EoG Chapter 2: The Shaman

Between ancient hunter-gatherer superstitions and more organized village chiefdoms, there lay the shaman. The term "shaman" is an umbrella term that covers any person (man or woman, perhaps child) that claims to have some control or insight into a culture's supernatural belief system. Cynics (Marxists) and optimists (functionalists) debate over whether the shaman truly believed that they had control or insight into their gods and goddesses or if they were a sort of primitive scam artist. There is merit for both arguments.

For the Marxists side, there is the idea that shamans didn't do the work that they did to serve the greater good, but rather for personal gain. Services that they provided were paid for rather than given for free or the common good. Using their so-called access to the supernatural world, shamans leveraged political powers for themselves, bringing themselves into further notoriety. The anthropologist Paul Radin explains that the shaman techniques were "designed to do two things: to keep the contact with the supernatural exclusively in the hands of the [shaman], and to manipulate and exploit the sense of fear of the ordinary man." By developing this religion that revolved around service for the shaman, the shamans were servicing themselves at the expense of culture.

The fundamentalists argue that the shamans weren't necessarily in it for themselves. They point to the strenuous hardships that many shamans suffered to get in touch with the spiritual world- many cultures required them to abstain from food or sex for days or months, some even to pierce their penises. If a shaman was found to be a fraud, he was ostracized from the community, probably to certain death. In certain cultures, shamans guaranteed their work- beads or blankets that they received for their services were given back if their incantations failed to heal the sick or prevent storms. According to the fundamentalists, the shamans gave social cohesion and created "social vitality."

Who was right? Were the shamans fundamentally good, creating social unity and serving society? Or as the Marxists believe, did they control society and exploit innocent people? As Robert Wright puts it, why not both? Both viewpoints come into play for cultural evolution. Shamans paved the way for the next step in human development- chiefdoms.