Microbes and Other Shamanic Beings

• Main Author: Giraldo Herrera, César E. (Author, http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
• Edition: 1st ed. 2018.
• Subjects: Physical anthropology.; Culture.; Social medicine.; History.; Human geography.; Biological and Physical Anthropology.; Sociology of Culture.; Medical Sociology.; History of Science.; Human Geography.

Shamanism is commonly understood through reference to spirits and souls. However, these terms were introduced by Christian missionaries as part of the colonial effort of conversion. So, rather than trying to comprehend shamanism through medieval European concepts, this book examines it through ideas...

Table of Contents:

• 1. Colonising and decolonising ontologies
• Part 1: Amerindian shamanism
• 2. (Mis)Understanding shamanism and animism
• 3. First contacts with Amerindian shamans and their "spirits"
• 4. Syncretic ontologies of the microbial-masters of game
• Part 2: Shamanic microscopy, perceiving cellular souls and microbial spirits
• 5. Shamanic epistemologies
• 6. Neuropsychological naturalistic explanations of shamanic visions
• 7. The cavern of the eye: seeing through the retina
• 8. Entoptic microscopy
• Part 3: Biosocial Ethnohistory of Syphilis and Related Diseases
• 9. French malaise in the Taíno myths of origin
• 10. The spotted Sun and the blemished Moon, Nahuatl views on treponematoses
• 11. The West, Syphilis and the other treponematoses
• 12. Threading worlds together.