Anthropology and the Ontological
Status of the Paranormal
by Jack Hunter
At a recent talk about anthropological approaches to the
study of the paranormal, at the Society for Psychical
Research, I was asked whether I thought that
anthropology was in a position to comment on the
ontology of the paranormal. This essay is an attempt to
expand a little on the answer that I gave.
Anthropological approaches to the study of the
paranormal have generally tended to focus on
supernatural beliefs without any attempt at addressing
the ontological status of the objects of these beliefs
(Giesler, 1984, 302). This trend began with Sir E.B
Tylor’s 19th century claim that establishing the
reality, or otherwise, of supernatural beliefs was
beyond the scope of the anthropological endeavour.
Consequently any notion of the reality behind
supernatural and religious beliefs has traditionally
been bracketed out in favour of studying the beliefs
themselves.
As the discipline developed,
however, the role of the anthropologist changed
significantly. With the advent of the methodology of
participant observation, as advocated by Bronislaw
Malinowski in the 20th century, anthropologists became
more than mere cut-and-paste academics. They started
living amongst those that they studied, and as they did
so found that the theories devised by armchair
anthropologists in the previous century were thoroughly
irreconcilable with the facts of “native” life. This was
especially true for the idea that so-called “savages”
were of a “primitive mentality”, utterly devoid of
reason and rationality. Fieldwork deconstructed the idea
that the western world-view was somehow superior to
other perspectives, and in so doing brought a number of
fundamental assumptions into question.
A
prerequisite assumption of dominant western scientific
thought is that there is no supernatural order of
reality. Positivism, an epistemological position that
inherently denies metaphysical speculation of any sort
(Comte, 1853), has been the point of departure for the
vast majority of scientific thought since the middle of
the 19th century. It has been a significant player in
the secularization and de-supernaturalisation of western
culture. Anthropology, as an outgrowth of 19th century
European culture, has always worked from this
perspective. It is understandable, therefore, that early
anthropologists, although concerned specifically with
notions of the supernatural, entirely ignored the
possibility that the beliefs and practices they studied
could have any basis in reality, or any efficacy that
was not the product of delusion and faulty logic.
But what happens when anthropologists are exposed to
experiences that apparently exceed the explanations
allowed for by dominant western rationalism, experiences
that in themselves appear to support the idea that there
is something more to reality than the physical? How are
such experiences to be interpreted and understood?
The anthropologist has several options. (1) The
experience may be bracketed out in line with the
position of theorists writing over a century ago. (2) It
can be explained away in terms that accord nicely with
positivist ideals, i.e. it was a hallucination with no
ontological value. Or, (3) it can be confronted head-on
and treated as a valid experience of an actual event,
whether paranormal or not.
If this last route is
chosen it must be admitted that there is a gap in the
way that western science has looked at the world. In
other words; that an aspect of reality has simply been
ignored, even if this aspect turns out not to have an
objective reality in a physical sense.
Now, all
of this might be considered as hypothetical speculation
were it not for the fact that anthropologists have
indeed been privy to anomalous experiences while working
in the field (McClenon & Nooney, 2002), and to my mind
this is a fairly serious issue. It has
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significant implications for the way in which
anthropologists interpret systems of belief and
practices dealing with supernatural notions, and more
broadly with the way in which science deals with the
so-called paranormal in general.
The
anthropological approach is a scientific one. In a
sense, therefore, anthropologists are scientists. Their
methodologies have been developed as a means to
empirically understand human beings. Participant
observation, then, is a scientific technique. If
paranormal experiences are achieved through participant
observation then we must say that a fact of experience
has been arrived at via the scientific method. If we can
accept the conclusions of anthropologists concerning
kinship systems, economic and social organization
structures, why should we ignore their claims to
ostensibly paranormal experience, which have been
arrived at in the same way?
It becomes clear
from all of this that participation is a fundamental and
necessary requirement if paranormal facts are to be
replicated. Rituals, for example, can only be fully
understood when they are engaged with on a participatory
level: simple observation will not suffice. If we were
to send an anthropologist into the field and they came
back saying that “if you properly participate in this
ritual you will see a spirit form”, we should send
another anthropologist to do the same. In this way
replication (or not) of results can be achieved and a
hypothesis as to the ontological status of the
phenomenon in question can be devised.
All of
this, however, proceeds from the assumption that western
science has just discovered something new about the
world. The truth is, though, that the rituals we see in
existence around the globe were not spontaneously
created only very recently. In actuality, rituals as
they exist today are the direct product of centuries, if
not millennia, of constant practice and refinement
geared especially towards attaining specific goals: the
object of the ritual. An exceedingly long time has
already been spent in ensuring the repeatability of
ritual outcomes over the course of human development.
Ritual practices would not have survived if they
constantly failed to achieve their intended goals.
Anthropologists have tended to ignore this fact, and
this has led to an almost innocent state of mind whereby
we think that we have only just discovered that rituals
can be effective. In actuality we have attempted,
historically, to blank out what our informants have been
telling us and only now are we beginning to realize how
foolishly we have behaved.
In the same way that
if one follows the recipe for a chocolate cake in detail
a chocolate cake will result from the procedure: if one
follows a ritual properly the ritual outcome will be
achieved. This is precisely what Edith Turner found when
she participated in the Ihamba ceremony of the Ndembu in
Zambia (the climax of which resulted in the apparent
extraction of a spirit-form from the back of the
suffering patient). Her experience led her to declare
that in order to “reach a peak experience in ritual it
really is necessary to sink oneself fully in it”
(Turner, 1993, 9), and in doing so she presents a
methodology by which anthropologists can approach the
issue of establishing the ontological status of
paranormal phenomena. Engage with it an experience it
for yourself, and thus overcome what she refers to as
“positivists denial”.
continues
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