The Anthropology of Altered States

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The Anthropology of Altered States
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Psychological Anthropology(Transpersonal
anthropology)

• relationship between altered states of
  consciousness and culture.
• transpersonal psychology altered states of
  consciousness (ASC) and transpersonal experience
• differs from mainstream transpersonal psychology
  cross-cultural
• role of culture in laying the foundations for, in
  evoking, in cultivating or thwarting, and in
  interpreting ASC
• fundamental to understanding the incidence and
  function of transpersonal experiences

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altered states of consciousness

• conditions in which sensations, perceptions,
  cognition, and emotions are altered
• characterized by changes in sensing, perceiving,
  thinking, feeling
• modify the relation of the individual to self,
  body, sense of identity, the environment of time,
  space, or other people
• induced by modifying sensory input
• directly by increasing or decreasing stimulation
  or alertness
• indirectly by affecting the pathways of the
  sensory input by somotopsychological factors

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Features of Altered States

• alterations in thinking
• disturbed sense of time
• loss of control
• changes in the expression of emotions
• changes in body image
• perceptual distortion
• changes in meaning and significance assigned to
  experiences or perceptions
• a sense of the ineffable
• feelings of rejuvenation
• hypersuggestiblity

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Some Types of Alerted States

• Trance
• shamanistic ecstasy
• prayer ecstasy
• sorcery
• "highway hypnosis"
• Hypnosis
• alcohol / drugs
• yoga / meditation
• dream states
• Culture bound syndromes

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Stimulation Consciousness

• a decrease form a presumed preexisting "normal"
  level of stimulation or activity
• highway hypnosis
• sensory deprivation produced either
  experimentally or as a result of solitary
  confinement
• involves an increase form a presumed preexisting
  "normal" level of stimulation or activity
• religious conversion
• healing trances in revivalistic settings
• "dance and music trance"
• battle fatigue
• hysterical conversion neuroses
• dissociational states
• mob contagion
• increase of alertness or mental involvement
• prolonged vigilance or sentry duty, watching a
  radar screen, fervent prayer
• decrease in alterness or mental activity
• relaxation of critical faculties in daydreaming,
  boredom, profound relaxation, mediumistic trance,
  meditation states

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Stimulation Consciousness

• somatopsychological factors
• drug-induced states
• states resulting from other changes in body
  chemistry

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Some Culture Bound Syndromes
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Cross-Cultural Observations Altered States

• diagnosis and healing
• divination and reading signs
• Dreaming and dreamworking
• Trance as evolutionary variable
• significance in human life derives from the
  symbolic transformation of experience and the
  capacity to share intrapsychic states.
• Unlike dreams, ASC derive from models based on
  pathological states
• serve as coping mechanisms for both the
  individual and the society and thus provide a
  basis for culture building.

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Power Self

• two forms of possession ritual and peripheral
• ritual is displayed in a ceremonial context and
  includes the social function of reinforcing
  cultural morality and established power.
• peripheral represents a more long-term state in
  which the individual believes that he is
  unwillingly possessed by intruding spirits and
  functions as an indirect form of social protest
• Ritual possession operates as a socially
  sanctioned psychological defense mechanism, while
  peripheral possession constitutes a pathological
  reaction to individual conflict.

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Alterations The State

• legal and illegal
• emphasis on the relationship between these
  alterations and the individual body, the social
  body, and the body politic
• Economies of alterations (political economy)
• motivations behind the development and global
  marketing of both legal and illegal alterations
• policy
• psychological normalcy
• demographics of legal and illegal use
• historical shifts in the legal/illegal
  distinction itself.

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Deviance Society

• Modes of action which do not conform to the norms
  or values held by most of the members of a group
  or society.
• What is regarded as 'deviant' is as widely
  variable as the norms and values that distinguish
  different cultures and subcultures from one
  another.
• Many forms of behaviour which are highly esteemed
  in one context, or by one group, are regarded
  negatively by others.

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Abnormals

• abnormal types in the social structure are
  culturally selected by all groups from every part
  of the world
• different degrees of ease with which abnormals
  function per each culture
• many abnormals function with ease and even honor
  without danger to the society

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Deviance and Conformity

• Social constructions
• idealized conduct is most clearly seen in
  marginalized people
• deviance forces them into "discredited" or
  "discreditable" groups, based on the nature of
  their stigma
• deviance the existence of a stigma

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Normality/abnormality

• Multi-dimensional concepts
• Represents a range of possible perceptions
• Of what is normal and not normal
• Whether it is controlled or not by the norms of
  society
• Times places people can behave in an abnormal
  way
• Most cultures disapprove of forms of public
  behavior that are obviously not being controlled

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Zones of social behavior
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Zones of social behavior

• Not static, fluid categories, spectrum of
  possibilities
• Change with time circumstance
• Normal in one group abnormal in another
• Controlled normality (A)
• Uncontrolled normality (D)
• Controlled abnormality (B)
• Uncontrolled abnormality (C)

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Zones of social behavior

• A, D, B it is assumed that the individual is at
  least aware of what the social norms are
• Whether they conform or not
• Substance use
• Traversing the categories of bad and mad
• Criminal Intoxication
• Temporary madness
• Altered Statesthe cultural and social politics
  of subjectivity

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The Anthropology of the Senses

• Comparison relativism
• diverse sensory SYMBOLISM and experience
• study of the senses out of the realm of natural
  history into that of social history
• does not deny the natural history of the senses
  -- the general process of sensorial experience
  and its natural processes
• able to break the mould of our own sensory bias
  experience radically different ways of making
  sense of the world

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The Anthropology of the Senses

• the particular the general
• sensory journeys through time and space
• dominant sensory medium of symbolic orientation
  can vary widely -- can only be understood in the
  context of a particular society not through
  generalized external sensory paradigms
• Tzotzil of Mexico heat
• Ongee of Little Andaman Islands smell
• Desana of Columbia -- color multi sensory,
  chromatic energy flows
• dominant sensory symbolic order of west -- seeing
  hearing
• one kind of visuality (to picture) one kind of
  aurality/orality
• So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So
  long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
  (Shakespeare)

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Anthropology of the Senses

• Western conceptual framework of typical/
  normal sensory experience
• From confusion to order
• Developmentally through repetition and habit
• Physically through neurochemical processes
• Through new sensorial skills
• desire to avoid vague sensations
• OR, another To perceive the true substance of
  the world beyond sensory mental habits
• All bodhisattvas, lesser and great, should
  develop a pure, lucid mind, not depending upon
  sound, flavor, touch, odor, or any quality. A
  bodhisattva should develop a mind which alights
  upon no thing whatsoever and so should he
  establish it. (Diamond Sutra 10)

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Participant-Observation Altered States

• Cross-cultural experience altered states as a
  psychosis observations vs. participant
  observation
• Sorcerers apprentice
• Going native
• Trust and science

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One Popular Consciousness Vision/Version

• field expedition to Mexico or someplace other
• observe the rituals of an isolated Indian tribe,
  who are said to preserve ceremonies that go all
  the way back to the Toltecs or some other
  ancients
• rituals involve the consumption of a potion made
  with powerfully hallucinogenic mushrooms
• not content merely to observe, but an active
  participant
• unifying theme emerges in hallucinations -- the
  origin of life, the origin of the Earth, the
  origin of thought, the origin of humanity.
• opened up a kind of physiological pathway that
  gives access to the vast untapped recesses of his
  genome
• the primitive, atavistic genetic heritage of
  humankinds most distant ancestors that lies
  inactive at the center of his every cell

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Anthropologies of Alcohol and Drinking
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Styles of Alcohol Use as Social Practice

• A style of alcohol use is not
• a psychological manifestation of the individual
  nor only determined by environment
• Style as social practice
• expressive equipment or social capital
• Available for the production of subjectivity
  (self identity)
• universe of stylistic possibilities
• represents differing ways to craft self and be
  a person
• Alcohol use is a social and cultural practice
  some find useful in the context of a set of
  ongoing social relations