Abstract
Shamanism, which premises a particular cosmology and etiology that make shaman's performances relevant within a socio-cultural context, cannot escape from radical transformation in the process of ideological and technological modernization or globalization. If shamanism can be characterized as religious practice in which a variety of "body resources" are manipulated and integrated to embody the world view of a culture, then radical changes in shamanism through globalization can also influence the bodily performance in religious practices. In this paper, the practices of shamanism among the Ladakhi and the Sakha people in contemporary circumstances are examined in terms of the transmission of "bodily performance" in the process of modernization or globalization. The former has undergone rapid modernization in their daily lives amid the promotion of local development and tourism. While the latter has experienced drastic changes in ideological, economic, and political systems and the revitalization of shamanism after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Among the Ladakhi, shamans' performances have changed relatively little; however, their glossolalia has begun to be understood in a more generalized and "de-cultural" context. Ladakhi shamans have come to play a role in healing not only local people, but also "global" people. In contrast, the Sakha have revived shamanism in quite a new form: as an emobodiment of the philosophy of symbiosis with nature. A shaman's ability to travel or fly to the underworld, in particular, is no longer embodied, even though shamans have, to a certain extent, maintained their traditional worldview. These two examples show the ways in which the body in the practices of shamanism is adjusted to be able to represent a new, modernized culture.
