Training Theories of Mind in Post-conflict Northern Uganda

Williams, Lars

doi:10.1080/01459740.2020.1802722

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…This training in porousness renders the North American evangelicals more similar to my Ugandan informants than they might otherwise be, because they are training their minds to experience themselves as porous in similar ways. This also points to the training aspect being central to debates about minds in different cultural settings (Cassaniti & Luhrmann, 2014;Kirmayer & Ramstead, 2017;Williams, 2020). I would argue that the conceptual approach to minds and mental illness, although building on Luhrmann's (2012a) work from North America, is applicable in an Acholi context not just because it deals with a similar kind of religious practice, but because of the way these religious practices are conceptualized; as cultural skills that are learned and that come to work as tools of the mind, or as cultural affordances that shape "regimes of attention" (Ramstead, Veissi ere, & Kirmayer, 2016, p. 3) or "cultural expectations" (Cassaniti & Luhrmann, 2014, p. 333).…”

Section: Training Regimes Of Attention Through Prayermentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Bringing in details of one person's story also makes comparison more accessible within broader conversation and debates on concepts of minds and mental disorders in different geographical and cultural contexts. In this approach, I mainly follow Meinert andWhyte (2017, 2020) in their studies using single extended cases 5 of similar issues in northern Uganda (see also Williams & Meinert, 2017, 2020. This approach also follows a legacy of medical and psychological anthropology, where single informants or families take on a central role in case representation (Biehl, 2013;Desjarlais, 1996;Good, 1993;Luhrmann, 2012b;Luhrmann & Marrow, 2016;Mattingly, 2014).…”

Section: Fieldworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“An automatic Bible in the brain”: Trauma and prayer among Acholi Pentecostals in northern Uganda

Williams

2021

Transcult Psychiatry

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This article examines the role of prayers for traumatized survivors of war within a Pentecostal-charismatic community in post-conflict northern Uganda. It argues that becoming part of a church group and learning certain regimes of prayer can work toward symptom relief and recovery for people suffering from traumatic experiences. The study builds on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in rural northern Uganda, with extensive participant observation of religious practices and interviews with rural church congregants. The article attempts to show, through a single case narrative, how individual prayer practices are trained and learned and to identify features of prayer that may alter the individual experience of distress. Analytically, the article builds on Tanya Luhrmann’s scholarship on prayer and applies this conceptual framework to a post-conflict context. The study expands on Luhrmann’s concepts of prayer as an emotional technology in order to understand how psychiatric symptoms are managed within a Pentecostal-charismatic community. The article further argues that a conceptual focus on training of skills can contribute to debates on the universal versus particular characteristics of psychiatric expression and concepts of mind. This argument contributes to current debates on non-clinical ways of managing traumatic experiences and to debates about models of mind in different cultural settings.

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Section: Training Regimes Of Attention Through Prayermentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Fieldworkmentioning

confidence: 99%