Being changed : the anthropology of extraordinary experience

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Being changed : the anthropology of extraordinary experience

edited by David E. Young and Jean-Guy Goulet

Broadview Press, 1994

  • : pbk

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

ISBN 9781551110325

Description

Anthropologists of recent generations have always expressed enormous sympathy with 'non-rational' modes of thought, with the 'supernatural' experiences of people around the world. What they have rarely in their scholarly writing admitted to doing is giving any credence to the 'irrational' themselves -- though such beliefs have long been common among those who have lived and worked for extended periods in cultures different from those that dominate Western society. Now, in a ground-breaking volume, leading anthropologists describe such experiences and analyze what can occur ""when one opens one's self to aspects of experience that previously have been ignored or repressed."" The ten contributions to the book include Edith Turner on 'A Visible Spirit Form in Zambia', Rab Wilkie on 'Ways of Approaching the Shaman's World', and Marie Francoise Guedon on 'Dene Ways and the Ethnographer's Culture'. The editors' introduction and conclusion extensively discuss the general issues involved. Being Changed is a book that directly challenges the rationalist bias in Western tradition by developing a new, 'experimental' approach to extraordinary experiences -- and a book that takes traditional cultures seriously in a way that anthropology has rarely done before. "
Volume

: pbk ISBN 9781551110400

Description

Anthropologists of recent generations have always expressed enormous sympathy with 'non-rational' modes of thought, with the 'supernatural' experiences of people around the world. What they have rarely in their scholarly writing admitted to doing is giving any credence to the 'irrational' themselves-though such beliefs have long been common among those who have lived and worked for extended periods in cultures different from those that dominate Western society. Now, in a ground-breaking volume, leading anthropologists describe such experiences and analyze what can occur "when one opens one's self to aspects of experience that previously have been ignored or repressed." The ten contributions to the book include Edith Turner on 'A Visible Spirit Form in Zambia', Rab Wilkie on 'Ways of Approaching the Shaman's World', and Marie Francoise Guedon on 'Dene Ways and the Ethnographer's Culture'. The editors' introduction and conclusion extensively discuss the general issues involved. Being Changed is a book that directly challenges the rationalist bias in Western tradition by developing a new, 'experimental' approach to extraordinary experiences-and a book that takes traditional cultures seriously in a way that anthropology has rarely done before.

Table of Contents

David E. Young and Jean-Guy Goulet: Introduction Part I: Extraordinary Experience and Fieldwork Jean-Guy Goulet: Dreams and Visions in Other Lifeworlds Marie Francoise Guedon: Dene Ways and the Ethnographer's Culture Edith Turner: A Visible Spirit Form in Zambia Part II: Modeling Extraordinary Experience Charles D. Laughlin, Jr.: Psychic Energy and Transpersonal Experience: A Biogenic Structural Account of the Tibetan Dumo Yoga Practice Rab Wilkie: Spirited Imagination: Ways of Approaching the Shaman's World David E. Young: Visitors in the Night: A Creative Energy Model of Spontaneous Visions Part III: Taking our Informants Seriously C. Roderick Wilson: Seeing They See Not Lise Swartz: Being Changed by Cross-Culteral Encounters Antonia Mills: Making a Scientific Investigation of Ethnographic Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation Part IV: Conclusion Yves Marton: The Experimental Approach to Anthropology and Castanda's Ambiguous Legacy Jean-Guy Goulet and David Young: Theoretical and Methodological Issues References Index

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