Abstract This article explores the relationship between meaning and the body, and the role of mind and brain in mediating this relationship. Drawing on research on “grounded cognition” in cognitive neuropsychology, I consider the mechanisms through which meanings become embodied. I illustrate my argument using examples of the ways in which meaning conditions experiences of illness and health....
This chapter explores the processes that mediate the relationship between sociocultural experiences and bodily responses, in the context of religious devotion. Using ethnographic and psychophysiological data from a study of spirit possession (Brazilian Candomblé), I offer a close examination of interactions among enactments of roles and meanings, and bodily states of mediums. In doing so, I...
AbstractDiscontinuities in the experience of self are distressing especially when they are unexpected, unsanctioned, and resist attribution. Such discontinuities are often a product of psychosocial and physical suffering. In this article I present a model of self that incorporates bodily experience as a fundamental building block and key source of discontinuity for a sense of self. Analysis of...
Anthropologists have become increasingly interested in embodiment-that is, the ways that socio-cultural factors influence the form, behavior and subjective experience of human bodies. At the same time, social cognitive neuroscience has begun to reveal the mechanisms of embodiment by investigating the neural underpinnings and consequences of social experience. Despite this overlap, the two...