Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self

by Thomas J. Csordas

Students of culture have been increasingly concerned with the ways in which cultural values are inscribed on the body. The unifying theme of these essays is that the body is at once a fount of symbols and the instrument of experience. This more complex and dynamic view is applied by the contributors to a variety of topics, including dietary customs, the expression of emotion, the experience of pain, and political violence. Their purpose is to contribute to a phenomenological theory of culture and self.

Genres: Anthropology, Philosophy, Nonfiction

308 pages, Paperback

First published November 17, 1994

About the author

Dr. Thomas Csordas is an anthropologist whose principal interests are in medical and psychological anthropology, comparative religion, anthropological theory, cultural phenomenology and embodiment, globalization and social change, language and culture. He has conducted ethnographic research with Charismatic Catholics, Navajo Indians, and adolescents in the American Southwest on topics including therapeutic process in religious healing, ritual language and creativity, sensory imagery, self transformation, techniques of the body, causal reasoning about illness, and the experience of psychiatric inpatients.