1) Transcendence: Is It Culturally Shaped or is "Their Something" Universal?

Symposium Group Abstract "Transcendence: Is It Culturally Shaped or is 'Their Something' Universal?" Friday Afternoon, March 21, 2008 More information on this conference can be found at http://www.sacaaa.org

"Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness" spring meeting,
Yale Divinity School, Yale University, March 19-23, 2008
Mark A. Schroll, organizer and Chair, participants Constantine Hriskos, Evgenia Fotiou, Ryan Hurd, Adam Rock, Bethe Hagens. Discussants: Stanley Krippner and Morris Freilich

Anthropology’s predominant view concludes reality (or human experience), is shaped by our cultural constructs; consequently the meaning of reality is relative to the generis loci within each social group. Still some anthropologists continue to wonder: are their experiences (states of consciousness) that transcend a culture’s symbolic limitations that could be considered universal? Conclusive evidence has yet to prove either of these views, although cultural relativism is the dominant paradigm. Perhaps both perspectives are somehow true, like the paradox of particle and wave. Working out the limitations of these theses and the variety of alternative explanations is the theme of this symposium.
This too is where the controversies of particulars/archetypes, subjectivity/objectivity, and the emic/etic divide comes’ into play, because it continues to be impossible to know with certainty the cognitive awareness of another person in normal consciousness. But in cases where an anthropologist is investigating shamanism, is the shaman I am observing and engaged in during a participatory act of altered experiential consciousness having the same experience I am? Or is whatever this experience of being always shaped by our expectations, cultural symbolism and language?
Anthropologists tend to avoid these big paradigm questions. Avoiding these questions does not make them go away. The first step toward trying to answer these questions conclusively is to have a methodology or methodologies that are better adapted to investigating these kind of experiences.