Thomas J. Csordas is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California San Diego, where he holds the Dr. James Y. Chan Presidential Chair in Global Health, and serves as Founding Director of the Global Health Program and Director of the UCSD Global Health Institute. His research interests include medical and psychological anthropology, global mental health, anthropological theory, comparative religion, cultural phenomenology and embodiment, globalization and social change, and language and culture. He has conducted ethnographic research among Charismatic Catholics, Navajo Indians, adolescent psychiatric patients in New Mexico, and Catholic exorcists in the United States and Italy. His book-length publications include Embodiment and Experience (1994); The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing (1994); Language, Charisma,and Creativity (1997); Body/Meaning/Healing (2002); Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization (2009); William C. Olsen and Thomas J. Csordas, eds. Engaging Evil: A Moral Anthropology (2019); Janis H. Jenkins and Thomas J. Csordas Troubled in the Land of Enchantment (2020).
Anthropological concern with embodiment began in part with consideration of Merleau-Ponty's theor... more Anthropological concern with embodiment began in part with consideration of Merleau-Ponty's theory of perception, and this essay continues in that vein by considering his theory of nature. Embodiment from this standpoint is our general existential condition and an indeterminate methodological field for a cultural phenomenology attuned to the immediacy of lived experience. Without claiming to define nature or human nature, the essay offers an outline of embodiment as a framework for integrating corporeality, animality, and materiality. These three domains have generated lively bodies of literature that do not always speak to one another, and that invite phenomenological critique in a world where the existential and ethical position of humanity is increasingly in question and precarious.
“Letting die” by design: Asylum seekers’ lived experience of postcolonial necropolitics, 2023
Although the United States has been a nation of immigrants since its founding, the massive number... more Although the United States has been a nation of immigrants since its founding, the massive number of asylum seekers arriving at the US-Mexico Border is a relatively new phenomenon that requires attention and study. This paper describes the lived experience of three asylum seekers, demonstrating how physical and mental health are structured by US policies and politics. The in-depth accounts are informed by participant observation and policy analysis of humanitarian, non-governmental organizations advocating for asylum seekers. We focus on health and geographical trajectories using the triple trauma paradigm that includes trauma in the country of origin, trauma incurred during transit/flight, and the trauma of arrival and relocation/resettlement in the host country. We suggest that a form of necropower, understood as processes exacerbating the potentiality for death, is embedded in the structure of the US asylum apparatus.
Philosophy on Fieldwork: Case Studies in Anthropological Analysis, 2022
Maurice Merleau-Ponty's understanding of sound as an intimate aspect of embodiment, captured in h... more Maurice Merleau-Ponty's understanding of sound as an intimate aspect of embodiment, captured in his description of our "sonorous being," serves as a guide to interpret the existential significance of wordless ritual songs in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and the Native American Church.
Mediating Catholicism: Religion and Media in Global Catholic Imaginaries, 2022
Through analysis of television documentary and documentary film, this paper shows how contemporar... more Through analysis of television documentary and documentary film, this paper shows how contemporary Roman Catholic exorcism articulates a discourse of evil and a therapeutic practice.
This article identifies how beliefs, practices, and religious communities converge in the structu... more This article identifies how beliefs, practices, and religious communities converge in the structuring of the evangelical drug rehabilitation model (ERM). Based on a qualitative study, we propose that the ERM shapes the ways of interpreting emotions and sensations based on a beliefs system that conceives the body as a battle field between good and evil. Sensations produced through ritual experience and symptomatic manifestations relative to withdrawal syndrome constitute key points of the culturally shaped somatic modes of attention (SMA) that are produced and transmitted within the evangelical rehabilitation centers (ERCs). This procedure grounds in prayer, cathartic emotive rituality, belief in forgiveness and God’s calling; in testimony; and in the community of believers. We conclude that religious practices and beliefs constitute essential tools of the ERM and can be efficacious for users who are engaged in a spiritual quest.
The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, Jan 11, 2017
Global health education has been expanding rapidly and several universities have created an under... more Global health education has been expanding rapidly and several universities have created an undergraduate major degree (bachelor's degree) in global heath or global health studies. Because there are currently no national guidelines for undergraduate degrees in global health, each of these programs was developed along individual lines. To guide the development of future global health majors, we conducted a systematic review of undergraduate majors in global health. We identified eight programs and invited program directors or representatives to a symposium at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health 2016 conference to review their existing undergraduate major in global health and to discuss lessons learned and recommendations for other colleges and universities seeking to develop undergraduate degrees in global health. We noted significant diversity among the existing programs in terms of required courses, international field experiences, and thesis research projects. In ...
The sizeable US Latino population calls for increasing the pipeline of minority and bilingual phy... more The sizeable US Latino population calls for increasing the pipeline of minority and bilingual physicians who can provide culturally competent care. Currently, only 5.5% of US providers are Hispanic/Latino, compared with 16% of the US population (i.e., >50.5 million persons). By 2060, it is predicted that about one-third of all US residents will be of Latino ethnicity. This article describes the Health Frontiers in Tijuana Undergraduate Internship Program (HFiT-UIP), a new quarterly undergraduate internship program based at a US-Mexico binational student-run free clinic and sponsored by the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California in Tijuana, Mexico. The HFiT-UIP provides learning opportunities for students and underrepresented minorities interested in medical careers, specifically Latino health. The HFiT-UIP might serve as a model for other educational partnerships across the US-Mexico border region and may help minori...
The past 20 years have seen a florescence in studies of religious and ritual healing. This articl... more The past 20 years have seen a florescence in studies of religious and ritual healing. This article broadly surveys this literature on a global scale, organizing and presenting the studies by geographical region. Summaries of major themes in the regional literatures follow each section, and suggest that differences and similarities may be as much a product of theoretical orientations brought by students of healing to their work, as of empirical features observed ethnographically. A concluding section raises the issue of therapeutic efficacy, summarizing the major contributions during the two decades covered by this article.
ABSTRACT Feminist critics have largely argued Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is oppressive, male domin... more ABSTRACT Feminist critics have largely argued Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is oppressive, male dominated, and places women in yet another patriarchal institution. However, one third of AA's membership is made up of women. Despite the feminist criticisms, women find healing, recovery, and empowerment within AA. Through in-depth interviews with 10 diverse women, this qualitative study seeks to bring academic discourse around AA into conversation with the voices and experiences of women in AA. The goal of this study is not to refute prior feminist criticisms but to question how women in AA navigate and negotiate the contradictions found within a male-dominated and male-centered program.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001
The theoretical status of ‘the body’ in cultural anthropology has evolved in roughly four stages:... more The theoretical status of ‘the body’ in cultural anthropology has evolved in roughly four stages: (1) in earlier decades of the twentieth century, it was an implicit, taken-for-granted background feature of social life; (2) beginning in the 1970s, the body became an explicit topic of ethnographic concern; (3) from the 1980s, the body began to become a problem to be accounted for with respect to its cultural and historical mutability; and (4) by the century's end, the body offered a theoretical locus for rethinking various aspects of culture and self. This conception of the changing status of the body in anthropology guides the exposition that follows.
ABSTRACT Addressing Peter Berger’s notion that a default discourse of secularism in combination w... more ABSTRACT Addressing Peter Berger’s notion that a default discourse of secularism in combination with a process of pluralization characterizes the contemporary religious situation, I observe that pluralization in itself calls into question whether a default discourse can in fact persist uniformly across alternative forms or among all social constituencies. Elaborating on the process of pluralization, I propose a concept of fractal pluralism, by which I mean pluralism not only among but within religions characterized by parallel forms of practice at equivalent levels of generality that occupy an equivalent existential niche.
Anthropological concern with embodiment began in part with consideration of Merleau-Ponty's theor... more Anthropological concern with embodiment began in part with consideration of Merleau-Ponty's theory of perception, and this essay continues in that vein by considering his theory of nature. Embodiment from this standpoint is our general existential condition and an indeterminate methodological field for a cultural phenomenology attuned to the immediacy of lived experience. Without claiming to define nature or human nature, the essay offers an outline of embodiment as a framework for integrating corporeality, animality, and materiality. These three domains have generated lively bodies of literature that do not always speak to one another, and that invite phenomenological critique in a world where the existential and ethical position of humanity is increasingly in question and precarious.
“Letting die” by design: Asylum seekers’ lived experience of postcolonial necropolitics, 2023
Although the United States has been a nation of immigrants since its founding, the massive number... more Although the United States has been a nation of immigrants since its founding, the massive number of asylum seekers arriving at the US-Mexico Border is a relatively new phenomenon that requires attention and study. This paper describes the lived experience of three asylum seekers, demonstrating how physical and mental health are structured by US policies and politics. The in-depth accounts are informed by participant observation and policy analysis of humanitarian, non-governmental organizations advocating for asylum seekers. We focus on health and geographical trajectories using the triple trauma paradigm that includes trauma in the country of origin, trauma incurred during transit/flight, and the trauma of arrival and relocation/resettlement in the host country. We suggest that a form of necropower, understood as processes exacerbating the potentiality for death, is embedded in the structure of the US asylum apparatus.
Philosophy on Fieldwork: Case Studies in Anthropological Analysis, 2022
Maurice Merleau-Ponty's understanding of sound as an intimate aspect of embodiment, captured in h... more Maurice Merleau-Ponty's understanding of sound as an intimate aspect of embodiment, captured in his description of our "sonorous being," serves as a guide to interpret the existential significance of wordless ritual songs in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and the Native American Church.
Mediating Catholicism: Religion and Media in Global Catholic Imaginaries, 2022
Through analysis of television documentary and documentary film, this paper shows how contemporar... more Through analysis of television documentary and documentary film, this paper shows how contemporary Roman Catholic exorcism articulates a discourse of evil and a therapeutic practice.
This article identifies how beliefs, practices, and religious communities converge in the structu... more This article identifies how beliefs, practices, and religious communities converge in the structuring of the evangelical drug rehabilitation model (ERM). Based on a qualitative study, we propose that the ERM shapes the ways of interpreting emotions and sensations based on a beliefs system that conceives the body as a battle field between good and evil. Sensations produced through ritual experience and symptomatic manifestations relative to withdrawal syndrome constitute key points of the culturally shaped somatic modes of attention (SMA) that are produced and transmitted within the evangelical rehabilitation centers (ERCs). This procedure grounds in prayer, cathartic emotive rituality, belief in forgiveness and God’s calling; in testimony; and in the community of believers. We conclude that religious practices and beliefs constitute essential tools of the ERM and can be efficacious for users who are engaged in a spiritual quest.
The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, Jan 11, 2017
Global health education has been expanding rapidly and several universities have created an under... more Global health education has been expanding rapidly and several universities have created an undergraduate major degree (bachelor's degree) in global heath or global health studies. Because there are currently no national guidelines for undergraduate degrees in global health, each of these programs was developed along individual lines. To guide the development of future global health majors, we conducted a systematic review of undergraduate majors in global health. We identified eight programs and invited program directors or representatives to a symposium at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health 2016 conference to review their existing undergraduate major in global health and to discuss lessons learned and recommendations for other colleges and universities seeking to develop undergraduate degrees in global health. We noted significant diversity among the existing programs in terms of required courses, international field experiences, and thesis research projects. In ...
The sizeable US Latino population calls for increasing the pipeline of minority and bilingual phy... more The sizeable US Latino population calls for increasing the pipeline of minority and bilingual physicians who can provide culturally competent care. Currently, only 5.5% of US providers are Hispanic/Latino, compared with 16% of the US population (i.e., >50.5 million persons). By 2060, it is predicted that about one-third of all US residents will be of Latino ethnicity. This article describes the Health Frontiers in Tijuana Undergraduate Internship Program (HFiT-UIP), a new quarterly undergraduate internship program based at a US-Mexico binational student-run free clinic and sponsored by the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California in Tijuana, Mexico. The HFiT-UIP provides learning opportunities for students and underrepresented minorities interested in medical careers, specifically Latino health. The HFiT-UIP might serve as a model for other educational partnerships across the US-Mexico border region and may help minori...
The past 20 years have seen a florescence in studies of religious and ritual healing. This articl... more The past 20 years have seen a florescence in studies of religious and ritual healing. This article broadly surveys this literature on a global scale, organizing and presenting the studies by geographical region. Summaries of major themes in the regional literatures follow each section, and suggest that differences and similarities may be as much a product of theoretical orientations brought by students of healing to their work, as of empirical features observed ethnographically. A concluding section raises the issue of therapeutic efficacy, summarizing the major contributions during the two decades covered by this article.
ABSTRACT Feminist critics have largely argued Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is oppressive, male domin... more ABSTRACT Feminist critics have largely argued Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is oppressive, male dominated, and places women in yet another patriarchal institution. However, one third of AA's membership is made up of women. Despite the feminist criticisms, women find healing, recovery, and empowerment within AA. Through in-depth interviews with 10 diverse women, this qualitative study seeks to bring academic discourse around AA into conversation with the voices and experiences of women in AA. The goal of this study is not to refute prior feminist criticisms but to question how women in AA navigate and negotiate the contradictions found within a male-dominated and male-centered program.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001
The theoretical status of ‘the body’ in cultural anthropology has evolved in roughly four stages:... more The theoretical status of ‘the body’ in cultural anthropology has evolved in roughly four stages: (1) in earlier decades of the twentieth century, it was an implicit, taken-for-granted background feature of social life; (2) beginning in the 1970s, the body became an explicit topic of ethnographic concern; (3) from the 1980s, the body began to become a problem to be accounted for with respect to its cultural and historical mutability; and (4) by the century's end, the body offered a theoretical locus for rethinking various aspects of culture and self. This conception of the changing status of the body in anthropology guides the exposition that follows.
ABSTRACT Addressing Peter Berger’s notion that a default discourse of secularism in combination w... more ABSTRACT Addressing Peter Berger’s notion that a default discourse of secularism in combination with a process of pluralization characterizes the contemporary religious situation, I observe that pluralization in itself calls into question whether a default discourse can in fact persist uniformly across alternative forms or among all social constituencies. Elaborating on the process of pluralization, I propose a concept of fractal pluralism, by which I mean pluralism not only among but within religions characterized by parallel forms of practice at equivalent levels of generality that occupy an equivalent existential niche.
In this groundbreaking study based on five years of in-depth ethnographic and
interdisciplinary r... more In this groundbreaking study based on five years of in-depth ethnographic and interdisciplinary research, Troubled in the Land of Enchantment explores the well-being of adolescents hospitalized for psychiatric care in New Mexico. Anthropologists Janis H. Jenkins and Thomas J. Csordas present a gripping picture of psychic distress, familial turmoil, and treatment under the regime of managed care that dominates the mental health care system. The authors make the case for the centrality of struggle in the lives of youth across an array of extraordinary conditions, characterized by personal anguish and structural violence. Critical to the analysis is the cultural phenomenology of existence disclosed through shifting narrative accounts by youth and their families as they grapple with psychiatric diagnosis, poverty, misogyny, and stigma in their trajectories through multiple forms of harm and sites of care. Jenkins and Csordas compellingly direct our attention to the conjunction of lived experience, institutional power, and the very possibility of having a life.
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interdisciplinary research, Troubled in the Land of Enchantment explores the well-being of
adolescents hospitalized for psychiatric care in New Mexico. Anthropologists Janis H.
Jenkins and Thomas J. Csordas present a gripping picture of psychic distress, familial
turmoil, and treatment under the regime of managed care that dominates the mental
health care system. The authors make the case for the centrality of struggle in the lives of
youth across an array of extraordinary conditions, characterized by personal anguish and
structural violence. Critical to the analysis is the cultural phenomenology of existence
disclosed through shifting narrative accounts by youth and their families as they grapple
with psychiatric diagnosis, poverty, misogyny, and stigma in their trajectories through
multiple forms of harm and sites of care. Jenkins and Csordas compellingly direct our
attention to the conjunction of lived experience, institutional power, and the very
possibility of having a life.