Engaging the Anomalous
Engaging the Anomalous: Collected Essays on Anthropology, the Paranormal, Mediumship and Extraordinary Experience
Jack Hunter
Engaging the Anomalous is a collection of essays written by Jack Hunter
between 2010-17. Together, the essays push toward the development of a
non-reductive, participatory and experiential anthropology of the paranormal.
Over the course of the book, Hunter surveys:
• Trends in anthropology’s engagement with the paranormal
• The anthropology and neuroscience of spirit possession
• The history of Spiritualism and the phenomena of physical mediumship
• The overlaps between mediumistic practices and other mind-body
phenomena
Hunter also poses serious questions about consciousness, experience,
spirits, mediumship, psi, the nature of reality, and how best to investigate
and understand them. In addition, the book features a selection of illuminating
interviews with the author, as well as an original Foreword by leading
parapsychologist and trickster theorist George P. Hansen. Engaging the
Anomalous is a bold contribution to Anomalistic literature.
Praise for 'Engaging the Anomalous'
"As I have lectured on both sides of the pond, I have noticed a
kind of quiet renaissance of interest in the paranormal among intellectuals,
especially among younger scholars of religion, anthropology, and literary
criticism. Jack Hunter is a shining light among these emerging voices. His
search for a non-reductive anthropology, for a "paranthropology" as
his journal has it, is among the most hopeful and creative signs in our shared
fields. With his trademark refusal to simply "bracket" away every
honest ontological question and his balanced insistence that there is a third
path forward between and beyond naive belief and equally naive debunking, Jack has
blazed a trail through any number of intellectual and spiritual jungles. Here
is a welcome record of that trail-blazing and that intellectual courage."
Jeffrey J. Kripal,
author of 'Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents
in the History of Religions.'
"Throughout history, across all cultures, and at all educational
levels, people have reported experiences labeled strange, bizarre, paranormal,
or supernatural. Anthropologist Jack Hunter inspects these weird but common
experiences in a collected set of crisp essays and interviews. Are such
experiences real, despite their challenges to today's scientific worldview? Or
should we take human experiences more seriously and use them as clues to help
expand our sense of reality? These are among the endlessly fascinating
questions explored in an engaging way in 'Engaging the Anomalous.'"
Dean Radin,
Chief Scientist, Institute of Noetic Sciences.
Author of 'Real Magic.'
"A must-read for anyone interested in the study of anomalous,
extraordinary, and paranormal experiences. The brilliance of Hunter's analysis
is not just that he identifies how contemporary methods fall short of weighing
in on the ontological reality of the paranormal... but in the construction of a
new method, a new strategy, that acknowledges the "agency" of spirits
and paranormal experience. Yes, spirits are ontologically real, surprise!"
Diana Walsh Pasulka, Ph.D.,
Professor and Chair of the Department of
Philosophy and Religion,
University of North Carolina, Wilmington.
Author of 'American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology'
About the author
Dr. Jack Hunter is an anthropologist exploring the borderlands of
consciousness, religion and the paranormal, living in the hills of Mid-Wales.
His doctoral research with the University of Bristol examined the experiences
of spirit mediums and their influence on the development of self-concepts and
models of consciousness, and is an effort towards a non-reductive anthropology
of the paranormal. He is the founder and editor of Paranthropology: Journal of
Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal. He is the author of Why People
Believe in Spirits, Gods and Magic (2012), editor of Strange Dimensions: A
Paranthropology Anthology (2015), Damned Facts: Fortean Essays on Religion,
Folklore and the Paranormal (2016), and co-editor with Dr. David Luke of
Talking With the Spirits: Ethnographies from Between the Worlds (2014). He has
served as a reviewer for the Journal of Exceptional Experiences and Psychology
(JEEP), Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religion (JBASR),
the Journal for the Study of Religious Experience (JSRE) and is a founding
member of the Afterlife Research Centre (ARC). He is currently an Access to
Higher Education tutor for Health and Social Care (Social Sciences) at North
Shropshire College, where he teaches Psychology and Sociology. He completed a
Permaculture Design Course at Chester Cathedral in 2017, and is currently
working on a project to develop a mainstream permaculture curriculum for
schools. He is also a musician and an ordained Dudeist Priest. To find out more
about his research and publications visit http://www.jack-hunter.webstarts.com
Publisher: August Night Press
Published May 2018
262 pages
Size: 229 x 152 mm