Download or read book Paranthropology Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal written by Edited by Jack Hunter and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-06-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are living in a complicated period in relation to our understanding of 'extraordinary' phenomena. Naive materialist approaches are more assertive than ever, in anthropology and in the world more generally. At the same time, the taboos against admitting to the reality of the paranormal are weakening. There is a growing body of writing which takes the paranormal and extraordinary seriously, while bringing to it the same academic standards that any other subject matter would require. This is a valuable and important development, and it helps open the way to new modes of understanding in the sciences and social sciences that will not reject scientific rationality, but expand that rationality so as to include more of the world of human experience. The articles in this Paranthropology reader provide important clues and suggestions, along with rigorous argument, to help us in exploring what is likely to be a major area of anthropological engagement in coming years. Dr.Geoffrey Samuel, Cardiff University.
Download or read book Anthropology and Psychic Research written by Robert L. Van De Castle and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very little cross-fertilization of ideas, concepts, or techniques has developed between the fields of anthropology and psychic research. This essay, chapter 11 of Psychic Exploration, reviews several firsthand reports of field observations that offer encouraging anecdotal support for the existence of psi. Also reviewed are the statistically-significant card testing experiments by Foster with American Indians, by the Roses with Australian aborigines, and by the author with Panamanian Indians. The full volume of Psychic Exploration can be purchased as an ebook or paperback version from all major online retailers and at cosimobooks.com.
Download or read book Manifesting Spirits written by Jack Hunter and published by Aeon Books. This book was released on 2020-12-12 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Manifesting Spirits is 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 seances - 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.
Download or read book The Development of Religion written by Irving King and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Magical Consciousness written by Susan Greenwood and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-08-20 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does a mind think magically? The research documented in this book is one answer that allows the disciplines of anthropology and neurobiology to come together to reveal a largely hidden dynamic of magic. Magic gets to the very heart of some theoretical and methodological difficulties encountered in the social and natural sciences, especially to do with issues of rationality. This book examines magic head-on, not through its instrumental aspects but as an orientation of consciousness. Magical consciousness is affective, associative and synchronistic, shaped through individual experience within a particular environment. This work focuses on an in-depth case study using the anthropologist’s own experience gained through years of anthropological fieldwork with British practitioners of magic. As an ethnographic view, it is an intimate study of the way in which the cognitive architecture of a mind engages the emotions and imagination in a pattern of meanings related to childhood experiences, spiritual communications and the environment. Although the detail of the involvement in magical consciousness presented here is necessarily specific, the central tenets of modus operandi is common to magical thought in general, and can be applied to cross-cultural analyses to increase understanding of this ubiquitous human phenomenon.
Download or read book Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation written by Andy Hilton and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-09-14 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the 1980s, interest in initiation was at its peak; it was being employed both theoretically and practically, in gender politics and humanistic therapy. How did that come to be, how should we understand 'initiation', and what can be its future? This wide-ranging book looks at the history, evolution and contemporary idea of initiation. It traces origins in the ancient Mysteries and early Christian texts, through Renaissance rediscoveries to admission in Freemasonry and anthropological investigations in French Canada and British Australia. It introduces the 'initiation discourse', as something that was constructed through centuries of translations and nineteenth century human science leading to the making of the modern concept. It argues for a subject, 'initiation studies', that effectively secularised the eighteenth-century rites of admission to produce the twentieth-century rites of passage. And it details, as compensation for this hollowing out of the mystery, the study of shaman 'spirit-workers', the idea of death and rebirth, and the later sacralisation of the liminal in adolescent/adult initiation. Finally, a contemporary revision is explored that incorporates neglected aspects like depth psychology and education for an idea of youth as a life-stage. And while ritual is now deemphasised, the religious dimension is reaffirmed with a critical analysis of cosmic consciousness, the enduring Great Mystery.
Download or read book Ecstatic Religion written by I. M. Lewis and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Adolf Bastian and the Psychic Unity of Mankind written by Klaus Peter Köpping and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 1983 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adolf Bastian mapped a programme for anthropological research in the nineteenth century which is still accepted in the international scholarly community today, without the figure of its founder being known. This is the first time that seminal pieces of the work of this much-neglected scholar have been translated into English. Bastian had an impact, directly and indirectly, on geography, psychology, comparative religious studies, and ethnology in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Psychic Investigators written by Efram Sera-Shriar and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Anthropology of Magic written by Susan Greenwood and published by Berg. This book was released on 2009-11-01 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magic is arguably the least understood subject in anthropology today. Exotic and fascinating, it offers us a glimpse into another world but it also threatens to undermine the foundations of anthropology due to its supposed irrational and non-scientific nature. Magic has thus often been 'explained away' by social or psychological reduction. The Anthropology of Magic redresses the balance and brings magic, as an aspect of consciousness, into focus through the use of classic texts and cutting-edge research. Suitable for student and scholar alike, The Anthropology of Magic updates a classical anthropological debate concerning the nature of human experience. A key theme is that human beings everywhere have the potential for magical consciousness. Taking a new approach to some perennial topics in anthropology - such as shamanism, mythology, witchcraft and healing - the book raises crucial theoretical and methodological issues to provide the reader with an engaging and critical understanding of the dynamics of magic.
Download or read book Childhood and Folklore written by L. Bryce Boyer and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Science in the New Age written by David J. Hess and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Science in the New Age, David Hess explores ideologies of the paranormal in the United States. He offers a map of the labyrinth of views put forward by parapsychologists and skeptical debunkers, spirit channelers and crystal healers, Hollywood poltergeist scripts, and prophets of the New Age. Adopting a cultural perspective, Hess moves beyond the question of who is right or wrong to the cultural politics of how each group constructs its own boundaries of true and false knowledge. Hess begins by looking at each group's unique version of knowledge, science, and religion and at its story about the other groups. Comparing the various discourses, texts, writers, and groups as cultures, he shows how skeptics, parapsychologists, and New Agers may disagree vehemently with each other, but end up sharing many rhetorical strategies, metaphors, models, values, and cultural categories. Furthermore, he argues, their shared "paraculture" has a great deal in common with the larger culture of the United States. The dialogue on the paranormal, Hess concludes, has as much to do with gender, power, and cultural values as it does with spirits, extrasensory perception, and crystal healing.
Download or read book An Exploration Into the Applicability of a Psychological Technique for Anthropological Research written by Gwendolyn Marie Harris Pierce and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Culture Subject Psyche written by Anthony Molino and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2004 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 20th Century was marked by two profoundly different insights into human nature: one views each person as the product of unconscious desires, while the other sees the individual as the product of language and culture. While some still believe these two insights to be irreconcilable, many social scientists are attempting to integrate psychoanalysis into their culturally-bound research. In this groundbreaking new work, Anthony Molino has collected in-depth interviews with seven renowned anthropologists and social theorists: Marc Auge, Vincent Crapanzano, Kathering Ewing, Gananath Obeyesekere, Michael Rustin, Kathleen Stewart and Paul Williams. These dialogues, alongside essays by Molino, anthropologists Wesley Shumar and Waude Kracke, and psychoanalyst Lucia Villela, update the prevailing conceptions of psychoanalysis within anthropology, exploring distinctive psychoanalytic contributions and ethnographic theory and practice.
Download or read book Culture and Identity written by Charles Lindholm and published by McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages. This book was released on 2001 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this text, Lindholm introduces students to the field of psychological anthropology, tracing the growth of the field, interweaving perspectives from anthropology, psychology, and sociology, and applying the insights gained to an understanding of daily life in America. Unlike other texts, this is a coherent essay that deals with questions that are important to the field, includes the study of important theorists previously ignored, and covers contemporary topics such as object relations, identity, emotions, cognition, symbolic systems, idealized relationships, and the psychology of groups.
Download or read book The Work of Culture written by Gananath Obeyesekere and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1990-11-27 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the product of two decades of field research by one of Sri Lanka's distinguished anthropological interpreters.
Download or read book Parapsychology written by David Groome and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2024-06-28 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of Parapsychology continues to challenge and provoke readers with some of psychology’s most puzzling phenomena. Whether believers or sceptics, the book provides readers with the opportunity to further their understanding of the paranormal, bridging the gap between traditional psychology and fringe areas. With contributions from leading paranormal researchers, this edition has been thoroughly updated and includes new chapters on dreams, precognition and prediction of future events and anthropology. The book has been reorganised to help readers frame each phenomenon within the context of cognition, science and religion, and chapters are structured around science and experience, cognition and belief, religious belief and science, and further topics in parapsychology. The book covers a range of topics that can be considered parapsychological; including reincarnation, entity encounters, astrology, mediumship and near-death experiences. Providing a balanced introduction to parapsychology that explores the strengths and limitations of scientific investigation, this is essential reading for students and professionals in the field, along with anyone interested in learning more about the science of the paranormal.
