1 Symposium ‘Healing and Spirituality’

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Edith; Alaskan Inuit; inuit; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.690.7160; http://shikanda.net/african_religion/questions_for_Edith_Turner.pdf

ABSTRACT. In the context of a symposium on Healing and Spirituality, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands (2007), the author was invited to put a number of questions before Edith Turner. This was to elucidate her sustained quest for an experiential anthropology and for the vindication, within anthropology and the North Atlantic region at large, of peripheral spirit traditions, such as (from her own fieldwork) those of N. Alaskan Inuit and the Ndembu of Zambia. The author’s questions seek to situate Edith Turner’s work in context, including the work of her late husband Victor Turner. In addi-tion to the author’s sympathy for experiential anthropology and his own long-standing practice as an African spirit medium, he draws on intercultural philosophy and long-range comparative research into symbolism and mythology in order to critically adduce perspectives that may elucidate, complement or correct Edith Turner’s. Topics covered include: the reliability of eye witness accounts of the para-normal; the relation between experiential and mainstream anthropology; the critique of ‘going native’ as a research strategy; the critique of experiental anthropology’s claims of producing valid knowledge through vicarious experience; the positioning of anthropology as mediating between peripheral tradi-tions and the North Atlantic region; can we claim that peripheral spirit traditions constitute both useful and valid knowledge?; an elaborate attempt to situate peripheral spirit traditions (and especially the