‘I haven’t fully understood – is shamanism religion or not?’

Some reflections on the concepts of shamanism and religion in Soviet discourse

Authors

  • Olle Sundström

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33356/temenos.73111

Abstract

In this essay the Marxist-Leninist understanding of the concept ‘religion’ is analysed in relation to how it was applied to the so-called shamanism of the indigenous peoples of the Soviet North. The point of departure is the correspondence between the head of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults in the Soviet Far East and his superior in Moscow. Further, the legal consequences of the somewhat varying Soviet understandings of ‘religion’ for people adhering to indigenous worldviews and ritual traditions in the Far East is presented. The essay aims to exemplify how definitions of ‘religion’, as well as the categorising of something as ‘religion’ or not, rely on social and political circumstances, and whether one finds ‘religion’, as well as the entities classified as such, to be positive or negative for the individual and society.

Author Biography

Olle Sundström

OLLE SUNDSTRÖM is Associate Professor of the History of Religions at Umeå University, Sweden. He took his PhD under the supervision of Professor Håkan Rydving in 2009. E-mail: olle.sundstrom@umu.se

Downloads

Published

2018-07-04

How to Cite

Sundström, O. (2018). ‘I haven’t fully understood – is shamanism religion or not?’: Some reflections on the concepts of shamanism and religion in Soviet discourse. Temenos - Nordic Journal for the Study of Religion, 54(1), 9–27. https://doi.org/10.33356/temenos.73111

Issue

Vol. 54 No. 1 (2018): Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2018 Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported License.

Author's Guarantee

  • The Author acknowledges that the Work will be publicly accessible on the Internet and that such access will be free of charge for the readers.
  • The Author guarantees that the Work is her/his original work that has not been published before and cannot be construed as copying or plagiarism. Furthermore, the Author confirms that the Work contains no statement that is unlawful, defamatory or abusive or in any way infringes the rights of others.
  • The Author confirms that she/he has secured all written permissions needed for the reproduction in the Publication of any material created by a third party.

User Rights

Under the CC BY 4.0 license, the Author/s and users are free to:

  • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially,
  • However, the Work must be attributed to the original Author and source of publication.

The license of the published metadata is Creative Commons CCO 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)

Author Rights

The Authors maintain the right to:

  • copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the Work,
  • the right to use the substance of the Work in future own works,
  • the right to self-archiving/parallel publishing (publisher's PDF allowed).

Rights of Publisher

  • The Publisher reserves the right to make such editorial changes as may be necessary to make the Work suitable for publication in the publication, e.g. style of punctuation, spelling, headings and the like.
  • The Publisher will publish the Work if the editorial process is successfully completed and reserves the right not to proceed with publication for whatever reason.
  • The publication entitles the author to no royalties or other fees. This agreement will be governed by the laws of Finland.