Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Legal Anthropology: An Introduction, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION offers an initial overview of the challenging debates surrounding the cross-cultural analysis of legal systems. Equal parts review and criticism, the author outlines the historical landmarks in the development of the discipline, identifying both strengths and weaknesses of each stage and contribution. LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY suggests that future progress can be made by treating as the distinguishing feature of law the perceived fairness of structural inequalities of social systems, rather than the traditional emphasis upon sanction or dispute resolution.

"Anticipatory Self-Defense" And Other Stories, Jeanne M. Woods, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

We argue that the specious justification for the invasion of Iraq -- a war based on a pretext of anticipatory self-defense -- necessarily exacerbates the inherent tendency of war to dehumanize and humiliate the enemy. This tendency is particularly evident in the variant of anticipatory self-defense that we have denominated as "capacity preemption," a type of claim that by definition depends upon characterizations of the opponent as utterly inhuman.

The Bush Doctrine tells a timeless story of self-defense. This story is shaped by an identifiable and predictable narrative structure, one that is able to transform the morally outrageous -- an …

Implicit Religion And The Curvilinear Relationship Between Religion And Death Anxiety, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Debate over the relationship of religion to death anxiety has included the opposing views of Malinowski, who held that religion lessened death anxiety, and Radcliffe-Brown, who argued that religion increased death anxiety. Homans' theoretical synthesis of these viewpoints was tested by Leming, who concluded that the empirical relationship was curvilinear, meaning that both high and low religious involvements resulted in low death anxiety while middle-range attachments did not.

Reconsideration of this result argues that the presence of death anxiety is not dependent upon social learning, and that either high or low levels of theism leads to the resolution of anxiety …

A Brazilian Challenge To Lewis's Explanation Of Cult Mediumship, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Recruitment into peripheral possession trance cults has been explained as attempts to compensate for socio-economic deprivation and jural impotence. This model, best developed by I.M. Lewis, is reviewed and its predictions tested against two types of Brazilian data. Firstly, national census figures of religious affiliation are compared with measure of socio-economic stress for a diachronic analysis. A second, synchronic analysis involves 62 respondents in Rio de Janeiro who completed questionnaires on socio-economic status, cultic affiliation, and perceptions of stress and gender inequality. The results offer only weak support for Lewis's original model, which may therefore profit from supplementation from other …

Psychic Unity Constraints Upon Successful Intercultural Communication, James M. Donovan, Brian A. Rundle

James M. Donovan

This article begins with the unchallenged assertion that intercultural communication episodes are necessarily imperfect. The disciplinary corpus reflects the correct assumption that much of this failure is attributable to the lock of various competencies on the part of the communicants. Experts become vague, however, where the line should be drawn, if at all, beyond which increased competency will not yield improved communication.

The principle of psychic unity assures us that there will be some experiences (not many, but some) which are so far removed from the ordinary processes of categorization and conceptualization that the raw data cannot be encapsulated faithfully …

Multiple Personality, Hypnosis, And Possession Trance, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Multiple personality disorder [MPD] and possession trance [PT] are examined from the perspectives of presenting morphology and demographic epidemiology. The goal is to ascertain whether at these levels MPD and PT are disparate phenomena, or warrant treatment as two instances of a single type. The data favor the second alternative, and from this we infer that both MPD and PT are culturally manipulated instances of a unitary psychobiological ability. But by virtue of this manipulation, differences do exist between the final forms, especially on the dimension of whether they are experiences as states of health or illness.

Relating Psychological Measures To Anthropological Observations: Procrastination As A Field Proxy For Death Anxiety?, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Anthropologists frequently incorporate psychological concepts such as death anxiety into their sociocultural theorizing, but are reluctant to use the psychological instrumentation quantifying these concepts. Due to the needs of ethnographic fieldwork, behavioral proxies should be identified for psychological concepts wherever possible. Two exploratory studies investigate whether procrastination might serve as just such a proxy for death anxiety. While significant results were found, they are too weak for the intended field application.

Charisma, Empathy, And The Experience Of Telepathy, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

A critique is offered of the preference of parapsychology for physical explanatory models for telepathy. Discussion shows this trend emerging from the combined effects of historical accident. An alternative explanatory model is offered which draws upon the rich but underutilized psychological foundations of parapsychology. Emphasizing telepathy's original definition as a communication event, two other phenomena are held to fall into the same class of events: charisma and empathy. Concepts traditionally used to understand charisma and empathy are shown to be equally suited for modeling telepathy. Experimental, theoretical, and especially philosophical implications of this "possible world" model are addressed throughout.

Blaming It On God: Considerations When Presented With Supernatural Explanatory Entities, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

If the presence of an anthropologist at a fieldsite indicates that there exist unknowns, then for that anthropologist off-handedly to dismiss informant responses as irrelevant, inadequate, or otherwise poor explanations for observed phenomena is an intellectually arrogant, if not dangerous act.

What then does the anthropologist do with statements that "god willed it" and "the spirits did it"? To dismiss them without good reasons is to be guilty of intellectual condescension; but what constitutes a "good reason," either to reject or to accept such testimony? This essay seeks to consider just such "good reasons," to see if they are as …

Sociobiological And Psychosocial Models Of Physical Attractiveness Phenomena: A Confrontation Of Theories, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

A majority of cultural anthropologists underestimate the value of sociobiological theory for a better understanding of human behavior. This essay attempts to demonstrate the shortcomings of this position by presenting an illustrative problem. Sexually asymmetrical physical attractiveness phenomena are examined first from a traditional psychosocial model. In its pure form this model is unable to account for the known data; when supplemented by sociobiological premises, however, these difficulties are resolved.

A Charisma Model Of Telepathic Communication, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

This paper opened by making some general criticisms of the state of parapsychological research: that it suffered from a lack of external validity and from uncritical acceptance of a flawed paradigm. The charisma model was offered as an attempt to rectify these problems. It allows for laboratory experiments to be designed which closely approximate genuine human interactions by shifting the paradigm for telepathy from that of energy transfers to one of communication events.