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ethnography, fiction, and the meanings of the past in Brittany
Author(s) -
BADONE ELLEN
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1991.18.3.02a00060
Subject(s) - ethnography , reflexivity , interpretation (philosophy) , parallels , anthropology , misfortune , construct (python library) , sociology , prehistory , history , reinterpretation , shamanism , aesthetics , literature , philosophy , linguistics , archaeology , narrative , art , mechanical engineering , computer science , engineering , programming language
Adopting a reflexive approach, this article interprets a recently created healing ritual in Brittany that integrates local 19th‐century notions about the curative powers of prehistoric monuments with diverse elements from non‐Breton sources. Parallels are noted between this New Age therapy and witchcraft, an older explanatory framework for illness and misfortune in Brittany. The therapeutic discourse associated with the ritual draws on the past and on exotic cultures to construct a meaningful cosmology. Therefore, this discourse—like the New Age movement as a whole—has much in common with anthropology, which, it is suggested, provides Western society with an ordered vision of the world. [ Brittany, New Age healing, witchcraft, interpretation of the past, anthropology as cosmology ]