Dreaming : Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams
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Dreaming

June-September 2004 (Vol. 14, Nos. 2-3)

 

Special Issue: Anthropological Approaches to Dreaming

Guest Editor: Charles Stewart

CONTENTS

 

Introduction: Dreaming as an Object of Anthropological Analysis
Charles Stewart
Page 75

Dream Sharing as Social Practice
Murray L. Wax
Page 83

From Elsewhere: Prophetic Visions and Dreams Among the People of the Earth
Roland Littlewood
Page 94

"That Which I Dream Is True": Dream Narratives in an Amazonian Community
Daniela M. Peluso
Page 107

Dressing in the Stuff of Dreams: Sacred Dress and Religious Authority in Southwestern Nigeria
Elisha P. Renne
Page 120

Forest Smells and Spider Webs: Ritualized Dream Interpretation Among Andaman Islanders
Vishvajit Pandya
Page 136

Toward a Holographic Theory of Dreaming
Jeannette Marie Mageo
Page 151

The Anthropology of Dreaming: Selfscape Dreams
Douglas Hollan
Page 170

The Poetics and Spirituality of Dreaming: A Native American Enactive Theory
Barbara Tedlock
Page 183

 

ABSTRACTS

 

Introduction: Dreaming as an Object of Anthropological Analysis
Charles Stewart
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3) 75-82, June-September 2004.

This article introduces a special issue on anthropological approaches to dreaming. A running history of dreams in the field of anthropology serves as a device for contextualizing the articles. The narrative identifies perennial areas of interest such as the question of why some societies value dreams while others do not. Anthropological approaches have varied from Victorian evolutionism to contemporary psychoanalysis and reflexivity. Each new theoretical paradigm has pushed the study of dreams in different directions, led to the study of new aspects of dreaming, and, sometimes, guided the exploration of new dimensions of social life. The presentation of ethnographic case studies of dreaming in specific cultural contexts constitutes one of anthropology's strongest contributions to the study of dreaming.
KEY WORDS: dreams; history of anthropology; rationality; relativism; experience; reflexivity



Dream Sharing as Social Practice
Murray L. Wax
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3) 83-93, June-September 2004.

Among the small communities of hunter–gatherers, dream sharing is widespread. The entities within their world (animals, plants, etc.) were regarded as sentient, responsive beings, with whom discourse could be established via dreams, visions, and trances, together with song, dance, and ritual. Their temporal orientation was mythic/paradigmatic (kairotic) rather than chronologic, so that creation could continually be recurring. In critical contrast, high Western intellectual thought—post-Reformation and post-Enlightenment—has been increasingly disenchanted, materialistic, reductionist, and routinized (Max Weber) and has approached dreams as the product of "the brain" of an individuated actor. In opposition to such formalized intellectualistic approaches, oppositional groups have revived the reverence for dreams and the practice of dream sharing. The evanescent character of dreams, and their creative aesthetic qualities, reveal their origin in the psyche of social beings and their tension with the self-system.
KEY WORDS: dream sharing; hunter-gatherer communities; self-system; kairos (paradigmatic time)



From Elsewhere: Prophetic Visions and Dreams Among the People of the Earth
 Roland Littlewood
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3), 94-106, June-September 2004.

Anthropological ethnographies sometimes postulate that new religious ideas may originate in individual dreams, visions, or madness. An illustration is given of the foundation of the Earth People of Trinidad, for whom dreams may still contain prophetic insight or knowledge. Their oneiric understandings have to be placed against their cultural baseline of village dream theory and the dreamlike visions of the Shouter Baptists. It is argued that the physical conditions of the community's daily life are perhaps conducive to visionary perceptions in a half-waking, half-sleeping state. KEY WORDS: pathomimesis; psychosis; creativity; dreams; Trinidad



"That Which I Dream Is True": Dream Narratives in an Amazonian Community
Daniela M. Peluso
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3), 107-119, June-September 2004.

In an Ese Eja community in the Peruvian Amazon, people dream the names of their children. Apart from a neo-Freudian perspective, naming dreams reflect, more importantly, multiple overlapping realities of time and space. As such, notions of agency, multiplicity, and transformation need to be examined for a proper analysis of dreaming. Drawing on multinatural perspectivism, the author examines eshawa, an Ese Eja concept of personhood that connects the self not only with the body but also with all species and an expansive sprit world. The author suggests that naming dreams are reminders of the still possible transformation between multiple worlds. Such an interpretation of dreams, as sources of knowledge and channels to cross realities, emphasizes the overlay between subjective dream worlds and public objective waking worlds rather than their "opposition."

KEY WORDS: Amazonia; dream interpretation; naming; myths; gender; multinatural perspectivism



Dressing in the Stuff of Dreams: Sacred Dress and Religious Authority in Southwestern Nigeria
Elisha P. Renne
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3) 120-135, June-September 2004.

Founders of the Cherubim & Seraphim Church, an independent African church in southwestern Nigeria, frequently recounted dreams or visions of angels or other heavenly beings, evidence to themselves and others of their special spiritual status. At times, these beings appeared in garments, images of which were later transformed by tailors into clothing worn by Cherubim & Seraphim church leaders. Whereas church members as a group wore prayer gowns of plain white cloth referring to depictions of angels in the Bible, church leaders materially emphasized their individual otherworldly connections and spiritual gifts through their distinctive garments inspired by dreams and visions. Some robes also came to be associated with the special healing powers of particular prophets who wore them. The author examines how the making and wearing of garments originating in dreams and visions have contributed to a creative process whereby religious authority has been constituted in southwestern Nigeria.

KEY WORDS: dreams; dress; spirituality; religious authority; Nigeria; African independent churches



Forest Smells and Spider Webs: Ritualized Dream Interpretation Among Andaman Islanders
Vishvajit Pandya
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3) 136-150, June-September 2004.

This article examines the significant role of dreams among the Andamanese and the changes in sleep and dreaming that have taken place as modern settlements replace traditional campsites. As Andamanese hunters and gatherers go to sleep at a campsite, they discuss what they did throughout the day and especially what they have seen in dreams. In the morning, it is proscribed to wake a person up so that dreaming is not disturbed. A shared consensus on the group's dreams guides the members' waking actions. The sleeping arrangements in modern Andamanese settlements have changed: Andamanese believe that these afford less dream recall or understanding and attribute their declining hunting success to this diminished dreaming.

KEY WORDS: dreams; Andaman Islanders; smells; rituals; Radcliffe-Brown



Toward a Holographic Theory of Dreaming
Jeannette Marie Mageo
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams.. Vol 14(2-3) 151-169, June-September 2004.

Contemporary psychologists hold that dreams sort memories. These memories can be seen as shared memories symbolizing key contradictions in culture. These contradictions originate in psychologically unresolved historical problems that rupture shared meaning systems. Dreams evoke these contradictions holograpically by deploying images circulating in the public sphere that constitute meaning fragments. Dream images are often dramatically fragmentary, which compels dreamers to elaborate them. These elaborations constitute cultural work: Through a figurative mode of thought, dreamers connect a fragmentary image to personal emotions and to other significances in a culture's symbolic–psychological world, thereby making new meanings. Dreams and interpretative work on them, therefore, are usefully understood as instrumental to cultural change and as instances of cultural practice rather than solely as private and individual. The article develops this holographic theory of dreams through the analysis of 2 Samoan dreams from the 1980s and 1 American dream from the 1960s.

KEY WORDS: dreams; holographs; meanings; cultural memories



The Anthropology of Dreaming: Selfscape Dreams
Douglas Hollan
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3) 170-182, June-September 2004.

The author discusses the concept of "selfscape" dreams, dreams that are emotionally and perceptually vivid and that reflect back to the dreamer how his or her current organization of self relates various parts of itself to itself, its body, and other people and objects in the world. The author provides examples of selfscape dreams from Indonesia, New Guinea, and the United States and demonstrates how the mapping of the self in selfscape dreams goes inward to the body as well as outward to people and objects in the world. Throughout, he emphasizes how the manifest contents of dreams can help reveal aspects of self-organization rather than disguise them.

KEY WORDS: anthropology; dreaming; selfscape dreams; manifest content; Toraja; Indonesia



The Poetics and Spirituality of Dreaming: A Native American Enactive Theory
Barbara Tedlock
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 14(2-3) 183-189, June-September 2004.

In Native North American cultures, dreams provide a valuable source of information about, and a compassionate understanding of, spiritual phenomena. Dreams that begin as personal entities shift during dream telling or performing to provide a cosmic doorway into another dimension of reality. Such power dreams in Native American cultures resemble Tibetan Buddhist Dream Yoga much more than they do Euro-American forms of lucid dreaming.

KEY WORDS: Native American dreaming; vision quests; incubation; power dreams; lucidity


 

 

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