James Winslow Dow

Oakland University · Department of Sociology and Anthropology

In the last three decades of the twentieth century, many people in Mexico and Central America turned to Protestantism as a new religion. The greatest increase has been in rural and Indians areas. This article shows that Protestantism in these areas is not a reaction against the Catholic Church as much as it is a reaction against traditional Indian...

This article examines three anthropological theories explaining how religion has evolved and continues to evolve. They are: commit-ment theory, which postulates that religion is a system of costly sig-naling that reduces deception and creates cooperation within groups; cognitive theory, which postulates that religion is the manifestation of mental...

This article offers a theoretical solution to the problem of how irrational and distorted thinking can evolve naturally in a social species. It first outlines the various theories that have arisen during the search for the evolutionary origins of religion. It rejects psychological by-product theories because evolution is driven by variation and nat...

The easiest way of understanding religion is through the eyes of a believer. However, a non-believer often cannot accept this vision because it refers to beings and forces that he or she cannot independently verify. Religion is even more of a puzzle to the scientist, who is taught to believe only in a reality that can be observed and tested. Yet, r...

This paper discusses two types of knowledge that are gen- erated by cultural anthropology, narrative knowledge and sci- entific knowledge. The argument of this article is that narra- tive knowledge an older form of knowledge that dates to the time when the brain was evolving its capacity for cultural com- munication, and that scientific knowledge i...

Religious people talk about things that cannot be seen, stories that cannot be verified, and beings and forces beyond the ordinary. Perhaps their gods are truly at work, or perhaps in human nature there is an impulse to proclaim religious knowledge. If so, it would have to have arisen by natural selection. It is hard to imagine how natural selectio...

Religion is a collection of behavior that is only unified in our Western conception of it. It need not have a natural unity. There is no reason to assume, and good reason not to assume, that all religious behavior evolved together at the same time in response to a single shift in the environment. This article does not look at the religion as a uni-...

Abstract Environmental learning, acquiring a behavior trait through experimentation alone, has been used as a counterpoise to cul- tural transmission. This article concludes,that memory,needs to be added,to models,of environmental,learning to make,them more,realistic. The main,difference between,memory,and non- memory,models,is that all the members...

At the moment there are a number of interesting anthropological theories about the evolution of religion based not on the earlier idea of myths being written on blank slates but on the biological evolution of the human central nervous system. I would like to look at some of these from an adaptationist point of view, a view that looks at the functio...

Published In Mesas and Cosmologies in Mesoamerica. Edited by Douglas Sharon. Pp 25-31. San Diego, CA: San Diego Museum of Man. 2003.

The primary goal of this book is to present empirical data on Protes- tantism in contemporary Mesoamerica and to offer a rich mix of theoreti- cal explanations that can eventually be triangulated to build a more com- plete anthropological understanding of the role that Protestantism plays in the region. Most of the chapters in the volume are based...

Published in Holy Saints and Fiery Preachers: The Anthropology of Protestantism in Mexico and Central America. Edited by James W. Dow and Alan R. Sandstrom. Pp. 1-23. Westport CT: Praeger

A semi-biographical ethnographic summary. An earlier version was published as a chapter in Prentice Hall's series "Portraits of Culture: Ethnographic Originals" edited by M. Ember, C. Ember, and D. Levinson. It describes the field work and discoveries by myself and my wife working together to gather information about a little-know Mexican Indian gr...

Geographical information illuminates many features of culture that cannot be seen otherwise. Higher-resolution mapping of cultural traits, now possible with computer-ized techniques, can open a new window on human cultural adaptation. It can look at where people live on a scale that is small enough to reveal the features of the environ-ment to whic...

Rarámuri Souls: Knowledge and Social Process in Northern Mexico. William L. Merrill. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. 1988. xi+237 pp., illustrations, notes, references, index. $24.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-8747-684-1.

In this article I propose that symbolic healing has a universal structure in which the healer helps the patient particularize a general cultural mythic world and manipulate healing symbols in it. Problems currently existing in the explanation of symbolic healing are examined. The relationship between Western psychotherapy and magical healing is exp...

The terms "tonal" and "nagual" refer to the supernatural companion animals in which Mesoamerican Indians believe. The meaning of the companion animals for one group of Indians, the Otomí of the Sierra Norte de Puebla, is analyzed. Most of the data for analysis comes from the teachings of a practicing Otomí shaman. The conclusion is that there is on...

This paper discusses a method of building mathematical models of information and energy flows within particular culture in order to describe and analyze this adaptation more precisely. Beside describing the adaptive systems in detail, these models allow an examination of their dynamic behavior by means of computer simulation and mathematical analys...

This article develops a general mathematical stochastic model of lineage evolution and provides a method for testing its adequacy as an explanation of the number of lineages or clans found in a particular social unit.

It has been suggested that Protestantism appeals to rural peasants and Indians in Mexico because it has similarities to native religions. Most of these suggestions focus on the ecstatic psychological states aroused in the two types of religions. However, the analogies break-down as one looks more closely at the rituals. This paper presents another...

Above two valleys in the northeastern escarpment of the central plateau of Mexico leading to the Gulf of Mexico stands the sacred mountain Cerro Brujo. On a promontory facing north where one can see the villages below is a shrine with many crosses. For centuries the the Sierra ˜ N¨

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brandeis University, 1972. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 317-324). Microfilm. s