In her paper, “Bringing the Anthropologists (Back) In,” Katherine Verdery argues for an enhanced role for social and cultural anthropology in the study of the post-Soviet world in the coming century. While I share her belief in the relevance of anthropology to the various problems facing humanity today (and not only in the former Soviet world), I am cautious about political conditions in the region, and the implications of those conditions for anthropology. In this essay, therefore, I will do three things. First, I will present an account of how one anthropologist, Caroline Humphrey, studied the revival of shamanism in the context of post-Soviet social and economic turbulence. Second, I describe how debates over a religious ritual in southern Africa demonstrate the ways structures of power can subvert and distort the methodology and theoretical goals of anthropology. Southern Africa during the twentieth century was shaped by the upheavals of the nineteenth century, which ended with British hegemony over the region – a hegemony that, among other things, had the effect of shaping the consciousness and the work of British anthropologists who worked in that region in subsequent decades. Verdery notes that one of the most important regions of the post-Soviet world, from the point of view of both scholars and the states that fund them, is Central Asia. In that area, new upheavals are underway, as the United States, Russia, and China move to advance their interests in the post-Soviet republics, and the post-Soviet republics seek to defend theirs. Therefore, the third and final section of this paper highlights differing assessments of the role of states and their interests in the Central Asia region and comments on the need for caution by anthropologists and others, caution concerning both the environment in which we work and the powers with which we must deal.

Shamanism and Social Upheaval in the Post-Soviet City

In her paper “Shamans in the City,” Caroline Humphrey maps the ways in which the post-Soviet revival of Shamanism in Siberian areas of Russia has run through channels laid down by both the Soviet regime and its successor.^[1] Shamanism – the forms of religious life based on the deliberate seeking out of ecstasy, trance states, and communication with spirits, usually in order to perform healing rituals – is a concept that comes from the peoples of Siberia. The word “shaman” comes from the Tungus language, literally meaning “one who is taken up,” a phrase evoking the experience of possession by spirits or the loss of the soul.^[2] Humphrey studied the particular revival of Shamanism in the city of Ulan-Ude. Those involved in the revival are invariably people who had a particular social position in the Soviet system. Humphrey argues that before becoming shamans they were members of the middle-class intelligentsia, and are as likely to be women as men (a departure from the classic gendered division of labor in most societies where shamanism is found). Buryat shamanism was originally a religion of the rural areas, inhabiting a sacred geography of pools, forests, and mountains. In its revival in the post-Soviet urban context, it takes on new forms, heavily influenced by the new conditions of urban life. These are characterised by suspicion and hostility between city-dwellers, and changes in the urban landscape itself, which can be invested with meaning by shamans and their clients. Rock concerts become sites of “stark shamanic battles.”^[3] A former student hostel, meanwhile, becomes the premises of the “Association of Shamans in Ulan-Ude”: from early morning, long queues of clients seeking consultations with shamans form outside its doors.^[4]
Humphrey goes on to detail how the Shamans ask their clients to recall their family genealogies and places of origin in the countryside. Only with this information can they carry out their healing rituals. This brings contemporary urban Shamanism into contact with that of the rural world, in circumstances of a wider confrontation between the city and the countryside, in which the countryside is now at a disadvantage with regard to the city and resents its dominated status. Shamanism, then, is not some exotic mystery from a primordial past; it is intimately connected to the realities of life in the post-Soviet era – economic crisis, social chaos, and personal suffering.^[5] To study shamanism in such an environment is to study a phenomenon which brings together questions of culture, society, politics, and economics – and to bring the researcher directly into contact with new, emerging social relations of power.
Humphrey’s work on post-Soviet shamanism supports many of the points in Verdery’s paper, especially her account of the distinctive methodological contribution anthropology can make, and in her account of our particular perspective on human society and cultures – that these are rooted in the categories human beings impose upon the world, and that the best way of grasping the set of categories a people hold is by extensive exposure to everyday life in their own particular social environment. Humphrey’s work is a good example of the application of anthropological perspectives and methods to the particular problems of the post-Soviet world. For this application to be fruitful, however, for anthropology to fulfil its potential in this area, anthropologists of the region should be aware of the potential for our work to be distorted by the categories which flow from particular power relations. The ways in which the debate over the Ncwala ritual of Swaziland has evolved since the 1940s is a good illustration of this point.

British Social Anthropologists and the Ncwala Ritual of Swaziland

Verdery correctly points out that we anthropologists have to “recognize that our method doesn’t guarantee ‘objective truth,’ that it is chock full of ‘observer effects,’ that we can never wholly enter others’ categories of thought nor shuck our own.” This has been a commonplace of anthropological theory since the 1960s and one reason for this heightened awareness of the inescapability of our own cultural categories is an awareness of the political context in which the relationship between anthropologists and the people they study must exist. For much of anthropology’s history this political context was one of colonialism, in which the wider background was one in which European powers dominated their subject peoples in the colonies of Africa and Asia. The case of the debates over the Ncwala ritual of Swaziland demonstrates very well the consequences of this for anthropology.
Hilda Kuper was one of the second generation of modern British social anthropologists who were trained by the Polish-born Bronislaw Malinowski, whose admonition to “grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world”^[6] is still taught to anthropologists today. Kuper is most widely remembered for her path-breaking ethnographic work on the Ncwala of the Swazi people of southern Africa, conducted in the early 1930s and published in the late 1940s.^[7] This very large religious ritual, which is still performed today, is divided into two parts: the “Little Ncwala,” involving the King’s inner circle and the “Great Ncwala,” which is performed twelve days later and in which as many members of the Swazi nation as possible participate. The ritual is both a manifestation of Swazi cosmological beliefs, the need to mark the passing of the months of hunger which precede a harvest and the harvest itself, and also a political ritual, as the Swazi king is the focal point of the ritual (and therefore of the various categories on which Swazi culture is based). The ritual is far too complex to be detailed here; the major point is that the Swazi king would be the target of what were apparently expressions of hatred and rejection by his people.^[8] In the decades that followed the publication of Kuper’s ethnography, the debate over the Ncwala centred around the real meaning of these antagonistic expressions to the Swazi king. Why should the king be addressed in this way?
The first attempt to answer this question was made by the anthropologist Max Gluckman. Basing his argument on Kuper’s original ethnography, he argued that the Ncwala is a “ritual of rebellion,” an expression of certain structural features of southern African kingdoms. As Gluckman saw it, the political life of southern African kingdoms was marked by a high incidence of rebellions in which incumbent monarchs would be overthrown, while the institution of kingship itself would be left untouched (these were emphatically not revolutionary movements). The Ncwala in general and the expressions of opposition to the monarch in particular acted as a social “safety-valve” which relieved pressure that might otherwise build up to the point where yet another monarch would lose his position to a challenger.^[9]
Hilda Kuper did her ethnographic work at a time when only a few looked forward to the end of Britain’s colonial empire. Gluckman worked in the decades immediately following the Second World War, by which time it was clear that the empire would have to go. Bruce Lincoln, however, critiqued Gluckman’s reanalysis in the 1980s, at a time when anthropology had been rocked by the debates which erupted in Britain and America over the relationship of anthropology to colonial and imperialist regimes (1987). For Lincoln, the Ncwala as Hilda Kuper observed it had to be seen in the context of a Swaziland which had become a protectorate of the British empire – and after it was seen in this context, the nature of the Ncwala for the politics of Swazi society would have to be reassessed.^[10]
The nineteenth century in South Africa was marked by the expansion of European dominance and the response of indigenous African polities to this expansion. The South African war of 1899-1902 ended with the assertion of British hegemony over the region and the establishment of a British protectorate over Swaziland. Under the terms of this protectorate, the Swazi monarch was no longer a king, but merely a paramount chief, one who would ultimately be subordinated to the dictates of London. Lincoln does not dismiss Gluckman’s argument. He simply argues that it only applies to the internal situation among the Swazi, and that a full understanding of the Ncwala as a social and cultural phenomenon is only possible through a perspective that recognises that the power relations in which the Swazi people and their royal ritual existed. From such a perspective, the Ncwala has to be seen as more than just a ritual of rebellion; it has to be seen as a ritual of resistance. As Lincoln puts it, “during the colonial period it was nothing other than the Ncwala which served as the chief instrument of Swazi solidarity and resistance to colonial rule.”^[11]
My own view would be that this perspective was not adopted until the 1980s because of the ways in which earlier generations of anthropologists took the social relations of the imperial era for granted, even if many of them would have had progressive views on the colonial question. When considering the ways in which anthropology might contribute to the understanding of societies in the twenty-first century, be it in either the former British empire or the former Soviet Union, we should therefore bear in mind the ways in which current relations of power around the world may risk shaping our understanding of that world.

Great Power Rivalry in Central Asia and its Implications for Researchers

Verdery notes that funding for research on the post-Soviet world has changed its targets in recent years – especially in the case of the funding bodies that are connected to the United States government, which has lost interest in Central and Eastern Europe, but has increased funding for research on Russia and Central Asia. A recent report issued by the Rand Corporation examines the emerging set of American government interests in the Central Asian region, specifically in the former Soviet republics which remain part of Russia’s “near abroad” and which are not far from an emerging world power, the People’s Republic of China.^[12] For the authors of this report, American interest in the region is driven largely by political and military concerns arising out of the “war on terror,” concerns which are, or should be, shared by Russia and China. They see the economic concerns which are popularly believed to drive American foreign policy (“war for oil,” and so on) as of minor concern at best.^[13] This point would be disputed by writers on the radical left, such as Gilbert Achcar, who in the late 1990s discerned a dash for the oil of the Caspian Sea by US oil companies, who apparently presented themselves as champions of the independence of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia against the hegemony of Moscow.^[14] Only the strength of internal American lobbying groups (Israeli and Armenian) prevented the normalization of relations with states (Iran and Azerbaijan) through which oil pipelines would have to run if they were to bypass Russian territory and Russian control.^[15] Eight years later, after the occupation of Iraq, similar arguments can be presented about the real nature of US policy in both the Middle East and Central Asia. By bringing both regions under American political and military domination, the US would be able to ensure its continued hegemonic position over the rest of the world economy, through its consequent domination of world oil supplies.^[16] Even if the more modest and benign assessment of US policy in the region is accepted, however, it will still be necessary to take the effects of that policy into account when carrying out research on the region, as well as the interests of Russia (such as the millions of ethnic Russians still living in the region) and the PRC. It may be that certain parallels can be drawn between the competition over the region today, and the ways in which the British Empire and the Boer republics competed for hegemony in southern Africa in the nineteenth century, while indigenous African states like Swaziland sought to retain at least some degree of independence. I am not arguing that the two cases are equivalent. I am simply saying that in this region there are also problems of power that should be taken into account if distorted understandings of the local societies and cultures are to be avoided.

Conclusion

In this paper I have brought together some apparently different cases – religious ritual in southern Africa, Shamanism in Siberia, and the role of the great powers in Central Asia. I felt that it was necessary to do so because although I was impressed by Verdery’s paper, I felt I should urge caution with regard to the new relationship to state and government that she outlines – especially to the United States government. The discussion of the relationship of anthropology to colonialism in Africa and elsewhere may seem to belong largely to the history of the discipline, just as colonialism itself has passed into history. Colonialism may belong to history but imperialism does not. Imperialism – the domination of smaller, weaker societies by great powers or by states that aspire to that status – has certainly not disappeared from the world. The particular kind of factors which distorted British social anthropologists understanding of the colonized societies may have gone, but they may have been replaced by other sources of misunderstanding and incomprehension, which may even be more insidious than those of the colonial past. Verdery describes anthropology as the hinge which can connect other disciplines, and this can be clearly seen in Humphrey’s work, where the apparently esoteric and exotic topic of shamanism can be connected with, for example, urban studies, politics, economics, and geography. The Shamans and their clients studied by Humphrey were returning to Shamanism in response to the disruption they experienced in the aftermath of the collapse of state socialism and the coming of an extreme form of neo-liberalism. Such disruptions may be most keenly felt at the level of everyday life but they begin in the rivalries between centres of imperial power. Such rivalries have not disappeared today – and if anthropology is to make a contribution to the study of the area (and I believe Verdery is correct when she says that it can and must), the impact of those rivalries on the everyday lives of the people we study, and their conceptions of the world, and on our own work and our conceptions of the world must be taken explicitly into account.