Sales Anne De

Biography

Anne de Sales initially worked on second-hand material concerning Siberia (the festival of the bear, shamanism) before turning her attention to Nepal, where she conducted a long field study (1981-1982) in the west of the country within a tribal community, the Kham-Magar. Her first publications centred on this population’s shamanic practices and ritual literature, specifically on the respective functions of gestures and words during healing sessions. In search of systemic consistency, these projects attempt to understand an exceptionally lively tradition, between Buddhist Tibet and Hindu India. She pursued the same themes within a neighbouring population of former copper miners who had begun a process of ethnogenesis, almost contemporaneous with her study. This new situation encouraged her to take a more historical and political view of the relations that these remote, rural communities maintain with the state.

Research Interest

religious and political anthropology, history of anthropology, shamanism, social change, oral literature, ritual