Spirit Power

This innovative volume carries out two of anthropology’s most distinctive tasks: to see the world in a grain of sand and to decolonize the academy. Conversing with Korean intellectuals and shamans, the authors show the surprising local uses to which Cold War imagery was put.---Webb Keane, author of Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories

Spirit Power adds to an exciting and growing body of literature on religion in Cold War South Korea, providing a fascinating window into the contingent yet powerful role of shamanism in an era of South Korean evangelical dominance. Employing ethnographic methods, and set to the backdrop of a volatile geopolitical past, this book provides a textured understanding of Korean shamans as they negotiate their liminal status—even calling upon the spirit of General MacArthur!—between the two Koreas, and in the long ‘American Century.’---Helen Jin Kim, author of Race for Revival: How Cold War South Korea Shaped the American Evangelical Empire

When a grand historical narrative collapses, writes Walter Benjamin, its places and heroes acquire a materially animated second life. For Heonik Kwon and Jun Hwan Park, the Korean shamanistic ritual of gut is so transformed in the aftermath of the Cold War. Historical places and heroes of the Cold War, decommissioned as indices of teleological progression, become both the expressions of and the apotropaic defenses against history now made accidental. In this monumental work, Kwon and Park return anthropology to its inaugural home of geography and history.---Hoon Song, University of Minnesota

Spirit Power is a wonderfully vivid book and will be of great use to readers from a variety of disciplines.---European Journal of Korean Studies

Spirit Power’s unique perspective on Korean religion, American influence, and modernity makes it a highly recommended read for anyone interested in these topics.---Journal of American-East Asian Relations