Shamanic Performances on the Urban Scene : Neo-Shamanism in Contemporary Sweden

Neo-shamanism is a set of notions and techniques borrowed from various tribal peoples and adapted to the life of contemporary urban dwellers. The practitioners seek to achieve a shift of consciousness and to gain access to the reality beyond the ordinary one, interacting with Spiritual Beings and enlisting their help to solve the problems of everyday life. How do people appropriate new cultural assumptions that seem to run counter to the accepted grounds of Western rationality? What are the distinguishing features of a part-time community based on such assumptions? How do imagination, performance and play come to constitute culture and spirituality in a contemporary complex society? These are among the questions addressed by this book.