Neuroethnology as a tool to comprehend the connections of the Self with the Surrounding: A Conceptual Enquiry with Hermeneutic Analysis.
Prakash Chandra Panda, Soumya Tripathy, Pratyush Mishra, B Jagadish, Sanjeeta Nayak, Kartika Chandra Parida
American journal of forensic psychology October 12, 2026 DOI: 10.61336/ajfp/2026-01-68 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that neuroethnology, a hermeneutic framework, can clarify how the self differentiates from yet remains interconnected with its surroundings. The authors propose that ethnocultural meanings become self-specific through embodiment and ethnocognition, shaping attention, appraisal, and action, and introduce "chronopersonalisation" to describe the temporal localization of behavioural ecology into adaptable self-organization. |
Abstract
Background: The relationship between the self and its surroundings is often conceptualised as a distinction between individuals and the external world.
Objective: This study employs hermeneutic analysis to explore neuroethnology and introduce the term as a means of understanding how the self-differentiates from its surroundings while remaining interconnected.
Methods: A modified Delphi-informed consensus process, conducted over seven sessions, identified six analytical domains. From 471 pooled records, 78 sources were selected for iterative thematic analysis and hermeneutic synthesis.
Findings: The analysis differentiates between culture and ethnoculture, transmission and incorporation, embeddedness and embodiment, and biological embedding and inherited cognition. Ethnoculturally available meanings and practices become self-specific through embodiment and ethnocognition, which organise attention, appraisal, and actions. Recurrent neurocognitive and somatocognitive patterns, understood as plastic rather than fixed, may confer pre-reflective self-relevance prior to the emergence of an explicit self-concept. The term “chronopersonalisation” is introduced to describe the progressive temporal localisation of behavioural ecology into characteristic yet adaptable self-organisation. Reflexivity is considered both a method and a subject, enabling the organization derived from surroundings to be examined and reorganized. Indic accounts of lineage and self-enquiry are acknowledged as epistemic antecedents of this mode of enquiry.
Conclusion: Neuroethnology complements neuroanthropology, cultural neuroscience, and neurophenomenology by focusing on the evolving self–surrounding relationship as one of its units of enquiry.