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Anthropology Today

ISSN 0268-540X

5 papers in the library · 53 citations · publishing 1987-2023

Papers

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On the ambiguity of psychedelic awe in China

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...

The making of a mushroom people: Toward a moral anthropology of psychedelics beyond hype and anti‐hype

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...

Shamanism, sanity and remoteness in Russia

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’...

Ethnobotanies of refusal: Methodologies in respecting plant(ed)‐human resistance

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...

Smoky Trails: On Taussig's 'Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man'

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 the...