Anthropology of Consciousness
February 12, 2021
Arne Harms
7 citations
Existing research shows a positive link between psychedelics and feeling more connected to nature, but the role of specific experiences is not well understood. This paper examines neoshamanic ayahuasca ceremonies in Europe, analyzing how specialists and participants talk about nature during rituals. The author argues that the ritual framings create fertile ground for affective ties to nature to emerge through substance-induced experiences. Even when participants prioritize individual healing or curiosity, environmentalism appears to be anchored by the proceedings themselves. The paper opens up analysis of ceremonial substance use as a contact zone where coherence is produced intersubjectively.
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2016
Christina Callicott
7 citations
Ayahuasca, a traditional Amazonian brew, significantly enhances spiritual experiences for 75% of participants in a study with 200 individuals. The findings reveal that those who consumed ayahuasca reported increased feelings of connection to nature and improved mental well-being. This brew's historical context intertwines with ecology and sociology, highlighting its role in cultural practices. Additionally, the exploration of ayahuasca intersects with anthropology and media studies, showcasing its impact on modern perceptions and interactions within the geographies of human-animal relationships in the Amazon rainforest.
Anthropology of Consciousness
June 1, 1998
Douglas Price‐williams
7 citations
This collection of essays explores the intersections of culture, symbol, and consciousness in anthropology, arguing for a more expansive and reflexive approach to the discipline. The author examines topics such as shamanism, myth, and the role of the anthropologist, advocating for an anthropology that engages with the symbolic and experiential dimensions of human life. The essays critique conventional boundaries and propose new ways of understanding cultural phenomena through the lens of consciousness and symbolic meaning.
Anthropology of Consciousness
August 7, 2023
C. Laughlin
6 citations
Consciousness and the brain can be modeled as intelligent complex adaptive systems (ICAS) that consume metabolic energy, share information, and adapt to their environments. Evolution of such systems produces emergent properties, including advanced brains. Two key processes integrate experience and knowledge: the effort after meaning and the effort after truth, mediated by direct sensory input and higher cognitive modeling. Viewing consciousness as an ICAS has significant implications for how anthropology understands culture.
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2016
Carlos Teodoro José Hugueney Irigaray, Pierre Girard, Maíra Irigaray et al.
6 citations
The current environmental crisis can be understood as a civilizational crisis. Alternatives for human transcendence are identified in the Inca civilization to address this malaise. The multicultural use of Hoasca (Ayahuasca) in Amazonian countries, particularly by the Beneficent Spiritist Center União do Vegetal (UDV) in a religious context, may help reconstruct 'buen vivir' (sumak kawsay, or complete wellness), a principle of pre-Columbian civilizations. The State now confronts constitutional principles of buen vivir, religious freedom, and cultural heritage protection. The implications of the crisis and ways to overcome it are approached from deep ecology and the doctrinal vision of the UDV.
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 2, 2016
Donald Pollock
6 citations
Among the Kulina Indians of western Brazil, intoxication with alcohol, tobacco, and ayahuasca serves as a means of semiotically appropriating the identities of cosmological others—animal spirits, creator beings, other indigenous groups, and Brazilians. Embodying practices like song and physical movement amplify the experience of becoming an 'alter,' a transformation enabled by the altered states of consciousness that intoxicants produce.
Anthropology of Consciousness
June 1, 1999
Grant J. Rich
6 citations
Erika Bourguignon, a leading figure in the anthropology of consciousness, discusses her decades-long career studying possession, altered states of consciousness, religion, psychological anthropology, and shamanism. Her fieldwork in Haiti and comparative work with Lenora Greenbaum established her as a preeminent psychological anthropologist and the premier anthropological authority on trance, possession, and altered states of consciousness. Melford Spiro describes her as resisting postmodernist and interpretivist trends in the field.
Anthropology of Consciousness
July 1, 1992
Charles D. Laughlin
6 citations
This paper argues that Husserl's transcendental phenomenology has a systematic bias favoring intuition of essences of meaning over intuition of essences of sensation, a bias rooted in his mind-body dualism. It proposes a neurophenomenology from a biogenetic structural perspective that merges knowledge of essences from contemplation with knowledge of experience from neuroanthropology. The author describes the sensorium and the constituent element of perception, the dot, hypothesizing that experience arises from dialogue between prefrontal cortical processes and sensorial processes, with experience constituted within a field of dots arising and dissolving in temporal frames. Husserl's view of time phenomenology is deemed essentially correct and compatible with neurophysiology, modern science, and religious traditions encountered by ethnographers.
Anthropology of Consciousness
April 20, 2025
Joshua Falcon
5 citations
Anthropologists have studied psychedelic drug use across cultures for over a century, but this literature has never been compiled. A survey of ethnographic research on classic psychedelics in the Global North reveals a robust subfield—the anthropology of psychedelics—that lacks diversity, focusing predominantly on Indigenous use or Indigenous–Global North encounters. There is a gap regarding widespread psychedelic use in urban Global North contexts. As scientific research on therapeutic psychedelics grows, cultural analyses of the extra-pharmacological dimensions of psychedelic experiences and effects are increasingly needed.
Anthropology of Consciousness
November 8, 2023
Christine S. Vanpool, Laura Lee, Paul Robear et al.
5 citations
Tobacco intoxication and a specific ritual posture, the Tennessee Diviner (TD) posture, combined with a rapidly beating drum or rattle, were used by Casas Grandes Medio period (AD 1200–1450) shamans in the North American Southwest to reliably produce trance experiences of soul flight, transformation, and divination. A conceptual model proposes that trance experiences emerge from the interaction of human minds with entheogens, cultural expectations, physiological states, postures, and sound. Pairing tobacco with the TD posture and rhythmic drumming likely reinforced culturally desired trance states. This mutually reinforcing practice may have been part of tobacco-based shamanism in other New World cultures, and the model can be applied to understand trance induction and resulting cosmological frameworks in other cultures.
Anthropology of Consciousness
February 10, 2021
Christian Stokke
5 citations
A Rastafari perspective on consciousness development, symbolized by the animals Anancy, lion, and lamb, is compared to established developmental stage theories from psychology and the psychology of religion. The analysis draws on dialogues from an online Rastafari community with a global reach, run by a group based in Trinidad, whose members align with the "spiritual, but not religious" trend. The paper interprets this material through the lens of Rastafari theorist Dennis Forsythe, relating the Rastafari stages to preconventional, traditional, modern, pluralist, and integral stages described by theorists such as Maslow, Kohlberg, Fowler, Gilligan, and Wilber.
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 7, 2024
Sidsel Marie
4 citations
Psychedelic integration in Denmark involves a dual typology of narrative and experiential-somatic processes through which users weave understandings and modes of being from acute psychedelic experiences into their everyday existence, transforming their experiential orientation over time. Based on ethnographic fieldwork from November 2020 to June 2021, the article charts the lived experiences and practices of integration among Danish psychedelic users, arguing that integration is a processual self-transformation rather than a single event.
Anthropology of Consciousness
February 27, 2023
Christian Frenopoulo
4 citations
The articles in this issue present a paradox: consciousness is formed socially and is fluid and malleable, yet participants report strong feelings of relief when unburdened of certain components, suggesting intrinsic boundaries. Cathartic purging—vomiting, crying—provides emotional relief and mental clarity, linking consciousness to the body. A phenomenological approach reveals how participants experience modulations of consciousness, but risks treating the embodied experience as an ontological fact. Consciousness develops intersubjectively, through interactions with others, including disembodied beings. The authors suggest consciousness may be a property of bodies emerging in interactions, not a given precondition. Intentionality may be a trained effect of interactions rather than a spontaneous introjection. The key insight is to decenter the ego-centric focus on individual selves as seats of awareness.
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2012
Bethe Hagens, Steven Lansky
4 citations
A prolonged 10-day dieta in the remote Peruvian Amazon, involving regular ayahuasca and other medicinal plant rituals, builds community through shared pre-dieta preparations, daily rituals, and post-ceremony practices. Participants bond with the shaman, local support community, and plant harvesters, fostering a spiritual community of love and trust that extends to people, plants, and the earth. The text describes how communal elements like tambo housing, meals, hygiene, music, and etiquette contribute to this process, aligning with traditional indigenous goals of creating an interconnected spiritual practice community.
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2010
Beatriz Caiuby Labate
4 citations
A recent international congress in the Peruvian Amazon brought together 218 researchers, indigenous representatives, and religious leaders from 22 countries to discuss the globalization and biomedicalization of indigenous medical practices, particularly ayahuasca-based therapy and religion. The event featured scientific discussions, political and ethical debates, and nonacademic sessions including Inca chiropractics and ayahuasca ceremonies. Tragic events in nearby Bagua, Peru, lent urgency to the congress's focus on indigenous cultural heritage. The author interviewed key attendees and reports on several controversies in the field of traditional medicine and ayahuasca.
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2008
Boris H. J. M. Brummans
4 citations
An autoethnographic essay reflects on brief personal experiences of field research with Tibetan Buddhist monks in Ladakh, India, examining how their monastery functions as a total institution. The author analyzes these experiences through the lens of dual and nondual mind, as conceptualized by Henry Vyner, to develop preliminary insights into the constitution of a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. The essay explores the relationship between these two modes of consciousness in shaping monastic life.
Anthropology of Consciousness
November 10, 2024
Juan Scuro, Ismael Apud, Víctor T. Pérez Martínez
3 citations
Three former patients with substance use disorders recovered after participating in ayahuasca rituals at a neo-shamanic center in Uruguay, run by a psychologist trained in the Peruvian vegetalismo tradition. In-depth interviews collected their narratives, analyzed from a medical anthropology perspective focusing on biographical, substance use, spiritual, and entheogenic trajectories. The impact of the rituals is attributed not only to ayahuasca's psychedelic properties but to its role as a psychotherapeutic tool embedded in a social, cultural, and spiritual setting designed to treat substance use disorders.
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2022
3 citations
The paper argues that clinical psychedelic medicine today reproduces modern colonial whiteness, drawing on Elizabeth Povinelli's theory of late liberalism. It calls for placing contemporary plant medicine within broader discussions in cultural anthropology about political ontology and decoloniality, rather than treating psychedelic studies as a segregated academic area. By reinterpreting whiteness through the history of the psychedelic counterculture as a form of complex trauma, the work suggests new implications for decolonial praxis.
Anthropology of Consciousness
February 2, 2022
Nicole Torres
3 citations
The COVID-19 pandemic can serve as a 'great teacher,' offering opportunities for learning in anthropological studies of consciousness. The author urges scholars and practitioners to use the pandemic as a chance to practice a 'decolonial praxis'—a tool for liberation and healing.
Anthropology of Consciousness
December 1, 1999
Andrei Vinogradov
3 citations
Altai shamanism declined in the 20th century under pressure from Old Believers, the Orthodox Church, Burkhanism (emerging in 1904), and Soviet repression. Based on the author's experiences living in Gorny Altai in 1988 and 1989, the paper surveys these historical influences and describes a subsequent revival of shamanic beliefs and practices in a neo-shamanistic form. Several factors that facilitated this regeneration are identified and discussed, including both internal community dynamics and external influences.
Anthropology of Consciousness
January 12, 2025
Federico Divino
2 citations
Anthropology must make consciousness a central focus to fully understand human experience. The field has evolved from positivist roots through phenomenological and ontological turns, yet still struggles with dualistic thinking, especially the separation of self and other. The author's ethnographic work on contemplative practices such as Buddhist meditation and mindfulness shows how this bias persists even in studies of meditation. Drawing on Buddhist philosophy, the article proposes 'mindful ethnography' as a way to overcome dualism. Consciousness is presented as a fundamental concern that can reshape anthropological inquiry and offer a more nuanced understanding of humanity.
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 13, 2023
El‐sayed El‐aswad
2 citations
In Egyptian Muslim communities around Tanta, rituals of zikr (remembrance of God) and zār (spirit exorcism) transform participants' consciousness through embodied encounters with an invisible Other, whether benevolent or malevolent. The paper compares how the majzūb (those mystically attracted to God) and the malbūs (those possessed by spirits) experience altered states of mind during these rituals. Each ritual shapes participants' perception of reality, blending psychic and emotional experiences with divine or non-divine encounters. The study argues that the image of the invisible Other, made visible through ritual performance, directly impacts the state of consciousness in both urban and rural communities.
Anthropology of Consciousness
July 8, 2022
Bruno Ramos Gomes, Luis Fernando Tofoli
2 citations
Ibogaine, a non-typical psychedelic derived from the African plant Tabernanthe iboga, is used in four Brazilian addiction treatment clinics. Qualitative interviews with professionals and patients reveal variation in patient screening, preparation, ibogaine dosing, and post-treatment care. These practices are shaped by three contexts: the addiction treatment clinic market, Brazilian urban religious ayahuasca use, and the medical ibogaine protocol developed by Howard Lotsof. The study describes how ibogaine is understood and applied for addiction and depression treatment, highlighting contextual influences on treatment approaches.
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 1991
Stanley Krippner
2 citations
Shamans' anomalous experiences have been documented for centuries, but only recently have they been studied with rigorous methods. Controlled observations and experimental studies are necessary to determine whether these experiences are truly anomalous, as interviews and informal reports alone are insufficient. The text provides examples of such research and offers recommendations for future investigations.
Anthropology of Consciousness
August 27, 2025
Lisa L. Gezon, K. J. Bartlett
1 citation
Psychedelic experiences helped some members of a Southeastern U.S. integration group resolve religious conflicts, including estrangement from religion or adverse religious associations, while nearly all reported a greater sense of spiritual connection. Challenges included perceived or actual religious condemnation of psychedelics, the absence of sought-after experiences, and difficulties interpreting ineffable occurrences. The findings reinforce the need for attention to spirituality when addressing psychedelic use and mental health, arguing that doing so reduces harm and optimizes benefits.