부산대학교 도서관

Psychic Investigators examines British anthropology'sengagement with the modern spiritualist movement during the lateVictorian era. Efram Sera-Shriar argues that debates over theexistence of ghosts and psychical powers were at the center ofanthropological discussions on human beliefs. He focuses on theimportance of establishing credible witnesses of spirit and psychicphenomena in the writings of anthropologists such as Alfred RusselWallace, Edward Burnett Tylor, Andrew Lang, and Edward Clodd. Thebook draws on major themes, such as the historical relationshipbetween science and religion, the history of scientificobservation, and the emergence of the subfield of anthropology ofreligion in the second half of the nineteenth century. Forsecularists such as Tylor and Clodd, spiritualism posed a majorobstacle in establishing the legitimacy of the theory of animism: acore theoretical principle of anthropology founded in the belief of"primitive cultures" that spirits animated the world, and that thisbelief represented the foundation of all religious paradigms. Whatbecomes clear through this nuanced examination of Victoriananthropology is that arguments involving spirits or psychic forcesusually revolved around issues of evidence, or lack of it, ratherthan faith or beliefs or disbeliefs.