Abstract

The study analyses the forms and narratives of an archaic religious form, shamanism, and its main religious object/instrument, the shaman drum, in postmodern new religiosity. The interpretation of these phenomena is enriched by numerous publications of Hungarian religious studies. Shamanism in Hungary can be considered a syncretic belief system, which became a dominant element of the new Hungarian mythology-based identity constructions after the regime change of the 1990s. In addition to the sociology of religion, cultural anthropology, ethnography, semiotics, and social psychology also play a role in the research on this topic. The interdisciplinary approach sheds light on the main motivations for the revival of ancient cultures and the specificities of the Eastern European Hungarian ethnopaganism, which differs from similar religious phenomena in Western Europe. The role of contemporary media, the World Wide Web, is also important to examine in researching this topic.

Presenters

Edit Ujvari PhD
Head of Department, Cultural Studies, University of Szeged, Csongrád, Hungary

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Narratives and Identity

KEYWORDS

Postmodern neo-religiousness, Shamanism, Shaman drum, Ethnopaganism, Identity construction

Digital Media

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