Looking backward: Thirty years of research in the anthropology of consciousness

My aim in this paper is to consider developments in the anthropology of consciousness from a long-term perspective. It may therefore be helpful to look back some thirty years and consider the state of affairs at that time. Of course, there wasn't anything called the "Anthropology of Consciousness." Psychologists had long ago given the whole notion of consciousness a bad name and put its study beyond the pale. There were only a few exceptions. For example, Charles Tart began to study consciousness and its alterations in the 1950s, working with Aldous Huxley who was then starting to experiment with mescaline (Huxley 1963 [1954], Tart 1963, 1972).