New item in the Archive for Religion and Cognition:


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Author(s): Cohen, Emma
Title: The Mind Possessed: The cognition of spirit possession in an
Afro-Brazilian religious tradition.
Category: book
Length: 256
Keywords: Psychology, religious; Spirit possession - Brazil; Afro-Brazilian
cults

Abstract: The cognitive science of religion has made a persuasive case for the
view that a number of different psychological systems are involved in the
construction and transmission of notions of extranatural agency such as deities
and spirits. Until now this work has been based largely on findings in
experimental psychology, illustrated mainly with hypothetical or anecdotal
examples. In The Mind Possessed , Emma Cohen considers how the psychological
systems undergirding spirit concepts are activated in real-world settings.
Spirit possession practices have long had a magnetizing effect on academic
researchers but there have been few, if any, satisfactory theoretical treatments
of spirit possession that attempt to account for its emergence and spread
globally. Drawing on ethnographic data collected during eighteen months of
fieldwork in Belem, northern Brazil, Cohen combines fine-grained descriptions
and analyses of mediumistic activities in an Afro-Brazilian cult house with a
scientifically-grounded explanation for the emergence and spread of ideas about
spirits, possession and healing.
Cohen shows why spirit possession and its associated activities are inherently
attention-grabbing. Making a radical departure from traditional anthropological,
medicalist and sociological analyses, she argues that a cognitive approach
offers more precise and testable hypotheses concerning the spread and appeal of
spirit concepts and possession activities.
This timely book presents new lines of enquiry for the cognitive science of
religion (a rapidly growing field of interdisciplinary scholarship) and
challenges the theoretical frameworks within which spirit possession practices
have traditionally been understood.

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