The concept of shamanism

The project of this book emerged from two sessions of the 4th International Conference of the International Society for Shamanic Research held at Chantilly, France, on 1-5 September 1997. One session was devoted to prehistory, another to "urban shamanisms and neo-shamanisms".

All the papers published in the second part of this book devoted to modernising societies were presented at the Conference. Discussions on prehistory developed subsequently, and new contributions have been included here in addition to those presented at the Conference. Let us assume that the contribution on Socrates by Pierre Hadot introduced at the end of this book helps to account for speaking of shamanism in such extreme historical situations even though we do not claim that Greek philosophy may constitute a bridge between them.

We are pleased to inform the reader that another volume of Proceedings of the Conference has been published in 2000 by the Société d'Ethnologie (Nanterre). It has been jointly edited by Denise Aigle, Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière and Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, under the title La politique des esprits. Chamanismes et religions universalistes.