SHAMANISTIC JOURNEYS AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL TRAVELS

This article offers two instances of the anthropologist's engagement i n local curing sequences as examples of the agreement of identities be tween anthropologist and shaman. This similitude of culturally dispara te roles is rooted, we believe, in the power generally derived from th e foreign and apart. It also comes from the nature of shamanism as the world's only universal ''specialty,'' a congery of cures, techniques, and packaged knowledge. We conclude that the identification of the an thropologist as shaman is not necessarily a misidentification. In thei r travels both define and cross boundaries wielding a power that is es sentially relational and communicational: derived from a manipulation of otherness, and from the use of words as things.