In 2011 a dissertation was written on the history and the marketing of 'shamanism' in The Netherlands. It uses the views of Western sociologists and anthropologists. It makes clear that a lot of claims made by modern 'shamans' are false.
The dissertation is in English, and it is also out as a commercial book, and can be found at Amazon.com, for instance.
A short introduction is here:
http://irs.ub.rug.nl/ppn/334091810Genealogies of shamanism : struggles for power, charisma and authority
(2011) Boekhoven, Jeroen Wim
‘Shamanism’ is a problematic and contested concept. After Westerners first heard the term in Siberia at the end of the seventeenth century, it rapidly acquired a remarkable range of meanings in different contexts. Theologians saw shamans as sidekicks of the devil, enlightenment thinkers considered them as mentally ill or retarded. From the eighteenth century onwards, the Romantic image of the shaman as an artistically gifted mystic became fashionable, whereas nineteenth-century folklorists, in turn, used the term ‘shamanism’ in nationalist quests for the essence of the Volksgeist of their nation. Twentieth-century psychologists identified shamans both as schizophrenics and as primal therapists. During the 1960s shamans came to be perceived as psychonauts who used hallucinogens to gain access to the divine essence of life.
During the 1970s an American anthropologist created workshops that, he claimed, were based on universal shamanic principles and practices. Through so-called archaic techniques his students could get in touch with the healing forces of nature. Contemporary forms of shamanism present themselves as countercultural, but a historical-sociological interpretation suggests that it is no coincidence that shamanism especially gained popularity at the time that neoliberal capitalism became dominant. Neoliberalisation disempowered people over their working lives and forced them to exert self-authority and make choices in their lives. Contemporary shamanic practices are also focused on self-authority, can be consumed in a free market and offer opportunities for empowerment. Instead of changing society, however, contemporary Western shamanism contributes to structure the structures it claims to resist.
For Dutch people: There is a link to a Dutch summary of eleven pages on the same page, under the word 'Samevatting'.
http://irs.ub.rug.nl/ppn/334091810
