Being Changed by Cross-cultural Encounters: Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience - Softcover

David E. Young

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1551110407 ISBN 13: 9781551110400

Publisher: Broadview Press Ltd ,Canada, 1994

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

Very interesting. It will allow me to teach Cultural Anthropology with a difference! --Charles Lawrence, Seattle University

a challenging and thought-provoking book. --Jennifer S. H. Brown, University of Winnipeg

an important book, ground-breaking -- and overdue. --Phillip Stevens Jr., State University of New York, Buffalo

About the Author:

David E. Young (Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alberta), and Jean-Guy Goulet (Professor of Anthropology at the University of Calgary), have both written widely on the native peoples of North America. Young's most recent book is Cry of the Eagle: Encounters with a Cree Healer (University of Toronto Press, 1990).

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadview Press Ltd ,Canada
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1551110407
• ISBN 13: 9781551110400
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300
• Editor: David E. Young, Jean-Guy A. Goulet