Conceptualizing spirit possession: Ethnographic and experimental evidence

Ethos

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 246-267

  Cohen, Emma ^a   Barrett, Justin L ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Afro Brazilian religion; Cognitive science of culture; Cultural transmission; Mind body dualism; Spirit possession

Indexed keywords

EID: 44449173706     PISSN: 00912131     EISSN: 15481352     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1352.2008.00013.x     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Al-Adawi, Samir H., Rodger G. Martin, Ahmed Al-Salmi, and Harith Ghassani 2001 Zar: Group Distress and Healing. Mental Health, Religion and Culture 4:47-61.
2. Atran, Scott 1990 Cognitive Foundations of Natural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3. Atran, Scott 1998 Folkbiology and the Anthropology of Science: Cognitive Universals and Cultural Particulars. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21(4): 547-609.
4. Barrett, Justin L. 2004 Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
5. Bartlett, Frederic 1932 Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. Behrend Heike, and Ute Luig, eds. 1999 Spirit Possession, Modernity and Power in Africa. Oxford: James Currey.
7. Bloom, Paul 2004 Descartes. New York: Basic Books.
8. Boddy, Janice P. 1989 Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
9. Boddy, Janice P. 1994 Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality. Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 407-434.
10. Bourguignon, Erika 1968 A Cross-Cultural Study of Dissociational States. Columbus: Research Foundation, Ohio State University.
11. Bourguignon, Erika 2004 Suffering and Healing, Subordination and Power: Women and Possession Trance. Ethos 32(4): 557-574.
12. Boyer, Pascal 2001 Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books.
13. Cohen, Emma 2007 The Mind Possessed: The Cognition of Spirit Possession in an Afro-Brazilian Religious Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press.
14. Cohen, Emma 2008 What is Spirit Possession? Defining, Comparing, and Explaining Two Possession Forms. Ethos 73(1): 101-126.
15. Cohen, Emma, and Justin Barrett In press When Minds Migrate: Conceptualizing Spirit Possession. Journal of Cognition and Culture.
16. Field, Margaret J. 1969 Spirit Possession in Ghana. In Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa. John Beattie and John Middleton, eds. Pp 3-13. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
17. Firth, Raymond. 1967 Tikopia Ritual and Belief. London: Allen and Unwin.
18. Frozer, James G. 1958[1890] The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. (Reprint, abridged ed.) New York: Macmillan.
19. Friedkin, William dir. 1993 The Exorcist. William Peter Blatty, Prod. and Screenplay. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video.
20. Gelman, Susan 2004 Psychological Essentialism in Children. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8(9): 404-409.
21. Herskovits, M.J. 1948 Man and His Works: The Science of Cultural Anthropology. New York: A. A. Knopf.
22. Hirschfeld, Lawrence A. 1996 Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture and the Child's Construction of Human Kinds. Cambricige, MA: MIT Press.
23. Hitchcock, John T., and Rex L. Jones, eds. 1976 Spirit Possession in the Nepal Himalayas. Warminster, England: Aris and Philips.
24. Keller, Mary 2002 The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
25. Kiev, Ariel. 1968 The Psychotherapeutic Value of Spirit-Possession in Haiti. In Trance and Possession States. Raymond Prince, ed. Pp 143-148. Montreal: R. M. Bucke Memorial Society.
26. Lambek, Michael 1981 Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
27. Lawson, E. Thomas and Robert N. McCauley. 2002 Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
28. Lewis, Ioan M. 1971 Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. Pelican Anthropology Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
29. Lum, Kenneth A. 2000 Praising His Name in the Dance. Spirit Possession in the Spiritual Baptist Faith and Orisha Work in Trinidad, West Indies. Sydney: Harwood Academic Publishers.
30. Maurizio, Lisa. 1995 Anthropology and Spirit Possession: A Reconsideration of the Pythia's Role of Delphi. Journal of Hellenic Studies 115: 69-86.
31. McCauley, Robert N. N.d. The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of Science. Unpublished MS, Department of Philosophy, Emory University.
32. Nelson, Cynthia 1971 Self, Spirit Possession and Worldview: An Illustration from Egypt. The International Journal of Social Psychiatry 17: 194-209.
33. Nourse, Jennifer 1996 The Voice of the Winds versus the Masters of Cure: Contested Notions of Spirit Possession among the Lauje of Sulawesi. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.) 2(3): 425-442.
34. Rosengren, Dan 2006 Transdimensional Relations: On Human-Spirit Interaction in the Amazon. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.) 12(4): 803-816.
35. Rosenthal, Judy 1998 Possession, Ecstasy, and Law in Ewe Voodoo. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
36. Rouget, Gilbert 1985 Music and Trance:A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possesion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
37. Saunders, Lucy Wood. 1977 Variants in Zar Experience in an Egyptian Village. In Case Studies in Spirit Possession. Vincent Crapanzano and Vivian Garrison, eds. Pp 177-191. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
38. Schömbacher, Elisabeth 1999 "A Daughter for Seven Minutes": The Therapeutic and Divine Discourses of Possession Mediumship in South India. In La Possesion en Asie du Sud: Parole, Corps, Territoire. Jackie Assayag and Gilles Tarabout, eds. Pp 33-60 [Collection Purusārtha 21] Paris: éEditions de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
39. Sharp, Lesley. 1996 The Possessed and the Dispossessed: Spirits, Identity, and Power in a Madagascar Migrant Town. Berkeley: University of California Press.
40. Slone, Jason 2004 Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't. New York: Oxford University Press.
41. Sperber, Dan 1996 Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell.
42. Stoller, Paul 1989 Fusion of the Worlds: An Ethnography of Possession among the Songhay of Niger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
43. Stoller, Paul 1995 Embodying Colonial Memories: Spirit Possession, Power, and the Hauka in West Africa. New York: Routledge.
44. Taussig, Michael T. 1987 Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
45. Taussig, Michael T. 1993 Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge.
46. Van de Port, Mattijs 2005 Circling Around the Really Real: Spirit Possession Ceremonies and the Search for Authenticity in Bahian Candomblé. Ethos 33(2):149-179.
47. Wafer, James W. 1991 The Taste of Blood: Spirit Possession in Brazilian Candomblé. Contemporary Ethnography Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
48. Whitehouse, Harvey 2004 Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Cognitive Science of Religion Series. Walnut Creek, CA:ALtaMira Press.