Healing Practices Regenerate Local Knowledge: The Revival of Mongolian Shamanism in China’s Inner Mongolia

Abstract

Shamanistic healing practices, including divination, have coexisted with other religious and medical practices in modern Inner Mongolia and China for many years. However, scholarly research has yet to investigate the effectiveness of shamanic healing and its physical and psychological benefits. This paper discusses the practice of shamanic activities, including healing rituals, on the boundaries between the spiritual communities and the masses in Eastern Inner Mongolia, and how the contrasts between the perspectives of healers or practitioners and the lay people’s more fluid understanding of the practices impact health, illness, and ethnic/cultural identity. Why is it that shamanistic healing is not included in any of the official healing systems, despite its importance as a health resource and as a factor in identity formation in Inner Mongolia.
This study will show that shamanistic healing is not included in the official healing systems due to several historical forces and geopolitical events, such as the invasion of exotic cultures and China’s ban on religious activities during and after the 1940s, when land reform, socialist transformation policies, and the Cultural Revolution took hold in Inner Mongolia.
In addition, the official recognition of Mongolian medicine as a national medicine in the 1960s left no room for other local healing practices, including shamanistic healing. I argue that the revitalization of shamanism during the decades since China has reformed and opened up is due, in part, to the suffering of both individuals and communities from cultural tensions, ecocosmological crises, and lost traditions and the effectiveness of these practices in healing these wounds. Healing practices or rituals have continued to exist
in this modernizing socialist state because of their effectiveness.