Shamans, nostalgias, and the IMF: South Korean popular religion in motion

282 Pages·2016·24.696 MB·English

by  Kendall, Laurel

KOREA N RELIGION
{ Continued from front flap }
SHAMANS SOUTH KOREAN
S
of shamans, who once ministered to
H
the domestic crises of farmers, as they
A POPU LAR REL IGI ON THIRTY YEARS AGO, anthropologist
address the anxieties of entrepreneurs
“Laurel Kendall has written a study of contemporary Korean shamans M NOSTALGIAS Laurel Kendall did intensive fieldwork
whose dreams of wealth are matched by that is both entertaining and enlightening. Most studies of the topic treat A IN MOTI ON among South Korea’s (mostly female)
their omnipresent fears of ruin. Money
shamans as an anachronistic remnant of the past. Kendall challenges N shamans and their clients as a reflection
and access to foreign goods provoke that approach, drawing on several decades of close observation of S AND THE IMF of village women’s lives. In the interven-
moral dilemmas about getting and , LAUREL KEND ALL
shamans in action to reveal how shamanism is constantly evolving. It is ing decades, South Korea experienced an
N
spending; shamanic rituals express these
an important work that will appeal to a wide audience.” unprecedented economic, social, politi-
O
through the longings of the dead and the
cal, and material transformation, and
playful antics of greedy gods, some of —DON BAKER, University of British Columbia S
T Korean villages all but disappeared. And
whom have acquired a taste for imported
A the shamans? Kendall attests that they
whiskey. “With the publication of Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF, Laurel Kendall L not only persist but are very much a part
No other book-length study captures opens a new chapter in the study not only of shamanism in Korea, but G
of South Korean modernity.
the tension between contemporary South also in many societies undergoing the process of industrialization and I
A This enlightening and entertaining
Korean life and the contemporary South modernization. It is distinguished by its rich ethnographic data and
S study of contemporary Korean shaman-
Korean shamans’ work. Kendall’s famil- novel theoretical approach to the field of Korean popular religion. One ,
ism makes the case for the dynamism of
iarity with the country and long associa- of its many merits is that, unlike conventional studies that focus on A
popular religious practice, the creativity
N
tion with her subjects permit nuanced ‘authentic’ shaman ritual performances, it reveals a wide spectrum of
of those we call shamans, and the neces-
D
comparisons between a 1970s “then” and shamans and rituals within a grand system of practice.”
sity of writing about them in the present

recent encounters—some with the same T
—KWANG OK KIM, Seoul National University tense. Shamans can be found thriving in
shamans and clients—as South Korea H
the high-rise cities of South Korea, work-
moved through the 1990s, endured the E
“Laurel Kendall’s sympathetic and lucid writing consistently leads ing with clients who are largely middle

Asian Financial Crisis, and entered the from vivid narratives to penetrating theoretical insights. In her hands IM class and technologically sophisticated.
new millennium. She approaches her
the IMF becomes a brilliant trope for the interplay between magical Emphasizing the shaman’s work as open
F
subject through multiple anthropologi-
causality and the bewildering modernity which moulds our lives, as it and mutable, Kendall describes how gods
cal lenses such that readers interested
does the lives of her shamans’ clients.” and ancestors articulate the changing
in religion, ritual performance, heal-
concerns of clients and how the ritual
ing, gender, landscape, material culture, —PIERS VITEBSKY, University of Cambridge
fame of these transactions has itself been
modernity, and consumption will find
K transformed by urban sprawl, private
much of interest here.
E cars, and zealous Christian proselytizing.
N For most of the last century Korean
Laurel Kendall is Curator in Charge Jacket photograph: A mansin in the guise of a Spirit Warrior sings a song of self-praise with D shamans were reviled as practitioners of
of Asian Ethnographic Collections in 10,000-won bills stuck under his/her hat, in the hatband at both cheeks, and as a “beard.” A
antimodern superstition; today they are
L
the Division of Anthropology, American Jacket design: Julie Matsuo-Chun
L nostalgically celebrated icons of a van-
Museum of Natural History, and also
ished rural world. Such superstition and
teaches at Columbia University.
tradition occupy flip sides of modernity’s
coin—the one by confuting, the other by
ISBN 978-0-8248-3343-5
90000 obscuring, the beating heart of shamanic
UNIVERSITY OF
practice. Kendall offers a lively account
HAWAI‘I PRESS
9 780824 833435
HONOLULU, HAWAI‘I 96822-1888 www.uhpress.hawaii.edu
{ Continued on back flap }
Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF
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Shamans, Nostalgias,
and the IMF
South Korean Popular Religion in Motion
Laurel Kendall
University of Hawai‘i Press (cid:139) Honolulu
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© 2009 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
14 13 12 11 10 09 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kendall, Laurel.
Shamans, nostalgias, and the IMF : South Korean popular
religion in motion / Laurel Kendall.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8248-3343-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)—
ISBN 978-0-8248-3398-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Shamanism—Korea. 2. Korea—Religion. 3. Korea—
Civilization—Shamanistic influences. I. Title.
BL2236.S5K463 2010
299.5'7—dc22
2009014290
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free
paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Council on Library Resources.
Designed by University of Hawai‘i Press Production Department
Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group
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For Namyông Ômma
with gratitude and affection
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Contents
Preface
ix
Acknowledgments
xiii
Introduction: Shamanic Nostalgia
xvii
1. Shifting Intellectual Terrain: “Superstition”
Becomes “Culture” and “Religion”
1
2. Memory Horizons: Kut from Two
Ethnographic Presents
34
3. Initiating Performance: Chini’s Story
66
4. The Ambiguities of Becoming: Phony Shamans and
What Are Mudang After All?
102
5. Korean Shamans and the Spirits of Capitalism
129
6. Of Hungry Ghosts and Other Matters of Consumption
154
7. Built Landscapes and Mobile Gods
177
vii
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viii Contents
Conclusion
205
Notes
207
References
221
Index and Glossary
245
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Preface
In the late 1970s, I lived in a Korean village and wrote about a shaman I
call “Yongsu’s Mother” and her colleagues and clients. In the intervening
decades South Korea became an urbanized, high-tech, and relatively pros-
perous place, and all of us got older. This book contains observations on a
changing world of shaman practice in the years before and after the turn
of the millennium, with some backward glances to that first fieldwork of
thirty years ago. In this account, I make a case for shamans inside Korean
modernity, not only as the adversarial objects of modernity talk but, more
significantly, as doers who engage anxious moments in the present tense
through drum song, divine prognostication, and humorous repartee.
Most of the shamans in this book are mansin (pronounced “mahn-
shin”), charismatic shamans, who perform the regional traditions of Seoul,
and nearly all of the shamans in this book are women; I use the pronoun
“she” with only rare exceptions. I have known some of these women since
my first fieldwork in the 1970s, but others are new acquaintances whom I
met either through my old contacts or during observations in commercial
shaman shrines beginning in the 1990s. Although all of the major rituals
that I describe are in the Seoul style (Hanyang kut, Hansông kut), some of
my conversation partners practice other traditions. Some are either refugees
from North Korea or southerners who were initiated into regional tradi-
tions brought south by refugees or earlier migrants. These shamans would
also be called mansin, but others, from central Korea or further south,
would not. The term “mudang” is more widely known and covers both the
mansin and the hereditary tan’gol mudang of Korea’s southern provinces,
but “mudang” can be derogatory and I avoided using it in my first book.
Besides, it is imprecise. More than thirty years ago, a distinguished Korean
folklorist complained that a variety of exorcists, diviners, and other popular
religious practitioners who do not perform kut were inappropriately called
mudang (Yim 1970). In the present, the question of who is a mudang has
only become more muddled. Although the term is now used very broadly,
many shamans, including some of my old acquaintances, have taken to
ix
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