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Erika Bourguignon: A Portrait of the Anthropology of Consciousness
Author(s) -
Rich Grant Jewell
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
anthropology of consciousness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 14
eISSN - 1556-3537
pISSN - 1053-4202
DOI - 10.1525/ac.1999.10.2-3.50
Subject(s) - consciousness , possession (linguistics) , shamanism , trance , ethos , anthropology , portrait , sociology , religious experience , psychoanalysis , history , religious studies , psychology , philosophy , art history , theology , epistemology , linguistics
This is an interview with Erika Bourguignon, who has been a presence in the anthropology of consciousness for decades. Her work has examined possession, altered states of consciousness, religion, psychological anthropology, and shamanism. Her own fieldwork in Haiti has been augmented by book‐length comparative work with Lenora Greenbaum as well. In a 1996 article in Ethos, Melford Spiro notes that Bourguignon is a scholar who has resisted the trends of "postmodernists and interpretivists" and he describes her as "a preeminent psychological anthropologist as well as the premier anthropological authority on trance, possession, and altered states of consciousness."