Ethos
June 1, 2008
Emma Cohen, Justin L. Barrett
AbstractWe report the findings of a programmatic series of studies designed to investigate the cognitive underpinnings of cross‐culturally recurrent forms of possession belief. Possession phenomena are frequently portrayed in the anthropological literature as incompatible with common cultural assumptions and biases guiding Western notions of “self” and “personhood” and as resisting...
Journal of Cognition and Culture
2008
Emma Cohen, Justin Barrett
AbstractTo investigate possible cognitive factors influencing the cross-cultural incidence of spirit possession concepts and to develop a more refined understanding of the precise contours of 'intuitive mind-body dualism' (Bloom, 2004), two studies were conducted that explored adults' intuitions about the relationship between minds and bodies. Specifically, the studies explored how participants...
The Mind Possessed
October 1, 2007
Emma Cohen
AbstractChapter 9 tackles questions concerning the apparently variable distribution and relevance of spirit concepts and possession (e.g. the high degree of women's participation relative to men's participation in possession cults). Taking some of the necessary cognitive mechanisms for the emergence and spread of spirit concepts described in chapters 6–8, this chapter considers what...
The Mind Possessed
October 1, 2007
Emma Cohen
Abstract Chapters 4 and 5 introduce more comprehensively the scientific approach to be adopted, incorporating a review of past and present approaches to possession cults and spirit phenomena. The first of these chapters looks at ethnographic description and anthropological interpretation of spirit possession phenomena, considering the roles of both rich description and faithful representation...
The Mind Possessed
October 1, 2007
Emma Cohen
AbstractThe reader is introduced to possession, and many of the key “why” questions that the book addresses, through the description of a possession healing ceremony and to the principal ethnographic focus of the book—a terreiro, or Afro‐Brazilian cult house in the city of Belém, northern Brazil. Brief introductions to dominant approaches to possession within academic scholarship and to the...
October 1, 2007
Emma Cohen
AbstractThe Mind Possessed examines spirit concepts and mediumistic practices from a cognitive scientific perspective. Drawing primarily, but not exclusively, from ethnographic data collected during eighteen months of fieldwork in Belém, northern Brazil, this book combines fine‐grained description and analysis of mediumistic activities in an Afro‐Brazilian cult house with a scientific account...