An American in Mongolia: Part XV

Discussion of research methodology

Before embarking upon my month long Mongolian fieldwork period of intensive shamanic ritual observation and interviews in Ulaanbaatar, Onderkhan, Khentii and Bayan Uul, Dornod, with my translator Zulaa and my traveling partner Lea (who was comparing embodiment rituals in Buddhist Tsam dance and Shamanism) I developed a number of guiding research questions. Some of these guiding research questions were later formulated to be questions appropriate to pose directly to a shaman during an the beginning of an interview. The questions were devised through favorable and less favorable (that is, more or less informative) responses I received during my early interviews, along with the help of multiple advisors, all Mongolian anthropologists at the National University in Ulaanbaatar. After a shaman answered this initial set of questions, I could decide which more specific questions I should ask from there. Of course people sometimes launched into a lengthy monologue of their life’s story before I could even begin asking questions, and often these monologues answered my questions before I even asked.

At an early stage in the interviewing process a tension emerged. I had an interest in accruing very specific data that would support a thesis detailing the primary differences or similarities between shamans practicing in radically different settings (the countryside and the city) and the factors that determined these discrepancies and overlaps. I found that certain (pre-) prepared questions that were instrumental in supporting my thesis were inflammatory or offensive to some parties and were best not asked. Sometimes I needed to use my best judgment and steer away from these kinds of questions. These situations were few, (although I felt at times that I may have put my pinky toe just a wee bit over the line) and the occasions that they did occur it was always when I was asking questions regarding shamanic ethics. I began with an etic approach and quickly switched gears into an emic approach38, defining shamanic ethics based upon what the anthropologists told me and what the shamans told me.

The anthropologists told me that a real shaman would be candid about how they became a shaman, how becoming a shaman has changed their lives, and how becoming a shaman was only a choice insofar as they must either become a shaman, or they must face supernatural consequences that would lead to physically dangerous consequences. This idea of being a real shaman came up many times in conversations with Mongolian anthropologists, but also with laypeople in Ulaanbaatar. Mongolians in general seemed to think that interviewing anyone who I met who claimed to be a shaman, or someone who I was referred to by others as a good potential interview subject was impractical and futile, because I would inevitably be interviewing people who they didn’t view as real shamans.

This perception that I came across time and time again was very intriguing to me, because the general anthropological literature that I had read up until that point regarding shamanism was pretty inclusive in what qualified as shamanic practices, and trickery and foolery were included in that broad definition. Because of this intriguing, culturally specific contradiction between the familiar literature in the field and the skepticism of Mongolian laypeople and academics as well as shamans themselves39, ethics and authenticity ended up being the focus of my interviews. By that I mean I was often inquiring if shamans had some accountability to a community, which was really a question of ethics, because if the shaman held no accountability for their practices and were powerful or popular, there was the potential that a shaman could do harm in a community. Whether it was a community of other shamans or a community of laypeople who sought their help was of interest, but so long as there was some community to answer to it didn’t matter. If a shaman avoided that question, or called every other shaman in the world a fake when I brought it up, it would usually lead to a question about charging tariffs, casting curses and the make-up of the shaman’s clientele, which got at the Mongolian perception of authenticity as well as what laypeople viewed as dangerous practices.

The anthropologists told me that some real shamans performed for tourists, charged a wad of cash, and were truly in communication with the realm of ancestral spirits (and/or land and water spirits), but that this was very rare. If a shaman was charging a lot of money, I should be wary that she might not be a shaman at all. Many shamans in the city have day jobs, and many shamans in the countryside are full time herders or schoolteachers. After skirting the issue sometimes for five minutes or so during an interview with a shaman, I had a few testy moments when I asked: point blank “Do you charge a tariff?” To which the shaman would almost always retort “No!”40 at times apparently aghast at my audacity to even imagine such a thing. But nothing seriously negative occurred during an interview; even in these tense, potentially provocative instances it may offer the reader peace of mind to know that all of the shamans whom I asked about curses shuddered and denounced them.

The first question set that I devised was designed to verify that the urban shaman met the fundamental qualifications of being a shaman, although I ended up using these questions in interviews with countryside shamans as well. Said qualifications are not for me to call my own, they were outlined by ethnographers of Mongolian shamanism Professor O. Purev in his book Mongolian Shamanism and I think that they are generally agreed upon within the academic community in Mongolia because they were also suggested to me by biological anthropologist Erdene Myagmar during a meeting at the Mongolian National University, and later by cultural anthropologist Bumochir Dulam. Erdene helped me to come up with ideas to refine, around which I should form a shamanic qualification inquiry.41

Once these quality questions were answered I could proceed with a more specific question set. The queries that followed were generally concerned with amassing the subjects’ own expressed principles, who they felt they were accountable to, and also with helping me to navigate the strikingly sundry shamanic aesthetic. Within Ulaanbaatar the aesthetic or artistic aspect of personal shamanic representation seems to be concerned with appearing to be a certain kind of individual to attract the attention of the much-desired consumer of spirituality. For example, ostentatiously shamanic (that is, garish and performative and shamelessly self-promoting) was one aesthetic that I observed amongst city shamans. From there I would often attempt to observe the ritual of the informant, sometimes by invitation, and sometimes to no avail. I decided that I could far more effectively analyze the information obtained during an interview if I had a point of reference for the sometimes convoluted or befuddling or remarkable responses I received to my questions based in the observance of an actual ritual of the subject. If I had the opportunity to observe the ritual of an informant, subsequently I could see for myself the consistencies and contradictions (and sometimes just plain poorly explained processes) between ritual and interview. The rituals in the city often took place at the subject’s home ger, and in the countryside all of the ritual that I observed was in Bayan Uul, Dornod during chanar at the Harhira ritual grounds. This helped me to attain a better general understanding of what being a shaman meant to my subject, and if there was praxis (within my limited frame-of-reference.) Then, I could return to my anthropological texts, and see what the subject’s views meant in relationship to the general academic community’s views, and the Mongolian community’s views and go forward with my evaluations.

Towards the end of my research period, I began to explore public acuities of shamanism in Ulaanbaatar and in Mongolia today, first conducting an interview with a layman who identified as an atheist, whose granddaughter was about to undergo shamanic initiation rights in Bayan Uul. Back in Ulaanbaatar, I interviewed the director of a performance intended for an audience of tourists that included an artistic representation of shamanic ritual. Finally, I handed out a survey at the Mongolian Artist’s Union (a place where I have spent a great deal of time, learning to craft traditional style Mongolian woodblocks to illustrate this paper with visual reference points during discussions of ritual that include important instruments, costumes, and paraphernalia), inquisitively inquiring about that particular demographic’s understanding of shamanic activity within the city and the countryside currently. The results of all of these scholastic ventures were equally intriguing, and will be discussed and analyzed within the next section of this paper.