Zeitschrift für Ethnologie: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 27.1895

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 27.1895

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Zeitschrift

Strukturtyp:: Zeitschrift

Werks-URN (URL):: https://digi.evifa.de/viewer/resolver?urn=urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-714788

URN:: urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-714788

Persistenter Identifier:: BV035173706

Titel:: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie

Untertitel:: ZfE = Journal of social and cultural anthropology : JSCA

Weitere Titel:: ZfE

ISSN:: 0044-2666

Erscheinungsort:: Berlin

Verlag:: Reimer

Erscheinungsjahr:: 1869

Signatur:: LA 7600

Lizenz:: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Wissensgebiet:: Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie > Allgemeines

Zeitschriftenband

Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenband

Werks-URN (URL):: https://digi.evifa.de/viewer/resolver?urn=urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-712766

URN:: urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-712766

Persistenter Identifier:: 1591192232029

Titel:: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 27.1895

Erscheinungsjahr:: 1895

Signatur:: LA 7600

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Zeitschriftenartikel

Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenartikel

Titel:: V. Bericht über den Urnenfriedhof bei Bülstringen (Reg.-Bez- Magdeburg) Vorgelegt in der Sitzung der Berliner anthropologischen Gesellschaft vom 16. Februar 1895

Sonstige Person:: Wegener, Ph.

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Anthropos 92.1997 Rezensionen Adams, Vincanne: Tigers of the Snow and Other Virtual Sherpas. An Ethnography of Himalayan En counters. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. 304 pp. ISBN 0-691-00111-1. Price: $ 16.95 “Tigers of the Snow and Other Virtual Sherpas” is an innovative, provocative ethnography of the Sherpas of Northeastern Nepal. In contrast to other, now classic ethnographies of this people, which tend to focus on Sherpa culture as a whole or themes specific to Sherpa society, Adams’s treatise focuses primarily on the trans national aspects of Sherpa cultural identity. Since the Everest-climbing days of Sir Edmund Hil lary, the Sherpas of Northeastern Nepal have been por trayed by Westerners as heroic, self-sacrificing mountain guides, as spiritually enlightened beings, as inheritors of a culture more attuned to nature, and, finally, as members of a third world community in dire need of modem institutions of education and health care. The global currency of these images has been so strong that images of “Sherpas” can now be found in adver tisements for software products and in descriptions of diplomatic aides who help their bosses to successful world summits. Sherpas, who presently live in a world of tourism, mountain-climbing expeditions, and foreign philanthropy, find that their cultural identity and hence much of their livelihood depends upon such portrayals. They therefore actively promote them, and thus par ticipate in a space of mimesis in which they try to become what Westerners desire of them, which is often to be more real, more natural, and more soulful than the Westerners themselves. In order to satisfy such desires, Adams argues, Sherpas must mold themselves in terms of the images advanced by the West. In order to fuel such desires further, however, they must also maintain enough difference between themselves and the West that they are still seen as an exotic other. The bulk of the book maps out the analytic nu ances of this often dizzying hall of mirrors as it takes form in the domains of tourism, mountain-climbing, travel writing, schooling, biomedical health care, and shamanic and Buddhist practices. Sherpas, seduced by the wealth and prosperity that Western modernization brings, simultaneously seduce Westerners to become intimate with their way of life. While such an equation might hold for many postcolonial situations, what makes Adams’s argument ethnographically compelling is that it details the ways in which the forms of seduction and the nature of cultural identity among the Sherpas build on models of action common to Sherpa culture. Local notions of intimacy, interdependence, reciprocity, and patronage pattern how Sherpas and Westerners relate to one another (many foreign tourists and mountain climb ers, for instance, have become the economic sponsors of Sherpa families and individuals). Shamanic rituals, in which shamans look into mirrors to first see and then become the spirits afflicting their clients, provide the ontological template for the mimetic process. Buddhist religious practices, in turn, underscore the idea that the self is illusory, temporary, multiform, and capable of becoming a simulation. The latter idea, Adams finds, is crucial to any un derstanding of Sherpa subjectivity. She points out that there are two main ways to understand acts of mimetic simulation in this situation. One would be to contend that there is a more real, “authentic” Sherpa behind the images promoted, as if impression-managing Sher pas donned tourist-friendly masks whenever trekkers or filmmakers were around and then returned to their real lives once they were by themselves again. The other would be to conclude that there is no “backstage,” nor any aspects of Sherpa culture that are more authentic or traditional than others, but rather “virtual Sherpas” who are what they and others imagine themselves to be. Finding that theories of impression-management are too simplistic and that a discourse of authenticity is invalid because any desires for authenticity are Western ones, Adams promotes the second argument, which, at the least, makes sense according to Buddhist precepts and concerns, which generally “demand that Sherpas become transitory subjects - subjects who are not fixed and essential and who are able persistently to become that which is desired by those who observe them, in cluding Westerners” (161). Most assessments of the book will probably turn on whether or not readers accept Adams’s application of “virtual identities” to Sherpa society. Sherpas have clearly adopted forms of acting and thinking - from the layout of their homes to the imagining of insanity - that are in mimetic, desiring response to Western sensibili ties. What readers will debate is the all-encompassing air that Adams ascribes to the mimetic faculty among the Sherpas. Some readers will find that the concept of “virtual Sherpas” accurately conveys the social world in which Sherpas (and perhaps others) appear to live.

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