Psychological Anthropology

To “Speak Beautifully” in Bangladesh: Subjectivity as Pagalami

by James Wilce

Introduction: Experience and Inquiétude

by Sarah Willen

Willen, Sarah S. & Don Seeman. 2012 “Introduction: Experience and Inquiétude.” In “Horizons of Experience: Reinvigorating Dialogue between Phenomenological and Psychoanalytic Anthropologies.” Sarah S. Willen & Don Seeman, guest editors. Special Issue of Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology. 40(1): 1-23.

In recent decades, human experience has become focus or frame for a wide variety of projects in psychological... more In recent decades, human experience has become focus or frame for a wide variety of projects in psychological anthropology and beyond. Like “culture,” which it arguably seeks to either qualify or displace, the concept of “experience” has generated its own interpretive literature, competing schools of analysis, and internal resistances. We propose that the anthropology of experience has achieved a degree of recognition and maturity that renders genealogical reflection, stocktaking, and agenda setting both possible and necessary.
Although the anthropology of experience, like experience itself, does not (and perhaps should not) lend itself to easy definition as a singular or unified theoretical paradigm, it does involve a fluid constellation of themes shared by what are traditionally regarded as parallel or divergent lines of inquiry: what might be glossed imperfectly as the phenomenological and psychoanalytic schools within sociocultural anthropology. Here we aim neither for na¨ıve synthesis nor a mathematical sum of parts, but for more adequate ways of depicting and making sense of what Dewey calls “the inclusive integrity of ‘experience.’” This will require more concerted attention to the sources of ethnographic inquiétude—the gaps, silences, limits, and opacities—that either preoccupy or remain overlooked within both traditions. [experience, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, phenomenological anthropology, psychoanalytic anthropology, inquiétude]

Religion, Neuroscience and Emotion: Some Implications of Consumerism and Entertainment Culture

by Rebecca Sachs Norris

This is a chapter in Religion and the Body: Modern Science and the Construction of Religious Meaning, David Cave and Rebecca Norris eds., Brill, Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions, forthcoming 2012.

Examining the structure and role of emotion: Contributions of neurobiology to the study of embodied religious experience

by Rebecca Sachs Norris

In Zygon: The Journal of Science and Religion, 40:1, March 2005.

Certain properties of the body and emotions facilitate the transmission of religious knowledge and the development of... more Certain properties of the body and emotions facilitate the transmission of religious knowledge and the development of religious states through particular qualities of perception and memory. The body, which is the ground of religious experience, can be understood as transformative: the characteristic that recalled emotion is “refelt” in the present enables emotion to be cultivated or developed. Emotions and the stimuli that evoke them are necessarily culturally specific, but the automatic nature of this process is universal. Religious traditions have made use of these processes to educate the feeling toward certain qualities and to develop religious experience, through the use of sacred images, ritual posture and gesture, and repetition of ritual acts. Neuroscience contributes to our understanding of the emotional processes that take place when emotions are evoked, refelt, and developed; the neurobiological processing of emotion parallels experience. Keeping experience central makes it possible to bring religion and neuroscience together in a nonreductive examination of spiritual experience.

The Paradox of Healing Pain

by Rebecca Sachs Norris

In Religion, 39(1), 22-33, 2009.

Pain may be seen as a problem to be healed or as a means for healing. The secular biomedical view of pain is that it... more Pain may be seen as a problem to be healed or as a means for healing. The secular biomedical view of pain is that it is to be avoided and alleviated; its only meaning is as a symptom of underlying disease. In contrast, there have been throughout history other views of suffering—as redemptive or as transformative, for example. This paper considers the disparity between these perspectives, examining the role of the emotions and the underlying neurobiological processes though which pain and suffering come to be experienced as meaningful, then analyzes interview material exploring how religion and religious beliefs help people cope with suffering or with pain. The experience of pain is subjective, enculturated experience; the meaning that pain or suffering holds within a given cultural context affects the experience of pain and suffering. In a context where pain and suffering are understood to be valuable, those experiences can be used for spiritual transformation and integrated within a meaningful identity. In contrast, in a context where pain and suffering are not understood to have value, that attitude can create more suffering, even in conditions meant to alleviate suffering, such as in biomedical situations.

Examining the structure and role of emotion: Contributions of neurobiology to the study of embodied religious experience

by Rebecca Sachs Norris

In Zygon: The Journal of Science and Religion, 40:1, March 2005.

Certain properties of the body and emotions facilitate the transmission of religious knowledge and the development of... more Certain properties of the body and emotions facilitate the transmission of religious knowledge and the development of religious states through particular qualities of perception and memory. The body, which is the ground of religious experience, can be understood as transformative: the characteristic that recalled emotion is “refelt” in the present enables emotion to be cultivated or developed. Emotions and the stimuli that evoke them are necessarily culturally specific, but the automatic nature of this process is universal. Religious traditions have made use of these processes to educate the feeling toward certain qualities and to develop religious experience, through the use of sacred images, ritual posture and gesture, and repetition of ritual acts. Neuroscience contributes to our understanding of the emotional processes that take place when emotions are evoked, refelt, and developed; the neurobiological processing of emotion parallels experience. Keeping experience central makes it possible to bring religion and neuroscience together in a nonreductive examination of spiritual experience.

"L'Oriente in Noi" Seminario Popolare sul Pensiero dell'Estremo Oriente

by Pietro Piro

Giornata di Studi dedicata alle relazioni tra Oriente e Occidente.

Il Seminario Popolare sul Pensiero dell’Estremo Oriente nasce per confrontarsi in maniera aperta e non accademica con... more Il Seminario Popolare sul Pensiero dell’Estremo Oriente nasce per confrontarsi in maniera aperta e non accademica con i grandi temi del Pensiero Orientale. Un pensiero differente che si muove da categorie proprie e che fornisce nuove e profonde visioni della realtà. La mondializzazione ha accelerato i processi di commercio e di comunicazione ma ancora troppo spesso si continua a non conoscere il substrato religioso e filosofico dei popoli con i quali si entra in contatto. L’Altro è spesso ridotto a merce di scambio e a forza-lavoro e non è ancora visto come il portatore di una cultura vasta e profonda, capace di arricchire e di cambiare le stagnanti prese di posizione del pensiero Occidentale.
Il Seminario giunge alla terza edizione sulla base del successo e dell’entusiasmo delle prime due. Si è, infatti, suscitato un vero intererrogare su temi che all’inizio possono sembrare distanti e difficili ma che alla fine, ci rivelano il loro contenuto universale e ci riempiono di un bagaglio di nuovi ed essenziali argomenti di riflessione.

Guiao Entrevista Eco Narrativa

by Paulo Jesus

Guião de Entrevista para investigação/intervenção de cariz ecológico e construtivista (narrativo) em Psicologia do... more Guião de Entrevista para investigação/intervenção de cariz ecológico e construtivista (narrativo) em Psicologia do Desenvolvimento Vocacional.
Adaptação da Life Story Interview de D. P. McAdams.

The Heart of “Iyashi”: Health, Comfort and Nostalgia in Japanese Pilgrimage and Medicine

by Jason Danely

Delivered at the 2011 Meeting of the Association of American Anthropology

The study of religious pilgrimage in anthropology has been dominated by the Turnerian legacy of rites de passage and... more The study of religious pilgrimage in anthropology has been dominated by the Turnerian legacy of rites de passage and communitas and the chorus of critiques and rejoinders that have followed. Recent works on pilgrimage have attempted to shift this perspective towards a focus on the context of hegemonic discourses, negotiations of identity politics and invented traditions of nostalgic tourism.  While these works underline the complexity of the pilgrim as cultural construct, they have also created an intractable distance between the fundamental importance of pilgrimage and the phenomenology of health that was so important to the Turners. Other recent work has started to reestablish the critical link between pilgrimage and healing though the theoretical lens of medical anthropology (Notermans 2006; Dubisch and Winkleman Eds. 2005).  Expanding on this work, this paper examines the construction of healing in contemporary religious pilgrimage in Japan. There are hundreds of established pilgrimage routes throughout Japan, most composed of a circuit of several interlinked religious sites, and are completed in multiple trips over a period of years.  Reflecting Japan's aging population and its long-standing association between health and spiritual journey, over half of the pilgrims to the most popular routes are over the age of 65, and newer pilgrimages dedicated to the prevention of senility and other contemporary health concerns of the elderly have increased.  Following this trend is the promotion of pilgrimage as the path of “iyashi,” a concept sometimes glossed as physical and emotional “comfort” that has in the last few decades been taken into therapeutic and biomedical contexts such as palliative nursing care, as well as those of religious healing (Ueda 1997).  “Iyashi”also links place, memory, and emotions as components of the healing experience, creating pilgrims both as nostalgic bodies in cultural landscapes and active agents in health prevention and end-of-life management.  Following both the legacy of Turner and the semiotic legacy of “iyashi,” this paper examines encounters with healing on one Japanese pilgrimage route as well as post-pilgrimage accounts of older adult informants that indicate the possibilities of lasting traces of “iyashi” in the pilgrim's experience.

Adaptive and maladaptive dissociation: An epidemiological and anthropological comparison and proposition for an expanded dissociation model

by Christopher Lynn

Others, Other Minds, and Others' Theories of Other Minds

by Webb Keane

Personal Meaning, Self-Representation, and Agency In Some Recent Works

by Mark Cravalho

The impact of primary schools on the differential distribution of Samoan adolescents’ competence with honorific language

by Harold L. Odden

Published in 'Current Anthropology' 2011, 52(4):597-606.

In the Western Polynesian society of Samoa, cultural learning and the acquisition of competency in many domains is... more In the Western Polynesian society of Samoa, cultural learning and the acquisition of competency in many domains is substantially influenced by the hierarchical structure of social relations and interactions.  From a population-level perspective, this pattern of intergenerational transmission of culture can generate differential distribution of competencies based on children’s relative household rank for many domains of cultural knowledge.  As the local primary school provides children with opportunities to learn without regard to household rank, the possibility exists that it may act as a countervailing force in the distribution of cultural competency.  This report examines this possibility through the analysis of children’s developing competency with the Samoan honorific lexicon, a basic yet important element of the larger category of respectful behavior that all adults are expected to acquire.  A multiple-choice test of the Samoan honorific lexicon was administered to a sample of early adolescent school children aged 10 - 14 years (n = 64) at a single, rural primary school.  Analysis of this data set supports the interpretation that the primary school functions to reduce the levels of variation in competencies across the population of children, and thus operates as a leveling mechanism in this domain of cultural knowledge.

Toward a Cultural Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity: The Extended Relational Field of the Tzotzil Maya of Highland Chiapas, Mexico

by Kevin Groark

In Press: Language & Communication (Special Issue: “Intersubjectivity: Cultural Limits, Extensions and Construals”; E. Danziger and A. Rumsey, eds.)

*Note: This is an uncorrected page proof. When citing, please refer to the final published version.

Among the Tzotzil Maya of San Juan Chamula (Chiapas Highlands, Mexico), dream experience, symptom formation, and... more Among the Tzotzil Maya of San Juan Chamula (Chiapas Highlands, Mexico), dream experience, symptom formation, and certain forms of emotionally heightened self-consciousness are drawn upon to gain knowledge of the social surround. Through an exploration of these ostensibly non-intersubjective domains (and their epistemological and ontological entailments), I begin to trace the contours and dynamics of the “extended relational field” of the highland Maya, emphasizing a distinctly multimodal approach to intersubjectivity which includes interpersonal relations, intersomatic processes, and soul-based “counterpart relations.” By attending to social experience across diverse phenomenal levels, contemporary Tzotzil Maya are able to cultivate a more fully dimensional understanding of the dispositional surround—particularly in terms of those aspects of feeling and intention that are systematically stripped from most face to face interactions. Through this discussion, I hope to broaden the frame through which we view cross-cultural inflections of intersubjectivity, emphasizing the importance of tracing the differential manifestations of relational processes across diverse—and often unexpected—experiential registers, only some of which involve “minds coming to knowing other minds.

Demuth, C.; Keller, H.; & Yovsi, R. D. (in press) Cultural Models in Communication with Infants – Lessons from Kikaikelaki, Cameroon and Muenster, Germany

by Carolin Demuth, Dr. phil.

Journal of Early Childhood Research Prepublished April, 23, 2011, DOI: http://ecr.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/04/20/1476718X11403993

Child rearing is a universal task, yet there are differing solutions according to the dynamics of socio-cultural... more Child rearing is a universal task, yet there are differing solutions according to the dynamics of socio-cultural milieu in which children are raised. Cultural models of what is considered good or bad parenting become explicit in every day routine practices. Focusing on early mother-infant interactions in this article we examine the discursive practices and strategies that foster cultural values such as autonomy and relatedness. Drawing on micro-analysis of videotaped mother-infant interactions from middle class families in Muenster, Germany and farming Nso families in Kikaikelaki, Cameroon, we aim at illustrating how diverse discursive strategies construct alternative versions of the child’s experience of self and self-in-relation-to-others. In each case, mothers draw on discursive practices that convey cultural norms and values that fit the relevant cultural context.

Keller, H.; Demuth, C. & Yovsi, R. D. (2008). The Multi-voicedness of Independence and Interdependence - The case of Cameroonian Nso.

by Carolin Demuth, Dr. phil.

Culture & Psychology Vol. 14(1): 115–144

It is often claimed that independence and interdependence are two dimensions that are part of any culture and the... more It is often claimed that independence and interdependence are two dimensions that are part of any culture and the psychology of any human being. While previous studies have considered these two concepts merely as a matter of degree, this paper argues that in fact, they can be of different quality and have a variety of meanings depending on the specific socio-cultural context. From a systemic approach, the study addresses the dialogical co-existence of these dimensions and views culture as an open system that allows for adaptation and constant reorganization according to the given context. Interviews with 10 mothers from the ethnic group of the Cameroonian Nso on their ideas on child rearing revealed that different conceptions of autonomy and interpersonal relatedness not only co-exist in this ethnic group but may serve different purposes and change depending on the specific socio-cultural conditions the mother lives in.

Keywords: Nso, independence, interdependence, autonomy, relatedness, cultural change

Demuth (2008). Talking to infants: how culture is instantiated in early mother-infant interactions. The case of Cameroonian farming Nso and North German middle-class families.

by Carolin Demuth, Dr. phil.

Doctoral Dissertation (2008), University of Osnabrück, Culture & Development

This study wants to contribute to a better understanding of child development by considering the broader cultural... more This study wants to contribute to a better understanding of child development by considering the broader cultural context in which it is embedded in. It takes a socio-cultural approach and considers child care practices as adaptive to the specific requirements of a given cultural context. Particularly, it is interested in investigating discursive practices in early mother-infant interactions in diverse cultural settings and relating them to prevalent cultural models of child care. A survey of research literature suggests that infant-directed communication varies greatly across cultures. It is suggested that protoconversation as described in the literature might be a cultural manifestation of an underlying innate parenting system prevalent in Western white middle-class context and that there might be other phenotypical forms of protoconversation in non-Western agrarian societies. Moreover, the study takes a practice approach to language and is interested in investigating how the construction of specific versions of the social world is achieved in the process of the ongoing interactions, particularly with regard to the dimensions autonomy and interpersonal relatedness.
The study therefore examines mother-infant interactions from two cultural contexts previously described as prototypically independent (German white middle class families in the city of Muenster) and interdependent (farming Nso families in the Western Grassfields of Cameroon). The data corpus originates from an earlier longitudinal study and consists of video material and transcriptions of 20 Nso and 20 Muenster mother-infant dyads at the infant’s age of 12 weeks.
The data are analyzed following the principles of qualitative social research using strategies from discourse analysis, conversation analysis and documentary method. Different patterns of co-constructing mother-infant interactions were found and are discussed in chapters 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3. Chapter 4.1 presents findings of a pattern of co-operative vs. hierarchical discourse; chapter 4.2 discusses findings of narrative-biographical vs. rhythmic-synchronous structuring; and chapter 4.3 surveys examples of individual-centered vs. socially oriented discursive strategies. The results point to the possibility of innate characteristics of protoconversation as well as culture-specific manifestations of their phenotype. The results are discussed with regard to the specificities of the relevant local socio-cultural contexts and possible implications for the development of culture-specific world views and self-construals.
The thesis concludes by arguing that infants’ ‘narrative envelope’ is a powerful medium to transmit cultural knowledge, even in interactions with pre-verbal infants. Maternal discursive practices are both constituted by culture and constitute culture.
Finally, some of the main implications of the study’s findings for theory and practice are discussed. It is suggested that what is healthy and pathological development needs to be (re-)defined for each specific cultural context. Curricula for training pediatricians, psychologists, teachers and other social workers accordingly need to take a socio- or eco-cultural approach in order to ensure culture-sensitive counseling and teaching. Further studies from socio-cultural contexts that have so far been neglected in academic research are needed that systematically relate infant-care practices with cultural models of child care. The study of discursive practices is suggested to be a particularly promising avenue to this line of research.

Current Academic CV

by Kevin Groark

Le psychisme dans la civilisation

by Samuel Lézé

french review in laviedesidées.fr , 2011 of : Norbert Elias, Au delà de Freud. Sociologie, psychologie, psychanalyse, La Découverte, 2010, 213 p.

La publication d’un ensemble de textes de Norbert Elias témoigne du dialogue que le sociologue allemand n’a cessé... more La publication d’un ensemble de textes de Norbert Elias témoigne du dialogue que le sociologue allemand n’a cessé d’entretenir avec la psychanalyse. Face à la thèse du « malaise dans la civilisation », Elias s’attache à la dimension affective des valeurs pour penser les relations entre culture et personnalité. Sa thèse néglige cependant l’économie morale prônée par l’anthropologie.

Moving Towards Healing - Nunavut Case Study

by Aaron Denham

with Chris Fletcher (2008). In Aboriginal Healing in Canada: Studies in Therapeutic Meaning and Practice, (pp. 93-129). Waldram, J., ed. Ottawa: The Aboriginal Healing Foundation.