Introduzione

This is the general introduction (written together with Alessandro Saggioro) to the book Sciamanesimo e sciamanesimi. Un problema storiografico. In this prefatory essay, both the authors summarize the historiographical passages by which the nouns shaman-s/shamanism, from colonial and/or evolutionary concepts through which various othernesses are described in a typical Western perspective, were assumed as a specific epistemological category in the anthropological debate. Seminal passages, in such a historiographical journey, are the positions carried out by D. Diderot, F. Boas, K. Meuli, S.M. Širokogorov, M. Eliade, and E. de Martino, to reach up to the research perspectives of C. Ginzburg, R.J. Wallis, A. Znameski, K. Von Stuckrad and J.W. Boekhoven.