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Politics, Religion Agency In anthropology, agency is broadly defined as the socio-culturally mediated capacity to act. Classically, the concept has been used to analyse how people try to influence, or change... August 2024 by Julia Vorhölter	Religion, Theory Dreams Dreams are commonly defined as involuntary, sporadic events that occur to individuals during their sleep and that encompass visual images, cognitive activity, as well as a range of... August 2024 by Sophie Chao	Religion, Theory Transhumanism The social and intellectual movement known as transhumanism questions the figure of the ‘human’ at the centre of humanism and modern political formations. As part of a broader ‘... September 2022 by Abou Farman
Region, Religion Haitian Vodou Haitian Vodou first took shape in the context of slavery. Once the religion of the royal family in Dahomey, in West Africa, it was then transformed by the slaves of the island of... April 2022 by Laënnec Hurbon	Region, Religion Vodou Ayisyen Vodou ayisyen an pran nesans nan kontèks esklavaj la. Yon relijyon fanmi Wa nan peyi Dawome, nan Afrik oksidantal, esklav sou lil Dayiti yo te tranfòme l kòm yon zouti pou yo... March 2022 by Laënnec Hurbon	Region, Religion Vodou Haïtien Le vodou haïtien a été formé dans le contexte de l’esclavage. Culte de la famille royale au Dahomey, en Afrique Occidentale, il a été transformé par les esclaves de l’île d’Haïti en... November 2021 by Laënnec Hurbon
Religion, Theory Monsters Monsters are not only key protagonists in myths, legends, fairy tales, fiction, and films; they also haunt cellars, cyberspace, and crossroads. Based on encounters with monsters in... October 2021 by Yasmine Musharbash	Health, Religion Mind There is something phenomenologically basic about the human experience of awareness, or consciousness. All ethnographies describe people who think, feel, imagine, hope, and are aware... October 2021 by Tanya Marie Luhrmann	Politics, Religion Buddhism Buddhism has existed for around two and half millennia, and is practiced by over 500 million people in the world today. The anthropology of Buddhism spans the breadth of the Buddhist... July 2021 by Joanna Cook, Hildegard Diemberger
Politics, Religion Sharia Sharia is a key concept in Islam and our contemporary world. Often translated into English as ‘Islamic law’, it includes financial contracts, criminal justice, and marriage and... November 2020 by Morgan Clarke	Religion, Theory Emic and etic The emic/etic distinction originated in linguistics in the 1950s to designate two complementary standpoints for the analysis of human language and behaviour. It has been... November 2020 by Till Mostowlansky, Andrea Rota	Religion, Theory Magic Attempts to define and describe magic must reckon with this concept’s slipperiness, as magic is often understood against what supposedly it is not: typically, ‘proper’ religion and ‘... October 2019 by Matteo Benussi
Religion, Theory Animism Animism is a particular sensibility and way of relating to various beings in the world. It involves attributing sentience to other beings that may include persons, animals, plants,... June 2019 by Katherine Swancutt	Religion, Theory Divination Divination is a widespread cultural practice that takes varied forms worldwide. It can be diagnostic, forecasting, and interventionist, in the sense of changing the receptor’s... April 2019 by Diana Espírito Santo	Politics, Religion Islam Islam is not an anthropological concept in the way, for example, culture, or even religion, are. People have thought about and discussed Islam long before anthropologists started... October 2018 by Samuli Schielke
Economics, Religion Charité Cet article aborde la charité comme un terme «étique» qui facilite la comparaison entre des traditions différentes. Les bases théoriques en ont été posées par deux grands... August 2018 by Jonathan Benthall	Health, Religion Death The variety of ways in which death has been handled in human societies has been a source of much scholarly fascination. In this brief overview, anthropological approaches to the... July 2018 by Bob Simpson	Religion, Theory Animals What role do nonhuman animals play in human social life? This question has long interested anthropologists, who have provided various answers, themselves reflective of broader... May 2018 by Thomas White, Matei Candea
Politics, Religion Cargo cults Cargo cult—the term—appeared in 1945, at the end of the Pacific War. Anthropologists rapidly embraced the neologism to label the Melanesian social movements that had come to their... March 2018 by Lamont Lindstrom	Economics, Religion Charity This entry considers charity as an ‘etic’ term that facilitates comparison between different traditions. Theoretical foundations were laid by two great anthropologists at the... December 2017 by Jonathan Benthall	Religion, Theory Ontological turn, the ‘Culture’ is in many ways the most fundamental of anthropological concepts. Yet it has been the subject of a range of critical interventions in the course of the discipline’s history,... May 2017 by Paolo Heywood
Religion, Theory Ethics / morality It is possible to argue that the anthropology of ethics has always been part of the discipline but also that it is a radically new and transformative venture. This entry explains why... May 2017 by James Laidlaw	Religion, Theory Values The concept of values has recently re-emerged as the object of explicit theoretical attention in a number of disciplines, including anthropology. The aim of this entry is to review... September 2016 by Joel Robbins, Julian Sommerschuh

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