Anthropology Today
December 1, 2023
Alex K. Gearin
1 citation
Psychology research frequently portrays the epistemic emotion of wonder as an intrinsic good. However, anthropologists highlight that social contexts shape its ambiguous political and moral potential. This concise article explores the awe‐inspiring DMT experience of a Chinese psychedelic user, which involves a humiliating encounter with a cosmic surveillance state. Analogous to the mood of...
Anthropology Today
May 31, 2023
Nicolas Langlitz
13 citations
As regulatory agencies have put psychedelics on an expedited path to market approval, North Americans and Europeans might turn away from their repression and join the subset of cultures that have institutionalized the use of hallucinogenic drugs. What is the place of anthropology in this psychedelic renaissance? More specifically, how should anthropology relate to the cycles of hype and...
Anthropology Today
April 1, 2022
Michal Pagis, Orly Tal
6 citations
Mindfulness is commonly portrayed as a solitary practice in which one turns attention inward to notice feelings, thoughts and sensations that arise in the mind and body. Yet the training and practice of mindfulness often take place in a group setting, indicating that the process of turning inward is dependent on an intersubjective space. Based on an extended ethnography of Israelis who train in...
Anthropology Today
February 1, 2022
Susan Greenwood
Magical thinking expressed in conspiracy theories is alive and well, as recent insurrection events at the US Capitol have shown, where alt‐right White supremacist activists stormed the government waving Confederate flags and a noose to hang the vice president. This article suggests that such ‘magical consciousness’ is a pan‐human mode of participatory awareness that plays out in a spectrum of...
Anthropology Today
April 1, 2020
Kristina Jonutytė
This article looks at the attempted trek of a ‘warrior shaman’ Alexandr Gabyshev from Yakutsk to Moscow, where his aim was to try to drive ‘the demon’ Putin out of the Kremlin. In particular, it explores Russian online responses to Gabyshev's campaign, as well as local reactions in the region where he was arrested, Buryatia. It is argued that the discourses of support are a sort of ‘removal’...
Anthropology Today
April 1, 2019
Ruth Goldstein
37 citations
Elaborating on conversational exchanges with a Brazilian shaman about biopiracy and interweaving scholarly literature from the ontological and ‘botanical’ turn, the author examines the disciplinary as well as the political ramifications of plant healers and practitioners – particularly indigenous ones – going largely uncited in plant‐centred discussions. In Brazil, indigenous claims for...
Anthropology Today
December 1, 1987
David Stoll
2 citations
David Stoll is author of Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire? , a history of the Wycliffe Bible Translators published by Zed Press and Cultural Survival in 1982, and is a graduate student in the anthropology department, Stanford University. Ethnography often has an autobiographical note: here1 we have the story of an anthropologist training to be a shaman. Michael Taussig was a refugee from...