A lot of stuff is said about shamanism both in academic and popular circles, with far too little critical thought about it even in academia. This is the best introduction I know to all of it.
The first problem is defining shamanism; and this is much worse than you might think. In order to qualify as a shaman, does one have to control spirits, or simply ascend to heaven in a vision? Is spirit posession essential to shamanism, or just a normal part of it, or a different phenomenon altogether? Is shamanism essentially public, or can one practice shamanism privately? Do shamans specialize in healing and divination, or are those incidental to the profession? No one agrees about all this, and the result is that one person sees shamanism where another doesn't. This of course is a huge problem when we start talking about shamanism outside of Siberia; I don't know of anyone who deals with this issue as succinctly or as perceptively as Hutton.
The second problem is understanding Siberian religion, and the role of shamanism within it. We know surprisingly less about Siberian religion, including shamanism, than you'd think, given how much people have to say about it. Of course Siberian religion is diverse; there are diverse peoples, speaking different languages, with different lifestyles; can we make any generalizations about them?
The third problem is the overwhelming influence of Mircea Eliade. I'm actually a fan of Eliade. I'm happy that he drew so much attention to shamanism, but I have to admit his critics have a lot of good points when it comes to shamanism. Unfortunately, Eliade's influence overpowers them.
There are a few minor problems, such as whether shamans used hallucinogenic drugs, how shamanism relates to transexuality and homosexuality, and so on.
All of this is well dealt with by Hutton, who tends toward skepticism rather than grand systematic theorizing. For this reason he annoys people who are in the business of theory or practice, but I just can't recommend his work highly enough. I especially appreciate Hutton's consideration of "shamanism" in European pre-Christian religion.
I strongly recommend this book, if for no other reason than because most it's raises serious questions about what you'll find in most books about shamanism. In fact, I recommend this as a first book about shamanism, even before Eliade's classic or the classics by I. M. Lewis.
The second book I recommend, actually, is Brian Morris' "Religion and Anthropology." After that, I would move on to Lewis and Eliade.
These days anyone interested knows what a shaman is, or do we really? In SHAMANS: SIBERIAN SPIRITUALITY AND THE WESTERN IMAGINATION the author, Ronald Hutton, traces how and what we know about the Siberian shamans. He looks at the scholars including the Russians under the Czar and the Soviet regime and the famous Mircea Eliade. What he found might surprise the readers - contradictory information and Western bias. Or maybe not. Yet the idea expounded by these scholars, especially Mircea Eliade, have entered the popular culture and inform the layperson's perceptions of what it is to be a shaman.
This slim little book of 220 pages is divided up into three parts with several chapters under each. Part One called Why We Think We Know About the Shamans contains chapter 1 - The Creation of Siberia, chapter 2 - The Creation of Siberians, chapter 3 - The Transformation of Siberians, and chapter 4 - The Records of Shamanism. Part Two called What We Think We Know About the Shamans includes chapter 5 - What Shamans Did, chapter 6 - Shamanic Cosmologies, chapter 7 - Shamanic Apprenticeship and Equipment, chapter 8 - Shamanic Performance, and chapter 9 - Knots and Loose Ends. Part Three entitled Siberia in the Shamanic World is probably the most important part of all, because it deals with the scholarly impact and neoshamanic impact on the post-Soviet Siberia. It includes chapter 10 - The Discovery of the Shamanic World, chapter 11 - The Discovery of the Shamanic Past, and chapter 12 - The Discovery of the Shamanic Future. The book also contains notes, bibliography and index.
This book will be of interest to those interested in alternate spirituality and shamanism in particular.
