Welcome to the Anthropology of Consciousness website!

We are an interdisciplinary association of anthropologists, psychologists, and like minded scholars united by a common interest in the study of consciousness from an anthropological perspective. Our research interests range from the cross cultural study of consciousness as understood within shamanistic, yogic and magical traditions to contemporary studies of neuroplasticity, human potential and human/technology interaction.

Consciousness, like most words, is polysemic having a range of meanings. Because of this, we remain open to a range of human understandings of consciousness from the spiritual to the materialist, from the sacred to the secular. We embrace the “Ontological Turn” in anthropology wherein we’ve come to understand the necessity to question our own academic and theoretical frameworks in order to more accurately learn from and represent other people’s lifeworlds. Furthermore, we embrace a radically empirical approach to consciousness whereby we take all phenomena of consciousness as worthy of study and exploration.

In our exploration of consciousness, we are committed to the anthropological principles of cross cultural, holistic, comparative study rooted in an ethnographic approach to research. We are committed to scholarly rigor and embrace the “Scholar-Practitioner” model where the researcher who actively tries to share in the experiences of the people he or she writes about will create more accurate, empathetic and rigorous ethnographic accounts. Finally, we are committed to exploring how findings from the anthropological study of consciousness can be applied to improving the condition of life on earth seen both from a human and non human perspective. 

We hope you enjoy our site and look forward to sharing this amazing learning journey with you!