{"id":837,"date":"2007-03-14T16:10:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-14T16:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=837"},"modified":"2007-03-14T16:10:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-14T16:10:00","slug":"the-most-controversial-anthropologist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=837","title":{"rendered":"The most controversial anthropologist"},"content":{"rendered":"

One episode of a BBC series called Tales from the Jungle<\/em><\/a> on famous anthropologists examines the “shamanthropologist” Carlos Castaneda (d. 1998), appropriately described as the most controversial anthropologist ever.<\/p>\n

For those of us who can’t watch the Beeb, it is available in segments from YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are also episodes on Bronislaw Malinowski<\/a> and Margaret Mead<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Without Castaneda, there would probably have been no “neo-shamanism.” Without Mead appealing to Western notions of the noble–and sexy–savage, the “sexual liberation” of the 1960s would have lost one of its ideological underpinnings. And Malinowski, of course, largely shaped 20th-century ideas of ethnography. <\/p>\n

The videos are a little hoked-up–and I wish that the BBC would consistently identify the talking heads on the screen. They do include Castaneda’s son and ex-wife, who in the video defend much of his research (although not his actions), and Jay Fikes<\/a>, an anthropologist known for his work with the Peyote Way in Mexico and the USA, who is more critical.<\/p>\n

The video focuses on the cultish last years of Castaneda’s life in particular. <\/p>\n

For more on Castaneda, read Richard DeMille’s<\/a> two books on him, as well as Dan Noel’s The Soul of Shamanism<\/em><\/a>. Also the Sustained Action<\/a> website.<\/p>\n

Via Savage Minds<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One episode of a BBC series called Tales from the Jungle on famous anthropologists examines the “shamanthropologist” Carlos Castaneda (d. 1998), appropriately described as the most controversial anthropologist ever. For those of us who can’t watch the Beeb, it is available in segments from YouTube. There are also episodes on Bronislaw Malinowski and Margaret Mead. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[30,11],"class_list":["post-837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-anthropology","tag-shamanism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-dv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6430,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6430","url_meta":{"origin":837,"position":0},"title":"Anthropologist Describes Rebirth of Mongolian Shamanism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A news release from the MIT News Office carries the subhead, \"MIT anthropologist finds that after Soviet domination, a rebirth of shamanism helped Mongolia rewrite its own history.\" The release continues, In 1990, as the Soviet Union was disintegrating, Mongolia, long a satellite of the U.S.S.R., regained its independence. Socialism\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"anthropology\"","block_context":{"text":"anthropology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=anthropology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsoffice.mit.edu\/sites\/mit.edu.newsoffice\/files\/styles\/news_article_image_top_slideshow\/public\/images\/2013\/20131213180343-0_0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":849,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=849","url_meta":{"origin":837,"position":1},"title":"Dionysus, Jesus, Castaneda","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"After watching the BBC take on anthropologist - novelist - sorcerer Carlos Castaneda, M. and I rented another documentary about him. Enigma of a Sorcerer was released in 2002. It is available through Netflix, but it is only for the hardcore student of neo-shamanism as phenomenon.Since it is only a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"anthropology\"","block_context":{"text":"anthropology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=anthropology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":852,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=852","url_meta":{"origin":837,"position":2},"title":"Sex in World Religions & Other Updates","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 First, here is a better version of the Pagan rosary story, \"'Hail Persephone:' Pagans Retool the Rosary,\" which has a photo and also some of the rosary invocations.Kimberly Winston's article was also mentioned at the GetReligion blog on religion and journalism.\u00b6 My recent post on Carlos Castaneda must have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Islam\"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=islam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8198,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8198","url_meta":{"origin":837,"position":3},"title":"Pentagram Pizza at the Mongolian Grill","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Some links worth exploring: \u2022 In post-Soviet Mongolia, shamanism is a \"growth industry,\" says an MIT anthropologist. In Manuduhai Buyandelger's Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia, she writes how, \"shamanism is a historical memory for people who lost parts of their ancestral homeland, and who had been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Mongolia\"","block_context":{"text":"Mongolia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=mongolia"},"img":{"alt_text":"pentagrampizza","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/pentagrampizza-126x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9017,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9017","url_meta":{"origin":837,"position":4},"title":"On Michael Harner (1929\u20132018)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 6, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The news of Michael Harner's passing has been going around, and of course some magical practitioners have to react by disrespecting him. You might well have heard the usual string of insults: he is an academic poser, he's a fake . . . a cultural imperialist . . . from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"shamanism\"","block_context":{"text":"shamanism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=shamanism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/michael_drum.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":449,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=449","url_meta":{"origin":837,"position":5},"title":"Ojo de dios","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The new issue, no. 65, of Shaman's Drum reprints a portion of Visions of a Huichol Shaman by the anthropologist Peter Furst.Furst has spent much time among the Huicholes, who live in Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental and who are sometimes considered one of the least-Christianized tribes. Their religious use of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"New Mexico\"","block_context":{"text":"New Mexico","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=new-mexico"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}