ISSN 0011-3204
5 papers in the library · 65 citations · publishing 2011-2026
Current Anthropology September 1, 2026 Nurit Stadler
This article inquires how specific bodily movements, such as kneeling, crawling, bowing, and other forms of approach-oriented, low-posture locomotion, produce religious experiences and spatial public manifestations of the sacred. To address this question, I present and theorize kinetic rituals: the directional and counted sequences of embodied movement elicited by site-specific architectural...
Current Anthropology June 16, 2026 Joe Ellis
This paper examines the relationship between women in the ger districts of Ulaanbaatar who visit and become shamans and the violence they experience. It shows that in many cases, women’s engagement with shamanism arises in the context of physical violence from their husband or male kin. Yet this paper also resists functionalist explanations that render violence as the sole cause of shamanic...
Current Anthropology June 29, 2022 Luke Alexander Heslop 1 citation
This paper is oriented around moments of crises and kinship ambivalence within the home of a merchant family on the outskirts of a small town in central Sri Lanka. The problems explored play out in two registers. The first outlines relations between men that become problematic and result in disharmony at home and at work, while the second deals with a situation in which the house itself becomes...
Current Anthropology April 1, 2021 Alex K. Gearin, Óscar Calavia Sáez 15 citations
Notions of visualism and individualism have long been employed to elucidate the contours of Western subjectivity. It is therefore not surprising to find the indigenous Amazonian shamanic brew ayahuasca being adopted by Australian neoshamanic practitioners as a medicine that provides personalized visions delivering unambiguous moral import. While this adoption represents a radically new style of...
Current Anthropology August 1, 2011 Lauren G. Leve 49 citations
“Identity” is a key term for anthropological analysis today. This paper explores the challenge posed by modernist Buddhists in Nepal who participated in identity politics while grounding their claims to identity-based rights in belonging to a religious community defined by the doctrine that there is no such thing as a “self” in the conventional sense. Examining the sharp proliferation of...