The greatest crisis of our times in a failure of the human imagination. -Editors The world is currently undergoing a period of unprecedented crises on virtually every front: economic, ecological, and humanitarian. It is starkly apparent that a shift is needed in our dominant structural systems - and that by addressing the collective thinking that has created and maintained these systems, scholars can do their part to catalyze such a shift. The interdisciplinary field known as the Anthropology of Consciousness offers important insights for enacting this necessary shift. This book draws on the work of a group of diverse scholars to explore what the intersection of anthropology and consciousness studies can contribute to the public turn within anthropology and the academy in general. Its twelve chapters span disparate geographies and disciplinary frameworks, yet cohere in their focus on common themes such as imagination, empathy, agency, dialogue, and ethics. The answers to the question So What? Now What? differ for a linguistic anthropologist in the South Pacific, an environmental educator in Hawai'i, a grant-writing anthropologist serving a refugee agency in Portland, Oregon and the founder of a girls' school in Brazil. Nevertheless, they are united in the desire to reframe the anthropology of consciousness as an anthropology of conscience, and this pioneering volume is the result.
About the Author: Matthew C. Bronson, Ph.D, an educational linguist, is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies and a teacher educator at the University of California at Davis. He has recently co-authored chapters in two books, including the Encyclopedia of Language and Education Research, and edited four special journal issues on Indigenous/Western dialogue and re-visioning higher education. Tina R. Fields, Ph.D., an ecopsychologist, has taught about the cultural and psycho-spiritual dimensions of environmental issues for Lesley University's Audubon Expedition Institute, New College, and Dominican University. Her recent publications include essays about ecological relationship in Courting the Wild and an entry on pre-Christian Celtic beliefs in the Encyclopedia of Shamanism. She is also an accomplished visual and performing artist.