description Paul Stoller Overview
Paul Stoller is an American anthropologist who has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork among the Songhay people of Niger since the 1970s. His research focuses on religion, healing practices, and spirit possession in West Africa, contributing to the development of sensory anthropology, which emphasizes non-visual senses in understanding cultural practices. He has authored numerous academic works including 'The Taste of Ethnographic Things' and 'In Sorcery's Shadow,' as well as memoirs and novels that blend scholarly and literary approaches to anthropology.
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What did Paul Stoller study in Niger?
Paul Stoller conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork among the Songhay people of Niger beginning in the 1970s. His research examined religion, healing, spirit possession, and everyday sensory experience.
What is In Sorcery's Shadow by Paul Stoller?
In Sorcery's Shadow is a 1987 ethnographic book by Paul Stoller and Cheryl Olkes. It explores Songhay healing and sorcery through the experiences of a Songhay sorcerer and healer.
What is sensory anthropology?
Sensory anthropology studies how people understand the world through embodied experiences such as taste, smell, sound, touch, and movement. Stoller's work helped make sensory experience a major subject in ethnographic writing.
Why is Paul Stoller's work important for anthropology?
Stoller challenged approaches that treated culture as something understood only through abstract symbols or written explanations. His Songhay research emphasized apprenticeship, bodily knowledge, and the lived experience of healing and spirit possession.
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