Talk:Shamanism among Eskimo peoples/Examples of using term shamanism among Eskimos in recent scientific literature

message: Pros for term “Eskimo” exist also in the English-speaking word, not only in Hungary.
=== Wikipedia ===
==== Threads of debates on talk pages ====
Reasons for using term “Eskimo” (both in the scientific literature and in a lexicon for common readers) are discussed in Talk:Eskimo in threads
* Talk:Eskimo#defaced
* Talk:Eskimo#Word origin
* Talk:Eskimo#Use and origin of the term
* Talk:Eskimo#Eskimo should be a disambiguation page
* Talk:Eskimo#Term Eskimo is extremely derogatory
* Talk:Eskimo#Inuit/Eskimo
* Talk:Eskimo#Eskimo as self-description of Alaskan Eskimos
* Talk:Inuit#Merge with Eskimo
==== Wikipedia's naming conventions ====
As for Wikipedia conventions, the followings may apply:
;use the most common name
:Wikipedia:Naming conventions
;precision
:Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision)
;avoid offensive names if offensiveness is verified
:Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)#Do not overdo it
The situation is funny, beacuse:
;Pro
:In generally, “use the most common name” contradicts Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision). But not here! Here, both guidelines vote for “Eskimo”
;Contra
:Here, the contra vota is conveyed by Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)#Do not overdo it, which warns against names that are offensive. (But the same text also mentions that the offensiveness must be proven by verifyable resources.) The main problem is that maybe also the “Inuit” label can be felt as (at least) strange for a Yupik. But do we need a common name for Yupiks and Inuits at all? Yes, because linguistical comparisons make it necessary. Until now this is “Eskimo”, and any other term (known by me) would hurt both principles precision and “use the most common name”
=== Non-Aleut branch of the Eskimo-Aleut language family ===
From the above threads I took that despite of the contras, there is no real alternative scientific term for the non-Aleut branch of the Eskimo-Aleut language family.
Of course it can be questioned: why we should split off the Eskimo branch from the Eskimo-Aleut family at all, and contrast the Eskimo branch them with the Aleut branch? Because there are good comparative linguistical arguments for it: Aleut language#Comparison to Eskimo grammar asserts that such important features of Eskimo languages as incorporation and ergativity and are less present in Aleut.
In fact, in many cases Eskimo languages consist dialect continuums (as stated in: online Lawrence Kaplan: Comparative Yupik and Inuit (found on the site of Alaska Native Language Center)). I have mentioned above a metaphor of an anthropologist: we reassamble our notion (“social structure”) from a muddling mass of phenomens . I thought of a similar analogy here: we cut out the classification of Eskimo languages from a muddling mass of language chains.
All that lead me to think
* a good comprehensive name over Inuit versus Yupik
* which (at the same time) contrasts them to Aleuts
is justified.
=== Humanistic arguments ===
As for the more humanistic arguments against term Eskimo: I took from the threads that
* although several Inuits dislike term Eskimo,
* but the same time, also some Asian Eskimos dislike the term Inuit.
I cannot verify if this is true at all, but I regarded it as an argument for using the scientific term in a rigid way, and bother less with feelings until a consensus is reached among the Eskimo people.
An anthropologist (who writes about herself that she belongs to the humanistic anthropology approach) also uses the term Eskimo in the title of her paper
* Turner, Edith (1989). From shamans to healers: the survival of an Inupiaq Eskimo skill. Anthropologica, 31(1), 3-24. (It is cited also in .) I could not avail it yet, so I have not the right yet to say that this book supports any of my opinions in any way. Because I do not know the context how she uses the words.
=== Modernity of used literature ===
Although I do not know the most recent publications in English-language anthropological literature, but term “Eskimo” was used yet in the last few decades. Let us examinine the years of publication among the English-language literature mentioned in the article:
;Pro (Eskimo is used)
:1985 Kleivan, I. and Sonne, B.: Eskimos / Greenland and Canada. (Series: Iconography of religions, section VIII /Artic Peoples/, fascicle 2). Institute of Religious Iconography • State University Groningen. E.J. Brill, Leiden (The Netherland), 1985. ISBN: 90 04 07160 1.
:1988 Burch, Ernest Jr. és Forman, Werner: The Eskimos. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1988, Macdonald/Orbis, London 1988. 
;Contra (Eskimo is avoided in favor of Inuit)
:1985 Merkur, Daniel: Becoming Half Hidden / Shamanism and Initiation among the Inuit. (Series: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis / Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion). Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm, 1985.
:1998 Inuit art / an introduction. Wirtten by Hessel, Ingo; photographed by Dieter Hessel ; with a foreword by George Swinton. British Museum Press, London, 1998.
:2000 Brody, Hugh: The other Side of the Eden / Hunter-gatherers, Farmers, and the Shaping of the World. Douglas & McIntyre Publishing Group, Vancouver, 2000 • Faber and Faber Limited, London, 2001 (admitting “In Alaska, the parallel term Inupiaq is used, although there has been a much stronger tendency to hold on to the word Eskimo”, p. 317 of Canadian publication) 
Burch&Froman and Hessel&Hessel wrote popular albums, but Kleivan&Sonne is an academic paper. Also the more recent
* Edith Turner (1990) - "The Whale Decides: Eskimos' and Ethnographer's Shared Consciousness on the Ice." Études/Inuit/Studies 14(1-2):39-54.
is an academic paper, but I could not avail it yet, so I cannot say more about it than its title says.
=== Caption of the image ===
Of course, it can be expected, that I should prefer terms “Inuit” and “Yupik” to “Eskimo”, but only in cases where we can know exactly this detail. But in many cases, we simply do knot know that. Let us see for example the caption of the image. Seeing the information provided on the Wikicommons place of the image, is an Alaskan shaman. But in Alaska, many groups exist which should not termed as Inuit (online Lawrence Kaplan: Inuit or Eskimo: Which names to use?). If I do not know the details of the image (and that is the case), I have not the right to label it as an Inuit shaman.
Let us see a counterexample for contrast. In the case of Vision quest article, I did not mind that someone has renamed all “Eskimo” occurrences to “Inuit”. Because really, the majority of the examples cited in the article were really Inuit ones (cited from ). But we cannot say the same in the case of Eskimo shamanism.
I think I must be as specific as possible — but no more as possible!
;not too general
:when we know more details, e.g. not saying e.g. “Arctic” shaman, when we know that he is an Eskimo one
;nor to too specific
:to the amount that the provided information may turn to be false, e.g. not to say “Inuit” shaman about an Alaskan one, if it may turn out later that he is a Yupik one.
=== Expression tricks like “Inuit or Yupik” ===
Saying “Inuit or Yupik” in all aoccurrences instead of Eskimo is
* distracting,
* msy hurt Wikipedia's covention use the most common name
* and may hurt Wikipedia's precision too, because it is debated whether the Eskimo branch (of Eskimo-Aleut family) consists of only Yupiks and Inuits: the Sirenik language is sometimes proposed to form a third branch of the Eskimo (online Linguist List's description about Nikolai Vakhtin's book: The Old Sirinek Language: Texts, Lexicon, Grammatical Notes. The author's untransliterated (original) name is “Н.Б. Вахтин”. Representing genealogical relations of (among others) Eskimo-Aleut languages by tree: Alaska Native Languages (found on the site of Alaska Native Language Center) Lawrence Kaplan: Comparative Yupik and Inuit (found on the site of Alaska Native Language Center), or for short the  image of the genealogical tree). But I must admit Sirenik language has become extinct in 1997.
Have a very happy Easter,
Physis 20:25, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Term “Eskimo” can be justified 

message: Saying “Inuit or Yupik” in all aoccurrences instead of Eskimo is
* distracting,
* msy hurt Wikipedia's covention use the most common name
* and may hurt Wikipedia's precision too, because it is debated whether the Eskimo branch (of Eskimo-Aleut family) consists of only Yupiks and Inuits: the Sirenik language is sometimes proposed to form a third branch of the Eskimo (online Linguist List's description about Nikolai Vakhtin's book: The Old Sirinek Language: Texts, Lexicon, Grammatical Notes. The author's untransliterated (original) name is “Н.Б. Вахтин”. Representing genealogical relations of (among others) Eskimo-Aleut languages by tree: Alaska Native Languages (found on the site of Alaska Native Language Center) Lawrence Kaplan: Comparative Yupik and Inuit (found on the site of Alaska Native Language Center), or for short the  image of the genealogical tree). But I must admit Sirenik language has become extinct in 1997.
Have a very happy Easter,
Physis 20:25, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expression tricks like “Inuit or Yupik”