In The Ghost Dance Assignment | Online Assignment

In The Ghost Dance, Alice Kehoe discusses how Wovoka was able to address the social, cultural, political, and economic conditions that gave rise to this (NRM) New Religious Movement near the turn of the twentieth century.In The Ghost Dance, Alice Kehoe discusses how Wovoka was able to address the social, cultural, political, and economic conditions that gave rise to this (NRM) New Religious Movement (especially in Paiute and Lakota culture) near the turn of the twentieth century. Discuss Wovoka as a charismatic prophet; how might we best understand his personal appeal and the appeal of his message in the context of late nineteenth century Paiute society? Compare Wovoka with another of the prophets we’ve examined in ANTH 166 (you may choose which). How are the two individuals similar and different from each other? How were the communities and contexts in which they innovated religious ideas and activities similar and different? Please illustrate your answer with examples from class lectures, film, Alice Kehoe’s The Ghost Dance, and any readings that consider the second prophet you’ve decided to write about). Formatting: •1 inch margins•12pt. font •Page numbers (lower right of each page) •IN-TEXT CITATIONS required; format: (Author’s last name year of publication: page #) –e.g., (Murphy 2017: 666) •REFERENCES SECTION NEEDED: any standard academic formatting for References is acceptable, provided you’re consistent •For any text citations/quotations you use, please include page number references. No lengthy quotations (e.g. more than 3 lines of text), please. DO NOT DO List for Term-Papers!! 1. Always use/cite at least SOME anthropology written within the last 25 years (3 or 4 sources from peer-reviewed journals). 2. Always include PAGE #s!!! (usually bottom at right, or bottom in center) 3. Always use left justification, NOT centered. I don’t ever want to see an even column of text where some sentences are stretched like this just so that the vertical lines are even at both the left and right sides of the page. Okay? 4. About your Bibliography…a.It’s NOT a “Bibliography” – it’s “References” or “References Cited”. You only put in here what you refer to in the text itself.b. Always list alphabetically by author’s LAST NAME 5. About those in-text citations…a.Always cite a direct quotation or idea.b. Always use this format for in-text citations: (Murphy 2017: 666). …that is, “last name year of publication: page number”c.Always list multiple in-text citations in alphabetical order of author’s last name, like this: (Babcock 1998: 555; Murphy 1995: 666). d. Always include a reference in your References Cited section for anyone you mention in the main text. If you write that ‘Malinowski said blah blah,’ then you MUST write ‘Malinowski (1925: 205) said blah blah.’ This reference must be tracked down to its source and included in the References Cited section. It’s not enough to say “Dr. Murphy said that Malinowski said blah blah.” 6. Always spell the anthropologist’s last name correctly! It IS important if you write “Brown” when you mean “Radcliffe-Brown” or “Pritchard” when you mean “Evans-Pritchard.” I will definitely ding you for not getting these simple things right…if you’re uncertain, look it up or ask me, but DO NOT GUESS! If you write “Malanowsky” when you mean “Malinowski,” bad things will happen!7. Last, but definitely not least, ALWAYS do a proofread and spell-check! If possible, have someone else do the proofread…I don’t ever want to see you mix up “there,” “their,” and “they’re” or “to,” “two,” and “too,” – both of which I see botched far too frequently. Kehoe, Alice Beck (2006). The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory & Revitalization, second edition. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.Review Essay
Paranormal Belief: A New Frontier?
Joseph Laycock
Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and
Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture. By Christopher D. Bader,
F. Carson Mencken, and Joseph D. Baker. New York University Press,
2010. 264 pages. $20.00 paper.
Paranormal Media: Audiences, Spirits and Magic in Popular Culture. By
Annette Hill. Routledge, 2011. 210 pages. $39.95 paper.
Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred. By Jeffrey J. Kripal.
University of Chicago Press, 2010. 332 pages. $37.50 cloth.
Scholars who have studied the historical development of “religion”
as a sui generis category have noted that our use of this term often
conceals a hidden moral framework. The category of religion is
frequently used in contradistinction to a variety of other phenomena
that are delegated to pejorative categories such as superstition, idolatry,
“blind faith,” and of course, “cults.” Through a variety of methodological
innovations, scholars of religion have begun to peel back the tacit
assumptions about what constitutes religion in order to arrive at a more
accurate picture of humanity’s relationship with the sacred. One area
that has been ignored for far too long is the enormously widespread
belief in such things as ghosts, UFOs, psychic abilities, and divination––
phenomena that frequently fall under the category of “paranormal.”
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Laycock: Paranormal Belief: A New Frontier?
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Scholars can hardly be blamed for overlooking paranormal belief.
With the exception of groups like the Raelians or Heaven’s Gate, it is
rare that interest in paranormal phenomena leads to any sort of institutional
structure amenable to study. Furthermore, there is now strong
evidence that many people are wary of even discussing paranormal beliefs
due to a strong stigma about those who are overly interested in
such topics. And yet, the paranormal is all around us. In addition to the
ubiquity of everything from mediums to alien abduction in popular
media, data such as Gallup polls and the Baylor Religion Survey consistently
indicate that a majority of Westerners believe in some form of the
paranormal. Furthermore, widespread belief in these topics offers a
fresh challenge to the secularization narrative in which reason is on the
rise and belief in the sacred is supposedly in decline.
At long last, it seems that scholarship has begun taking the paranormal
seriously. We now have substantial data on the cultural role of the
paranormal in the United States, and to a lesser extent the United
Kingdom and France. Bader, Mencken, and Baker; Hill; and Kripal
offer fresh perspectives on how to study these topics, their cultural significance
at the start of the twenty-first century, and how they relate to
the larger category of religion and the sacred. Bader, Mencken, and
Baker have taken a thoroughly demographic approach, bringing the
extensive data of the Baylor Religion Survey to bear on the question of
what kind of people believe in the paranormal. Hill explores the paranormal
through the lens of media studies and raises some fascinating
insights into the relationship between paranormal media and identity.
Finally, Kripal explores the understudied works of Frederic Myers,
Charles Fort, Jacques Valee, and Bertrand Meheust and raises the question
of why we seem so poorly equipped to study the significance of
paranormal phenomena.
One theme across all three books is the ongoing problem of defining
the paranormal. Bader, Mencken, and Baker frame the category in
terms of “unconventional belief.” But the category clearly includes only
certain kinds of unconventional belief. The authors admit that religious
practices like glossolalia might be considered unconventional but not
paranormal. Only Kripal gives the sort of concise, italicized definition
that religion scholars have learned to expect. He defines the paranormal
as, “the sacred in transit from the religious and scientific registers
into a parascientific or ‘science mysticism’ register.” He also describes it
as a kind of “super-imagination” that depends on neither reason nor
faith (9). Indeed, all three books seem to locate the paranormal somewhere
near the intersection of deviant religion and deviant science. It
may well be that our distinction between religion and science, itself a
product of the Enlightenment, is the primary reason why paranormal
belief has proved so difficult to study.
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Nova Religio
94
Bader, Mencken, and Baker begin with the most important fact about
the paranormal––that a majority of people believe in it, at least in some
form. The Baylor Religion Survey asked respondents whether or not
they believe in the possibility of telekinesis or similar psychic abilities,
fortune-telling, astrology, communication with the dead, haunted
houses, ghosts, Atlantis, UFOs, and monsters such as Bigfoot. In 2005, it
was found that more than two-thirds of Americans expressed belief in at
least one of these nine topics (75). The authors attempt to answer the
question, “Who are these people anyway?” In 2009, Bader and Mencken,
along with Ye Jung Kim, first explored this data in a journal article for
Sociology of Religion. Paranormal America offers a more thorough and accessible
view of the data. Their statistical analysis is also buttressed by
ethnographic data collected while on a ghost hunt in Jefferson, Texas,
visiting a psychic fair in Dallas, and stalking the forest with the Texas
Bigfoot Research Conservancy. The authors note their field research was
limited to Texas and that paranormal belief is likely diverse across geographic
regions. The data recovered through these expeditions is rather
journalistic compared to the “thick description” of an anthropologist.
However, these accounts add a human face to the survey data and reveal
the need for more extensive ethnography of these groups.
Paranormal America is as readable as it is fascinating and would make
an excellent choice for an introductory course on religion, sociology, or
a combination thereof. The data contained in this book is also essential
for anyone seeking to understand the significance of the paranormal in
popular experience. Belief in paranormal topics is correlated with race,
age, income, education level, and religious affiliation. Perhaps most
importantly, the authors note that Americans’ obvious interest in the
paranormal is tempered by their desire to show that they can keep a
healthy distance from it. The stigma about paranormal beliefs is such
that public figures such as Nancy Reagan and Denis Kuchinich have
been attacked for openly expressing interest in topics such as astrology
and UFOs. It can hardly be assumed that religion scholars are immune
to the social pressures the authors describe.
Like all of the titles discussed here, Paranormal America confronts a
categorical problem. The authors quickly discover that the nine topics
of the Baylor Religion Survey do not neatly map onto an overall theory
of “the paranormal.” For instance, the authors discovered that most
serious Bigfoot hunters see their interest as a purely zoological debate
and are annoyed that they have been lumped in with credulous ghost
hunters and Ufologists. This leads Bader, Mencken, and Baker to suggest
that the “paranormal” is a heuristic category that actually entails
numerous distinct subcultures. They conclude, “Distinguishing people
who believe in the paranormal from those who do not is not particularly
useful” (157). All of this is reflected in their admittedly problematic
definition of the paranormal as, “Beliefs, practices, and experiences
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Laycock: Paranormal Belief: A New Frontier?
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that are not recognized by science and not associated with mainstream
religion.” (24). The authors acknowledge that religions like Raelianism
incorporate beliefs they identify as paranormal. Conversely, certain religious
beliefs such as angels and Marian apparitions bear a family resemblance
to the paranormal, making any clear distinction between
“religious” and “paranormal” discourses quite blurry.
Paranormal Media is presented as a “popular cultural ethnography of
the paranormal.” Hill draws on focus groups and individual research
interviews as well as participant observation on a “ghost hunt.” The
book’s premise is that there has been a “paranormal turn” in popular
culture, demonstrated both through fictional media and in numerous
“reality television” shows about ghost hunting and the paranormal. This
trend in popular culture appears to both reflect and amplify rising levels
of belief and interest in the paranormal. Indeed, it seems that in
some ways the television producers have a better insight into popular
belief than religion scholars. Hill describes how the British television
show Most Haunted was created after a producer purchased a copy of
every magazine marketed to women, laid them on the floor, and noticed
that each one contained an article on the paranormal (52).
The most compelling aspect of this book is Hill’s discussion of paranormal
media as an “ambiguous cultural experience.” Much like Bader,
Mencken, and Baker, Hill found that her interview subjects wanted to
be understood as occupying a middle ground between gullibility and
extreme skepticism (43). Cultural experiences that invite the viewer to
evaluate the reality of the paranormal––in the form of magic shows,
ghost tours, ghost hunting, and so forth––provide a “rehearsal space”
in which viewers can try on different epistemological positions. Hill
describes the “revolving door of skepticism and belief,” in which audiences
waver over whether the paranormal phenomenon is actually occurring.
In other words, what draws the attention of viewers is not the
paranormal in itself, but rather the opportunity to explore themselves
by reassessing their attitude towards the paranormal. In this sense, viewing
paranormal media is actually a process of what Anthony Giddens
called the reflexive project of the self. This means that religion scholars
may be asking entirely the wrong questions about the paranormal. For
Hill, the consumption of paranormal media, “is more of a performance
of the self and paranormal beliefs than an exercise in moral and religious
thinking.” (87).
There are a few difficulties in bringing the discipline of media studies
into dialogue with religious studies. Thinking about popular culture
further complicates the problem of defining the paranormal. When
looking at fictional media, how is one to distinguish the paranormal
from the merely fantastic? Hill never offers a single or concise definition
of the paranormal and I occasionally had trouble following her
assumptions. How, for instance, is the revival of a gothic aesthetic in
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Nova Religio
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films like Batman Begins indicative of a “paranormal turn” (6–7)? Hill
also has a different set of priorities when thinking historically about
these problems. The chapter “Spirit Histories” jumps from discussing
popular belief in ghosts and demons during the early modern period
straight into Victorian Spiritualism. The Enlightenment, with its emphasis
on scientific reasoning and the autonomous individual, is almost
completely absent. It seems that there is fruitful work ahead bringing
Hill’s findings into dialogue with the broader themes of the sociology
of religion. In particular, Hill’s insights should be located within the
larger processes of modernity, secularization, and re-enchantment.
Of the three books discussed here, Kripal’s is by far the most eccentric
and ambitious. It is also just possibly ahead of its time. Where the
previous two books focus on the significance of the paranormal to the
layman, Kripal is interested in the history of intellectuals who have considered
this material. Kripal’s research actually began as a book on the
comic book genre and its relationship to the sacred. In examining the
literature on beings from other worlds and people born with extraordinary
abilities, Kripal found himself exploring the work of four thinkers
who have historically been excluded from the scholarly canon. Here, we
are back to the stigma observed by Bader, Mencken, and Baker. Kripal
points out that many luminaries in the fields of psychology, anthropology,
and philosophy have either explored the paranormal or had paranormal
experiences themselves, but edited volumes generally bracket
out writings on these topics. “The paranormal,” Kripal concludes, “is
our secret in plain sight” (7). He proposes that by ceasing to ignore the
paranormal, we may find a new insight into the nature of the sacred,
particularly as it relates to mysticism.
Kripal is less interested in what the subjects of his book chose to
study––whether it was psychical research, anomalous experiences,
Ufology, or the powers of human consciousness. Rather, he argues that
each of these authors possesses a “hermeneutical model of the paranormal”
(39). Where others see simply anomalous data, authors of the
impossible boldly propose new paradigms of reality that can account for
this data. Kripal calls us to become authors of the impossible as well,
arguing that the key to a new understanding of the sacred lies with the
anomalous (23). Indeed, it is strange that Thomas Kuhn never appears
in this book. Kripal’s ideas about paradigm shifts and the anomalous
frequently resemble Kuhn’s argument in The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions.
Kripal also offers some idea of what this new paradigm might look
like. He argues that the kinds of impossible experiences that interest
him can never be studied using the traditional “tool kit” of religious
studies (22). A model that can make sense of the impossible will have
to be interdisciplinary. Specifically, Kripal argues that consciousness
must be studied simultaneously through the lens of neuroscience with
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Laycock: Paranormal Belief: A New Frontier?
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its understanding of the brain and through sociology with its understanding
of how culture shapes perceptions. Perhaps through such a
methodology we can move past studying who believes in the paranormal
and discover what actually happens during a paranormal experience
and how these experiences can inform our understanding of the
sacred. Again, this is an ambitious book.
Whether or not we accept Kripal’s premise that the future of religious
studies lies with the paranormal, there is ample evidence throughout
these books that paranormal beliefs should be taken seriously.
Bader, Mencken, and Baker point to the McMartin Preschool Trial in
which $15 million dollars were spent investigating whether a daycare
center was actually a Satanic cult. Hill claims that $20 million dollars was
spent by the CIA and the Department of Defense researching psychic
warfare (61). Sociologists who once predicted the decline of religion
would likely find these expenditures by our secular government quite
shocking. Future scholarship will no doubt continue to explore ways of
incorporating these beliefs into the study of religion. By studying these
beliefs, we may arrive at a more complete picture of our culture’s relationship
with the sacred.
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