indigenous Religions," which explores the expression, experience, and understanding of indigenous contemporary forms of shamanism. It will be of great interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, and Gender Studies.
You can find a preview of the book in PDF
here.

Dr.
Davide Torri
is currently researcher at the Department of History, Anthropology, Religions, and Performing Arts at 
Sapienza University, Rome. His main areas of research include Himalayan religions, shamanism, and indigenous minorities in Asia.
Dr.
Sophie Roche
is research associate and lecturer at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies. Her research focus encompasses conflicts and environmental disasters in Central Asia, Iran, and Germany. Between 2013 and 2017, she was leader of the junior research group “
The Demographic Turn in the Junction of Cultures” at the former Cluster "Asia and Europe".