Projects per year
Abstract
Anthropologists have long attempted to come to grips with Indigenous Australian sorcery beliefs and especially with the idea that acts with no understandable efficacy bring about illness and death. In this ethnographic interpretation of sorcery beliefs in the remote community of Numbulwar, I follow those few who have attempted to find a link between these apparently harmless acts and real physiological consequences, arguing that the fear of sorcery that pervades Numbulwar contributes directly to the stress of daily life and indirectly to the premature morbidity and mortality of too many lives. Belief is posited as the mechanism whereby the human stress response is activated to a harmful extent, a process in which the projection of envious feelings may often be critical.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 286-300 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Australian Journal of Anthropology |
Volume | 28 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2017 |
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Dive into the research topics of 'The embodiment of sorcery: Supernatural aggression, belief and envy in a remote Aboriginal community'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Inequality, identity and future discounting: a comparitive ethnographic approach to social trauma in aboriginal australian communities
Tonkinson, R. (Chief Investigator), Burbank, V. (Chief Investigator) & Tonkinson, M. (Chief Investigator)
1/01/02 → 31/12/04
Project: Research