Anthropology News October 2004
SACC supported a AAA Board proposal to hold
meetings only in municipalities with living wage
ordinances and only in unionized hotels.
Motion passed to extend many thanks to Ann
Popplestone for her many years of service as
SACC Web guru and to establish a SACC elec-
tronic information committee. Phil Naftaly
appointed David Schutzer, Jo Raine Rodgers and
Ann Popplestone to the committee. David and Jo
will serve as new Webmasters.
At the AAA Annual Meeting in San Francisco,
SACC will sponsor the Five-fields session and
(with NASA) co-sponsor a session on student
learning outcomes.
SACC Conference 2005 will be in Savannah,
GA, with the theme, “leaching Diasporas: People
in Motion.”
SACC treasury has a balance of $14,2oO.
Membership dropped from 263 (Dec 2003) to
255 (Dec 2004).
Motion passed to create a new mission state-
ment and replace Kokopelli with a more appro-
priate SACC logo.
Discussions took place on AnthroSource, the
Kokopelli logo, invited sessions at AAA meetings,
K-12 networking and coalition building with
other AAA sections.
Let’s Talk Excuses
Community college instructors often complain
about the amount of time they have to spend with
students who are not ready to learn. Missed tests
and appointments, late assignments, makeup
exams, “second” chances and unceasing student
excuses absorb valuable instructor time. Here’s one
from some “email chatter” on the topic.
A student who missed an exam telephoned me
after the fact asking for an opportunity to plead her
case. I set up a meeting to discuss it with her the
next morning at 8:OO am. Upon arriving at my
office the next morning, I saw that she was dis-
cussing something with a psychology instructor. A
few minutes later the student comes to me, breaks
down in tears and lets me know that her best friend
had been killed in a traffic accident two days before.
So,I caved, and gave her the opportunity to write
and alternate exam. Then, I went down the hall to
ask the psychologist what the student was seeing
her about. She said the student had told her that
she missed the psychology exam because she had
just broken up with her boymend. (I failed the stu-
dent). (Bob Muckle, Capilano College)
Send correspondence and commirnications to Lloyd
Miller, 1loyd.miIltHi~chi.com.
Society for the
Anthropology of
Consciousness
Altered BodieslAltered Minds
SAC held its 2004 spring meeting at the
University of California, Berkeley Faculty Club,
52
last March. The conference theme was Altered
Bodies/Altered Minds. Many thanks to Mira
Zussman who was, once again, our Berkeley
Program Chair. She did a fantastic job. Mira we
owe you one! Thanks also to Lee Gilmore, Amy
Smith and the many others who helped make
this conference such a wonderful event.
Sessions held during the conference include:
“Spirits, Identity and Ascension“; “Visitors and
Visions”; “Rhythm, Breath, Motion, Mind”;
“Feasting, Fasting and Green Felt Tables”;
“Possessionand the Possession of Sacred Bodies”;
“Killing Me Softly with His Words”; “Psychedelic
Stories-Their Value and Social Responsibility”;
“Altertd BodiesIAltered Minds.”
Several experiential sessions were also held:
“Roll Your Own Dreams-Dreamwork with
David Jenkins”; “Mevlevi Sufi Dhikr Izikr]--
Mevlevi Order of America”; “Bound Bodies, Freed
Mind+Temple of Atonement.”
A keynote experiential entitled, “Mind and
Body Altering Ecstasy Breathing” with Annie
Sprinkle was also presented. SAC convened its
business and board meetings at Berkeley.
The SAC 2004 meeting concluded with the Rakassah:
International Belly Dance Festival at the Richmond
Civic Center.
Psychedelics
Since the 1960s, psychedelics have been a thorn
in the side of anthropology, which encountered
them in its studies of the “other” and their
”ways” and worlds, at the same time that youth
were experimenting with them in our own socie-
ty. Recently, there has been less and less interest
in how these substances transform the con-
sciousness of their users in their respective con-
texts. Rather, more of an emphasis has been
placed on the biochemical and neurological com-
ponents and effects of their actions.
Outside of those interested in the hard science
data, anthropologists have largely ignored this
domain, essentially “culturalizing” it, thereby
reducing any discussion of hallucinogens to cul-
tural contexts “alone” and rendering biology
irrelevant. Serious scholars don’t even concern
themselves with psychedelics these days. Yet,
recent studies have shown that some of these
substances can be used to address serious addic-
tions like alcoholism by allowing individuals to
break with habituated patterns of behavior and
thought.
Psychedelic experiences did once promise to
set us free, or to allow us to see what we could not
see as we moved mindlessly through our every-
day life. Somewhere between “culture” and “biol-
SECTION NEWS
ogy” there must be a middle ground that values
the worlds of experience, sensation and under-
standing that these agents bring to the experi-
encing self and that would help us, who arc not
participants in these cultures/societies, under-
stand something more of what they can mean
both for those “others” and for “ourselves.”
Psychedelics’ Value
By Mark A Schroll
Few topics are as controversial or misunderstood
as psychedelics; indeed, reasoned discussion
among critics and supporters is rare. SAC’S
courage to sponsor this session at its annual
spring meeting held at UC Berkeley, on March
27, 2004, represents a milestone for our civil right
to pursue our understanding of consciousness
wherever our curiosity chooses to take it.
During this session that I organized, 1 addressed
the necessity of “Breaking the Habits of Cognition:
Why Psychedelic Fxperiences is so Fsential,” arbw-
ing that technique and tool use are equivalent
aspects of what Arthur Deikman refers to as thcJ
obj& scdt These habits of cognition form the cul-
tural constructs of our myths and paradigms, and
have become associated with normal or consensus
consciousness. Initially necessary to form our ego
structure, social cohesion, and learning technique,
the object self eventually dominatesconsciousness.
Thus we need to break free of the object self‘s
cognitive restrictions to have a complete anthro-
pology of consciousness, because the object self
prevents us from perceiving alternate worldviews
and a diversity of cognitive perspectives.
Furthermore, our quantitative analysis of neuro-
chemistry and the receptor sites associated with
the action of psychedelics on the body restricts
our understanding of consciousness solely to the
object mode.
Those of us interested in the exploration of
shamanism and the secrets associated with the eth-
nobotanical substances in their mediane bag do
find it interesting to know the quantitative analysis
of these substances. But it is the boundarydissolv-
ing experience of these substances that creates the
cultural phenomena of shamanism, whose subjec-
tive understandmg enables us to remember that
everything is a social construction.
See next month’s SAC column for more
reviews from the conference.
k i d contributions to this coliimn to Constantine
Hriskos at chriskosCa~~~hoo.com.
~~
Society for the
Anthropology of Europe
K A I H IKINb c I)ONAHUI, CONIKII~IJIINbEI)IIOK
EASA Conference in Vienna
The 8th biennial conference of the European
Association of Social Anthropologjsts (FASA) was
held in Vienna from September 8 to 12 at the
University of Vienna. Hosted by the lnstitut fur
Ethnologie, Kultur- und Socioanthropologie at