ISSN 2049-1115
6 papers in the library · 22 citations · publishing 2014-2023
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory September 1, 2023 Quincy Amoah
The Karimojong prophet Apaokere was called by Divinity in a dream to sacrifice. In this vision, Divinity instructed him to kill a prized dark ox for the women of his household to avoid the onset of “nothingness.” This two-part essay (the second part to appear in the following issue of Hau) theorizes that the sacrifice of the “Dark One” was a unique iconic poem and that, in general, prime...
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory March 1, 2022 David Dupuis 15 citations
Although so-called “psychedelic” substances have recently experienced a revival of interest in their therapeutic properties, the underpinnings of their effectiveness remain poorly understood. Based on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in a Peruvian Amazon clinic, this article proposes an anthropological approach to their therapeutic efficacy in the treatment of addiction. Using an...
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory March 1, 2022 Christian Tym 5 citations
The critique of belief as an analytical tool in anthropology has overshadowed belief as an ethnographic reality. This article short-circuits these debates over the politics of belief by elaborating ethnographically the indigenous use of the concept—literally the Spanish “creer” and “creencia”—in Shuar territory in post-conversion Amazonia. It shows that contemporary Shuar “belief” supersedes...
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory September 1, 2021 N. Langlitz 2 citations
Fieldwork in philosophy amounts to a second-order philosophical anthropology. It examines contemporary forms of the human by attending to lower-level concepts and practices. It departs from Michel Foucault’s gray and meticulous approach to the history of the present, which understands the transformation of high-level organizing concepts such as “Man” or “the subject” through an inquiry into...
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory September 1, 2019 Michael L. Cepek
In this essay, I analyze the production of value in the shamanic complex of the indigenous Cofán people of eastern Ecuador. While acknowledging the ethical nature of human existence and the generative power of human action, I describe the shaman as a paradoxical figure with regard to the efforts that produce him and the criteria that orient his actions. The shaman occupies a central social...
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory April 1, 2014 J. Fontein
This is a personal account of a recent criminal trial in the United Kingdom that the author was involved in as an expert witness, involving a young Zimbabwean woman who attacked her mother with a knife, when she (as she, her mother, and relatives claimed) was possessed by an evil spirit as the result of another family member’s witchcraft. Evidence for her abnormal state of consciousness was...