An Anthropological Study Of Spirits

Author : Christine S. VanPool,Todd L. VanPool
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2023-05-28
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783031259203

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An Anthropological Study of Spirits by Christine S. VanPool,Todd L. VanPool Pdf

This book discusses the cultural importance of spirits, what spirits want, and how humans interact with them, using examples from around the world and through time. Examples range from the vengeful spirits of the Zulu that cast lightning bolts from clear skies to punish wrongdoers, to the benevolent Puebloan Kachina that encourage prosperity, safety, and rain in the arid American Southwest. The case studies illustrate how humans seek to cooperate (or counteract) spirits to heal the physical and spiritual ailments of their people, to divine the truth, or to gain resources. Building from their cross-cultural analyses, the authors further discuss how our physiology and psychology impact our interaction with the spirits. Readers will come away with an appreciation of the beauty and power of the spirits that continue to shape the lives of people around the world.

Author : I. M. Lewis
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Ecstasy
ISBN : 041530508X

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Ecstatic Religion by I. M. Lewis Pdf

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Author : I. M. Lewis
Publisher : Penguin Group
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 1971
Category : Ecstasy
ISBN : UCAL:B4967117

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Ecstatic Religion by I. M. Lewis Pdf

Author : Morton Klass
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Page : 153 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2004-09-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780585466781

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Mind Over Mind by Morton Klass Pdf

Mind Over Mind explores the phenomenon of spirit possession from both anthropological and psychological perspectives. Spirit possession is ritually important in many cultures from India to Brazil to Madagascar, but has tended to be narrowly regarded from modern American and European perspectives as a psychopathological problem of multiple personality disorder. This book proposes an integration of anthropological and psychological approaches, concluding with a new analytical framework for understanding spirit possession and resolving the controversy surrounding the "reality" of possession. The issues raised are thus essential to both the anthropology of religion and the psychology of altered states of consciousness. At the same time, Mind over Mind confronts the most challenging philosophical issues of human consciousness and human identity, which can not be properly formulated without the insights of social and cultural anthropology. At the most general level, this study argues for the unequivocal importance of an interdisciplinary approach to spirit possession and for the integral significance of anthropology for the other human sciences.

Author : Jack Hunter
Publisher : Aeon Books
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2020-12-12
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9781913504489

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Manifesting Spirits by Jack Hunter Pdf

An exploration of contemporary trance and physical mediumship at a private spiritualist home-circle called the Bristol Spirit Lodge. Located in a garden on the outskirts of Bristol, the Lodge is a wooden shed specially constructed for the purposes of mediumship development and spirit communication. Through a combination of ethnographic observations in séances – including his own experiences of mediumship development – and interviews with spirits and their mediums, Hunter delves into a sub-urban world of trance states, ectoplasm, spirit lights and discarnate entities. Issues relating to altered states of consciousness, personhood, performance and the efficacy of ritual are examined in order to make sense of the processes by which spirits become manifest in social reality. A large part of Manifesting Spirits is given over to a broader discussion of anthropology's evolving attitudes toward the 'paranormal' as a component of the 'life-worlds' of many people across the globe, and argues for the development of a non-reductive anthropological approach to the paranormal, and mediumship in particular. This emerging framework – referred to as 'ontological flooding' does not attempt to explain away the existence of spirits in terms of functional, cognitive or pathological theories (as most mainstream theorists tend to do), but rather embraces a processual perspective that emphasises complexity and multiple interconnected processes underlying spirit possession performances and experiences.

Author : Ruy Blanes,Diana Espírito Santo
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2013-11-22
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780226081809

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The Social Life of Spirits by Ruy Blanes,Diana Espírito Santo Pdf

Spirits can be haunters, informants, possessors, and transformers of the living, but more than anything anthropologists have understood them as representations of something else—symbols that articulate facets of human experience in much the same way works of art do. The Social Life of Spirits challenges this notion. By stripping symbolism from the way we think about the spirit world, the contributors of this book uncover a livelier, more diverse environment of entities—with their own histories, motivations, and social interactions—providing a new understanding of spirits not as symbols, but as agents. The contributors tour the spiritual globe—the globe of nonthings—in essays on topics ranging from the Holy Ghost in southern Africa to spirits of the “people of the streets” in Rio de Janeiro to dragons and magic in Britain. Avoiding a reliance on religion and belief systems to explain the significance of spirits, they reimagine spirits in a rich network of social trajectories, ultimately arguing for a new ontological ground upon which to examine the intangible world and its interactions with the tangible one.

Author : American Anthropological Association. Meeting
Publisher : University Press of America
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 1997
Category : Religion
ISBN : 076180661X

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Explorations in Anthropology and Theology by American Anthropological Association. Meeting Pdf

The papers in this volume seek to map out the broad areas of anthropology and inspire others to follow with their own contributions.

Author : Rebecca L Stein,Philip Stein
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2015-08-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317350217

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The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft -- Pearson eText by Rebecca L Stein,Philip Stein Pdf

This book emphasizes the major concepts of both anthropology and the anthropology of religion and examines religious expression from a cross-cultural perspective while incorporating key theoretical concepts. It is aimed at students encountering anthropology for the first time.

Author : Jeannette Mageo,Alan Howard
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9781136758539

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Spirits in Culture, History and Mind by Jeannette Mageo,Alan Howard Pdf

Spirits in Culture, History and Mind reintegrates spirits into comparative theories of religion, which have tended to focus on institutionalized forms of belief associated with gods. It brings an historical perspective to culturally patterned experiences with spirits, and examines spirits as a locus of tension between traditional and foreign values. Taking as a point of departure shifting local views of self, nine case studies drawn from Pacific societies analyze religious phenomena at the intersection of social, psychological and historical processes. The varied approaches taken in these case studies provide a richness of perspective, with each lens illuminating different aspects of spirit-related experience. All, however, bring a sense of historical process to bear on psychological and symbolic approaches to religion, shedding new light on the ways spirits relate to other cultural phenomena.

Author : Efram Sera-Shriar
Publisher : Sci & Culture in the Nineteent
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2022-06-14
Category : History
ISBN : 0822947072

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Psychic Investigators by Efram Sera-Shriar Pdf

Psychic Investigators examines British anthropology's engagement with the modern spiritualist movement during the late Victorian era. Efram Sera-Shriar argues that debates over the existence of ghosts and psychical powers were at the center of anthropological discussions on human beliefs. He focuses on the importance of establishing credible witnesses of spirit and psychic phenomena in the writings of anthropologists such as Alfred Russel Wallace, Edward Burnett Tylor, Andrew Lang, and Edward Clodd. The book draws on major themes, such as the historical relationship between science and religion, the history of scientific observation, and the emergence of the subfield of anthropology of religion in the second half of the nineteenth century. For secularists such as Tylor and Clodd, spiritualism posed a major obstacle in establishing the legitimacy of the theory of animism: a core theoretical principle of anthropology founded in the belief of "primitive cultures" that spirits animated the world, and that this belief represented the foundation of all religious paradigms. What becomes clear through this nuanced examination of Victorian anthropology is that arguments involving spirits or psychic forces usually revolved around issues of evidence, or lack of it, rather than faith or beliefs or disbeliefs.

Author : Bettina E. Schmidt
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2016-06-16
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781474255684

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Spirits and Trance in Brazil by Bettina E. Schmidt Pdf

Bettina E. Schmidt explores experiences usually labelled as spirit possession, a highly contested and challenged term, using extensive ethnographic research conducted in São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil and home to a range of religions which practice spirit possession. The book is enriched by excerpts from interviews with people about their experiences. It focuses on spirit possession in Afro-Brazilian religions and spiritism, as well as discussing the notion of exorcism in Charismatic Christian communities. Spirits and Trance in Brazil: An Anthropology of Religious Experience is divided into three sections which present the three main areas in the study of spirit possession. The first section looks at the social dimension of spirit possession, in particular gender roles associated with spirit possession in Brazil and racial stratification of the communities. It shows how gender roles and racial composition have adapted alongside changes in society in the last 100 years. The second section focuses on the way people interpret their practice. It shows that the interpretations of this practice depend on the human relationship to the possessing entities. The third section explores a relatively new field of research, the Western discourse of mind/body dualism and the wide field of cognition and embodiment. All sections together confirm the significance of discussing spirit possession within a wider framework that embraces physical elements as well as cultural and social ones. Bringing together sociological, anthropological, phenomenological and religious studies approaches, this book offers a new perspective on the study of spirit possession.

Author : Anna Fedele,Ruy Llera Blanes
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2011-09-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780857452085

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Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices by Anna Fedele,Ruy Llera Blanes Pdf

Social scientists and philosophers confronted with religious phenomena have always been challenged to find a proper way to describe the spiritual experiences of the social group they were studying. The influence of the Cartesian dualism of body and mind (or soul) led to a distinction between non-material, spiritual experiences (i.e., related to the soul) and physical, mechanical experiences (i.e., related to the body). However, recent developments in medical science on the one hand and challenges to universalist conceptions of belief and spirituality on the other have resulted in “body” and “soul” losing the reassuring solid contours they had in the past. Yet, in “Western culture,” the body–soul duality is alive, not least in academic and media discourses. This volume pursues the ongoing debates and discusses the importance of the body and how it is perceived in contemporary religious faith: what happens when “body” and “soul” are un-separated entities? Is it possible, even for anthropologists and ethnographers, to escape from “natural dualism”? The contributors here present research in novel empirical contexts, the benefits and limits of the old dichotomy are discussed, and new theoretical strategies proposed.

Author : Timothy Larsen
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2014-08-29
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780191632051

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The Slain God by Timothy Larsen Pdf

Throughout its entire history, the discipline of anthropology has been perceived as undermining, or even discrediting, Christian faith. Many of its most prominent theorists have been agnostics who assumed that ethnographic findings and theories had exposed religious beliefs to be untenable. E. B. Tylor, the founder of the discipline in Britain, lost his faith through studying anthropology. James Frazer saw the material that he presented in his highly influential work, The Golden Bough, as demonstrating that Christian thought was based on the erroneous thought patterns of 'savages.' On the other hand, some of the most eminent anthropologists have been Christians, including E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, and Edith Turner. Moreover, they openly presented articulate reasons for how their religious convictions cohered with their professional work. Despite being a major site of friction between faith and modern thought, the relationship between anthropology and Christianity has never before been the subject of a book-length study. In this groundbreaking work, Timothy Larsen examines the point where doubt and faith collide with anthropological theory and evidence.

Author : Michael Lambek
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 1981-11-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0521238447

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Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte by Michael Lambek Pdf

Based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork, this book describes and interprets trance behaviour among the Malagasy speakers of Mayotte, a small island in the Comoro Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa. Professor Lambek describes how the people of Mayotte (most often women) enter into trances, during which they believe their bodies are inhabited by spirits. He then analyses the conventions for behaviour in trance and the process by which the individuals come to terms with the spirits in their midst. The book presents thorough case studies of spirit possession over time, providing one of the most detailed accounts of possession phenomena available for a single society. The author argues that trance can best be understood as a social activity within a defined system of cultural meaning rather than as a psychological problem, a simple deception or a means of manipulating others. This book should be of particular interest to those concerned with the study of ritual, symbols and non-Western religious systems.

Author : Conerly Casey,Robert B. Edgerton
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 562 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2007-10-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781405162555

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A Companion to Psychological Anthropology by Conerly Casey,Robert B. Edgerton Pdf

This Companion provides the first definitive overview of psychocultural anthropology: a subject that focuses on cultural, psychological, and social interrelations across cultures. Brings together original essays by leading scholars in the field Offers an in-depth exploration of the concepts and topics that have emerged through contemporary ethnographic work and the processes of global change Key issues range from studies of consciousness and time, emotion, cognition, dreaming, and memory, to the lingering effects of racism and ethnocentrism, violence, identity and subjectivity