Mind Over Mind explores the phenomenon of spirit possession from both anthropological and psychological perspectives. Spirit possession is ritually important in many cultures from India to Brazil to Madagascar, but has tended to be narrowly regarded from modern American and European perspectives as a psychopathological problem of multiple personality disorder. This book proposes an integration of anthropological and psychological approaches, concluding with a new analytical framework for understanding spirit possession and resolving the controversy surrounding the "reality" of possession. The issues raised are thus essential to both the anthropology of religion and the psychology of altered states of consciousness. At the same time, Mind over Mind confronts the most challenging philosophical issues of human consciousness and human identity, which can not be properly formulated without the insights of social and cultural anthropology. At the most general level, this study argues for the unequivocal importance of an interdisciplinary approach to spirit possession and for the integral significance of anthropology for the other human sciences.
This innovative introduction to the anthropological study of religion challenges traditional categories and assumptions, arguing that too many of them reflect ethnocentric perspectives long discarded by contemporary anthropologists. The continued use of such terms as supernatural" and cult" inescapably communicates that what is under study is not as real or true as the beliefs of the observer. This conflict between the axioms of science and Western scholarship and those of the belief systems under study can be avoided with careful attention to terminology and underlying assumptions. Ordered Universes introduces and explores important anthropological issues, concerns, and findings about the institution of religion approached as a human cultural universal. Klass applies a non-ethnocentric perspective to each topic, relying on contemporary anthropological theories and using approaches deriving from other subdivisions of the discipline. Offering operational, non-judgmental definitions that avoid taking a position on whether the belief under study is true" and providing examples from ethnographic (and other) literature on religion, Klass explores values, beliefs, witchcraft, shamans, sacrifice, ghosts, revitalization, and many other concepts. In the final chapters, he considers the emergence of new religious movements and leaders and evaluates the continuing ideological conflict between proponents of scientistic, fundamentalist, and post-rationalist systems of thought.
From Field to Factory explores the impact of a modern factory on a Bengal agricultural village and the impact of the village's social and ideological systems on the factory. Morton Klass provides ethnographic data on life and work in both the village and factory and assesses theories of community, caste, village religion, and industrialization. This book will interest sociologists and anthropologists interested in South Asia, community structure, caste, village-level religion, and the anthropology of work. Previously published in 1978 by the Institute for the Study of Human Issues.
This book focuses on anthropological questions and methods, and is offered as a supplement to textbooks on the anthropology of religion. It is designed to help students collecting and interpreting their own fieldwork or archival data and relating their findings to the work of others.
In this collection of anthropological writings drawn from many different world areas, contemporary theoretical issues and conflicts in the anthropological study of religion are explored and illustrated. The editors present these anthropological writings on religion within a larger cultural matrix by drawing upon literature exhibiting an interdisciplinary as well as global approach.The book examines religion within social, political, and historical contexts to confront theoretical and methodological questions that apply across time and borders. How do belief systems respond to conquest and the imposition of foreign values, beliefs, and practices? What happens to religion when the colonial rulers depart? What are the relationships between gender, sexuality, and religious rules and restrictions? How is gender constructed and maintained within ideological systems? How do the beliefs and practices underlying possession and trance deal with illness and death, and how do they respond to science and other belief systems? Is religion a tool or weapon of the state—or an enemy of the people? And how does religion, often erroneously perceived as changeless and constant, respond to the pressures and technologies of this rapidly changing world? Across the Boundaries of Belief examines these issues and many others.The readings derive from interdisciplinary as well as global literature, and the titles of the sections reflect the contexts within which religion is explored and portrayed in this collection: “Colonialism and the Post-Colonial Legacy,” “Gender and Sexuality,” “The Healing Touch and Altered States,” “Religion and the State,” and “Changes and Continuities.” The book will help students and general readers to perceive religion as a pan-human institution embedded in social structures, political systems, and historical contexts.
In this collection of anthropological writings drawn from many different world areas, contemporary theoretical issues and conflicts in the anthropological study of religion are explored and illustrated. The editors present these anthropological writings on religion within a larger cultural matrix by drawing upon literature exhibiting an interdisciplinary as well as global approach.The book examines religion within social, political, and historical contexts to confront theoretical and methodological questions that apply across time and borders. How do belief systems respond to conquest and the imposition of foreign values, beliefs, and practices? What happens to religion when the colonial rulers depart? What are the relationships between gender, sexuality, and religious rules and restrictions? How is gender constructed and maintained within ideological systems? How do the beliefs and practices underlying possession and trance deal with illness and death, and how do they respond to science and other belief systems? Is religion a tool or weapon of the state'or an enemy of the people? And how does religion, often erroneously perceived as changeless and constant, respond to the pressures and technologies of this rapidly changing world? Across the Boundaries of Belief examines these issues and many others.The readings derive from interdisciplinary as well as global literature, and the titles of the sections reflect the contexts within which religion is explored and portrayed in this collection: ?Colonialism and the Post-Colonial Legacy,? ?Gender and Sexuality,? ?The Healing Touch and Altered States,? ?Religion and the State,? and ?Changes and Continuities.' The book will help students and general readers to perceive religion as a pan-human institution embedded in social structures, political systems, and historical contexts.
Mind Over Mind explores the phenomenon of spirit possession from both anthropological and psychological perspectives. Spirit possession is ritually important in many cultures from India to Brazil to Madagascar, but has tended to be narrowly regarded from modern American and European perspectives as a psychopathological problem of multiple personality disorder. This book proposes an integration of anthropological and psychological approaches, concluding with a new analytical framework for understanding spirit possession and resolving the controversy surrounding the "reality" of possession. The issues raised are thus essential to both the anthropology of religion and the psychology of altered states of consciousness. At the same time, Mind over Mind confronts the most challenging philosophical issues of human consciousness and human identity, which can not be properly formulated without the insights of social and cultural anthropology. At the most general level, this study argues for the unequivocal importance of an interdisciplinary approach to spirit possession and for the integral significance of anthropology for the other human sciences.
This innovative introduction to the anthropological study of religion challenges traditional categories and assumptions, arguing that too many of them reflect ethnocentric perspectives long discarded by contemporary anthropologists. The continued use of such terms as supernatural" and cult" inescapably communicates that what is under study is not as real or true as the beliefs of the observer. This conflict between the axioms of science and Western scholarship and those of the belief systems under study can be avoided with careful attention to terminology and underlying assumptions. Ordered Universes introduces and explores important anthropological issues, concerns, and findings about the institution of religion approached as a human cultural universal. Klass applies a non-ethnocentric perspective to each topic, relying on contemporary anthropological theories and using approaches deriving from other subdivisions of the discipline. Offering operational, non-judgmental definitions that avoid taking a position on whether the belief under study is true" and providing examples from ethnographic (and other) literature on religion, Klass explores values, beliefs, witchcraft, shamans, sacrifice, ghosts, revitalization, and many other concepts. In the final chapters, he considers the emergence of new religious movements and leaders and evaluates the continuing ideological conflict between proponents of scientistic, fundamentalist, and post-rationalist systems of thought.
From Field to Factory explores the impact of a modern factory on a Bengal agricultural village and the impact of the village's social and ideological systems on the factory. Morton Klass provides ethnographic data on life and work in both the village and factory and assesses theories of community, caste, village religion, and industrialization. This book will interest sociologists and anthropologists interested in South Asia, community structure, caste, village-level religion, and the anthropology of work. Previously published in 1978 by the Institute for the Study of Human Issues.
This book focuses on anthropological questions and methods, and is offered as a supplement to textbooks on the anthropology of religion. It is designed to help students collecting and interpreting their own fieldwork or archival data and relating their findings to the work of others.
Biochemical Approaches to Aging covers the significant research studies on the biochemical aspects of aging. This book is composed of 11 chapters that consider several factors that affect cellular aging. The opening chapters present some model systems for the study of aging using different species, including mammals, nematodes, insects, and protozoa. The succeeding chapters deal with the role of free radical formation, lipid peroxidation, membranes, mitochondria, microsomes, and lysosomes in aging. These topics are followed by discussions of the DNA and RNA changes during aging; the mechanism of protein metabolism; and the alternation of proteins and enzymes. The concluding chapters examine the effect of aging on hormonal interaction and the biochemical effects of nutrition in aging. This book will prove useful to gerontologists, cell and molecular biologists, and researchers.
Effects on the Eyes and Visual System from Chemicals, Drugs, Metals and Minerals, Plants, Toxins and Venoms; also Systemic Side Effects from Eye Medications (4th Ed.)
Effects on the Eyes and Visual System from Chemicals, Drugs, Metals and Minerals, Plants, Toxins and Venoms; also Systemic Side Effects from Eye Medications (4th Ed.)
The purpose of this book is to present a synopsis of what is known about substances that have toxic properties injurious to the eyes, disturbing to vision, or affecting eyes in other unwanted ways. The coverage is truly comprehensive, encompassing local and systemic, acute and chronic, human and veterinary toxicology of the eye. The text summarizes mechanisms of injury, treatments, and other relevant knowledge for more than 3000 alphabetized substances - essentially all those on which public information is available. Also described are systemic side effects of ophthalmologic drugs, treatment of chemical burns of the eyes, and testing methods and species specificity for toxic effects on the eyes. Facilitating access to this prodigious amount of information is a large index that cross-references substances and effects, including numerous synonyms. This monumental work is a truly definitive text and a highly useful reference book that should be available to every ophthalmologist, emergency room, and medical library.
Having set global warming in irreversible motion, we are facing the possibility of ecological catastrophe. But the environmental emergency is also a crisis for our philosophical habits of thought, confronting us with a problem that seems to defy not only our control but also our understanding. Global warming is perhaps the most dramatic example of what Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects”—entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a thing is in the first place. In this book, Morton explains what hyperobjects are and their impact on how we think, how we coexist with one another and with nonhumans, and how we experience our politics, ethics, and art. Moving fluidly between philosophy, science, literature, visual and conceptual art, and popular culture, the book argues that hyperobjects show that the end of the world has already occurred in the sense that concepts such as world, nature, and even environment are no longer a meaningful horizon against which human events take place. Instead of inhabiting a world, we find ourselves inside a number of hyperobjects, such as climate, nuclear weapons, evolution, or relativity. Such objects put unbearable strains on our normal ways of reasoning. Insisting that we have to reinvent how we think to even begin to comprehend the world we now live in, Hyperobjects takes the first steps, outlining a genuinely postmodern ecological approach to thought and action.
Interest in solid waste disposal has been growing since the early 1960s, when researchers emphasized the potential for solid waste to harbor pathogenic microorganisms. Since then, society has become more interested in the environmental impacts of solid waste treatment and disposal, and how biological processes are used to minimize these impacts. This new text provides a basic understanding of the unique microbial ecosystems associated with the decomposition of municipal solid waste (MSW). It addresses the challenges of sampling and assaying microbial activities in MSW and describes preferred methods. The decomposition of MSW under anaerobic conditions in landfills and digestors is described, as well as under aerobioconditions during composting. The Microbiology of Solid Wastes discusses the need to consider MSW as an integrated system of collection, recycling, treatment, and disposal. A better understanding of solid waste microbiology will contribute to safe and economical solid waste management. Microbiologists, environmental engineers, and solid waste managers will all find this a useful reference.
This study draws on a wide range of texts — early Irish, pre-modern Scottish Gaelic, early Welsh, Early Norse, Old English —to illustrate the role of the poet as a tool of power, as seer, and as ceremonial figure.
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