Ethos
August 27, 2026
Johanna Bard Richlin
Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games, by Jeffrey Snodgrass, compiles and compares the author's varied ethnographic research on two forms of ecstatic experience: Religious possession in India (Rajasthan) and video game play in India (Udaipur) and the United States (Colorado).In this ambitious and unexpected juxtaposition, Snodgrass argues that both experiences...
Ethos
March 17, 2025
Nicholas J. Long
1 citation
Abstract Drawing on ethnographic data collected over 16 months of fieldwork with Indonesian hypnotherapists, this article investigates the suitability of different relationalities for providing therapeutic care. Clinical literature often advocates the merits of self‐hypnosis over hetero‐hypnosis, while anthropologists express skepticism regarding therapies that encourage individualized regimes...
Ethos
December 1, 2022
Dan Zahavi
Is selfhood socially constituted and distributed? Although the view has recently been defended by some cognitive scientists, it has long been popular within anthropology and cultural psychology. Whereas older texts by Marcel Mauss, Clifford Geertz, Hazel Rose Markus, and Shinobu Kitayama often contrast a Western conception of a discrete, bounded, and individual self with a non-Western...
Ethos
September 1, 2021
Aja Smith
3 citations
Abstract Transformative experiences have long been a central interest for anthropologists studying spiritual phenomena. During fieldwork, many ethnographers have themselves undergone such experiences, caused by and fueling their confidence in radical participation as the soundest approach to understanding spiritual phenomena. These anthropologists inadvertently find themselves faced with the...
Ethos
March 2020
Tony V Pham, Rishav Koirala, Brandon A Kohrt
To explore the relationship between traditional healers and conventional psychotherapy, we conducted a combined ethnographic study and structured observational rating of healers in the middle hill region of central Nepal. We conducted in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations of healing with 84 participants comprising 29 traditional healers and 55 other community members. Overall, our...
Ethos
December 1, 2018
Etzel Cardeña, Yvonne Schaffler
14 citations
In this paper we present a multidisciplinary, developmental analysis of a Dominican Republic Vodou servidor ("Marcos"), from childhood to early adulthood, integrating ethnographic observation, field documentation, and anthropological analysis, with relevant constructs from developmental, personality, and clinical psychology. Marcos transitioned from a child with many problems to a young adult...
Ethos
September 1, 2018
Rebecca A. Seligman
18 citations
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....
Ethos
March 1, 2018
Nicholas J. Long
8 citations
Abstract From relative obscurity in the 1990s, hypnotherapy has become a major industry in contemporary Indonesia. This article examines its tremendous surge in popularity, and the subsequent trajectories of its vernacularization. It shows the hypnosis boom to have been underpinned by the introduction of a distinctive “30% theory, 70% practice” seminar format, structured in such a way as to...
Ethos
June 1, 2017
Douglas W. Hollan
4 citations
Abstract In this article, I use the study of selfscape dreams to discuss contagion‐like processes not as unique or extraordinary phenomena per se, but rather as a particular kind of social influence more broadly conceived. In particular, I argue that dream consciousness gives us clues about how social influence (and contagion) actually works: partially, incrementally, in a “condensed” way,...
Ethos
September 1, 2015
Nofit Itzhak
20 citations
AbstractAnthropological accounts of healing tend to draw, either explicitly or implicitly, on the notion of “symbolic” healing initially developed in Lévi‐Strauss's seminal article, “The Effectiveness of Symbols.” Within this framework, therapeutic efficacy is understood as the result of a transformation of meaning or the manipulation of symbols. This article seeks to challenge and refine this...
Ethos
August 4, 2010
Rebecca A. Seligman
74 citations
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...
Ethos
September 1, 2008
Joseph D. Calabrese
51 citations
AbstractEuro‐American theories of psychotherapeutic intervention focus on therapist behavior or the therapeutic relationship, conceived in dyadic terms. The cultural prototype is individualistic and rationalistic: a one‐to‐one conversation in which the patient discloses and discusses innermost feelings in regular office visits. This may be appropriate for modern Euro‐Americans. However,...
Ethos
June 1, 2008
Emma Cohen, Justin 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...
Ethos
December 1, 1984
Colleen Ward
42 citations
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