No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The evolution of the shaman's cultural toolkit
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2018
Abstract
A complete picture of shamanism's cultural evolution requires an understanding of how the professionalization of shamanism affects the distribution of knowledge within societies. We suggest that limiting knowledge to fewer people could impede the accumulation of functional knowledge within shamanism. On this basis, we make further predictions about how the domain of shamanism could change and collapse.
- Type
- Open Peer Commentary
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018
Target article
The cultural evolution of shamanism
Related commentaries (25)
A ritual by any other name
An existential perspective on the psychological function of shamans
Biological foundations and beneficial effects of trance
Commitment enforcement also explains shamanism's culturally shared features
Complexity and possession: Gender and social structure in the variability of shamanic traits
Do shamans violate notions of humanness?
Enjoying your cultural cheesecake: Why believers are sincere and shamans are not charlatans
Financial alchemists and financial shamans
Genetic predilections and predispositions for the development of shamanism
Identifying the nature of shamanism
Increased affluence, life history theory, and the decline of shamanism
Missing links: The psychology and epidemiology of shamanistic beliefs
Psychosis is episodically required for the enduring integrity of shamanism
Shamanism and efficacious exceptionalism
Shamanism and psychosis: Shared mechanisms?
Shamanism and the psychosis continuum
Shamanism and the social nature of cumulative culture
Shamanism within a general theory of religious action (no cheesecake needed)
Shamans as healers: When magical structure becomes practical function
Some needed psychological clarifications on the experience(s) of shamanism
The cultural evolution of war rituals
The evolution of the shaman's cultural toolkit
The social functions of shamanism
Therapeutic encounters and the elicitation of community care
Toward a neurophysiological foundation for altered states of consciousness
Author response
Why is there shamanism? Developing the cultural evolutionary theory and addressing alternative accounts