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This book presents new directions in contemporary anthropological dream research, surveying recent theorizations of dreaming that are developing both in and outside of anthropology. It incorporates new findings in neuroscience and philosophy of mind while demonstrating that dreams emerge from and comment on sociohistorical and cultural contexts.
The chapters are written by prominent anthropologists working at the intersection of culture and consciousness who conduct ethnographic research in a variety of settings around the world, and reflect how dreaming is investigated by a range of informants in ever more diverse sites. As well as theorizing the dream in light of current anthropological and psychological research, the volume accounts for local dream theories and how they are situated within distinct cultural ontologies. It considers dreams as a resource for investigating and understanding cultural change; dreaming as a mode of thinking through, contesting, altering, consolidating, or escaping from identity; and the nature of dream mentation.
In proposing new theoretical approaches to dreaming, the editors situate the topic within the recent call for an "anthropology of the night" and illustrate how dreams offer insight into current debates within anthropology's mainstream. This up-to-date book defines a twenty-first century approach to culture and the dream that will be relevant to scholars from anthropology as well as other disciplines such as religious studies, the neurosciences, and psychology.
List of contents
Part I: Introduction 1. Defining new directions in the anthropology of dreaming 2. The anthropology of dreaming in historical perspective Part II: New theoretical approaches to dreaming: implications for culture and identity 3. Metaphors we dream by: on the nature of dream cognition 4. Identity and memory in Germany: the defensive role of dreams 5. Dreaming bloody murder: women's dreams of mortal threat, true crime culture, and metonyms of gendered vulnerability 6. Dream sharing, play, and cultural creativity Part III. Dream cultures: theoretical and ontological perspectives 7. Out-of-body on the happy hunting road: dialogues between dreaming and culture in Papua New Guinea 8. Taking dreams seriously: an ontological-phenomenological approach to Tzotzil Maya dream culture 9. Godly dreams: Muslim encounters with the Divine 10. Life is but a dream: culture and science in the study of Tibetan dream yoga and lucid dreaming Afterword: on the varieties and particularities of dreaming
About the author
Jeannette Mageo is a professor of anthropology at Washington State University, USA.
Robin E. Sheriff is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of New Hampshire, USA.
Summary
This book presents new directions in contemporary anthropological dream research, surveying recent theorizations of dreaming that are developing both in and outside of anthropology.
