Anthropos: Anthropos, 99.2004

Anthropos, 99.2004

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Strukturtyp:: Zeitschrift

Werks-URN (URL):: https://digi.evifa.de/viewer/resolver?urn=urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-714820

URN:: urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-714820

Persistenter Identifier:: BV043334262

Titel:: Anthropos

Untertitel:: internationale Zeitschrift für Völker- u. Sprachenkunde

Erscheinungsort:: Fribourg

Verlag:: Ed. St. Paul

Erscheinungsjahr:: 1906

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Wissensgebiet:: Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie > Allgemeines

Zeitschriftenband

Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenband

Werks-URN (URL):: https://digi.evifa.de/viewer/resolver?urn=urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-711752

URN:: urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-711752

Persistenter Identifier:: 1510222436589

Titel:: Anthropos, 99.2004

Erscheinungsjahr:: 2004

Signatur:: LA 1118

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

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Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenheft

Titel:: Bd. 99, 2004, Heft 2

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

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Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenartikel

Titel:: Toward a Cultural Psychology of Voluntary Action Beliefs

Sonstige Person:: Nuckolls, Charles W.

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

ANTHROPOS 99.2004: 411-425 Toward a Cultural Psychology of Voluntary Action Beliefs Charles W. Nuckolls Abstract. - The concept and perception of voluntary action develops through systematic violations of intuitive cognitive as sumptions. It bears a resemblance, therefore, to concepts Pascal Boyer calls “religious.” However, Boyer understands the devel opment of concepts as a purely cognitive process, and neglects the processes that give rise to emotional attachment. This article argues that the cognitive account must be supplemented by a theory of the emotions, and suggests that “attachment,” as John Bowlby understood it, frames and constrains the development of concepts such as “action.” Ethnographic data from India are used to test the hypothesis that action concepts develop first and foremost in relation to the experience of emotional attachment in early childhood. [Psychological anthropology, c ognitive anthropology, voluntary action, natural ontologies, religious systems] Charles W. Nuckolls, Ph. D. (University of Chicago, 1987), the 1989 recipient of the Stirling Award for Contributions to Psychological Anthropology; from 1990 to 1999 Associate Professor at Emory University. He is now Professor of Anthro- Pology at the University of Alabama. - For publications: see *ef. Cited. The focus of this article is voluntary action, that ls > the subjective impression associated with the Potion that one is the agent of one’s own acts. To say that one did something on the basis of a P intention to act is usually taken for granted. However, it is not at all clear how an action 18 actually planned and executed, how a subject Incomes conscious of intending to act, or why, ln certain circumstances, one feels that actions are directed by forces external to the subject. The position advanced in this article is that the concept and perception of “voluntary action” develops through systematic violations of intuitive c °gnitive assumptions. It bears a resemblance, therefore, to concepts Pascal Boyer calls “reli gious.” Boyer suggests that superhuman agencies - the essential characteristic, he says, of all reli gious systems - possess features that are salient and memorable chiefly by virtue of their power to violate natural ontologies (Boyer 2001b; see also Lawson and McCauley 1990). In other words, we grow up expecting certain things to happen, like “things fall when dropped,” and these de- velopmentally prescribed intuitions become our “ontologies.” We fashion our gods by imagining how these expectations can be violated, e.g., “gods float, hover, fly, and otherwise act unconstrained by gravity.” One of these so-called natural ontolo gies, to extend the Boyer hypothesis, is agency. If it is natural to assume that human actions are voluntary and proceed from the exercise of will, then religiously formulated concepts violate this assumption by postulating the existence of beings who control all of our actions. That is the kind of intuition-violation that makes superhuman agen cies, from Christ to Krishna, salient and memo rable, and their cults transmissible from generation to generation. The problem with this hypothesis is that Boy er and his colleagues 1 generally do not consider emotion, and thus neglect the relationship between action and the desire for attachment. This is an old problem in the social science, the result, probably, of the fact that cognitivists and psychoanalysts typically do not talk to each other and the fear that each side means to swallow the other whole. Still, could an account that combines cognitive insights 1 Atran 1998; Boyer and Walker 2000; Pyysiáinen 2001; Whitehouse 2000.

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