Felicity Aulino
Biographic Data
| ID | 123377 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Felicity Aulino |
| GIVEN NAMES | Felicity |
| FAMILY NAME | Aulino |
| SIGNATURE | AULINO F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Massachusetts Amherst |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1400-6799 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 82 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Care and karmic stories
This article elucidates a common relationship between care and temporality in contemporary Thai social worlds through attention to circulating narratives and their effects on both the experience of time and practices of care. I begin with ordinary stories about ghosts, spirit mediums, and past lives. These “karmic stories” make evident cause and effect across lifetimes. Through such karmic storytelling, particular values and an extensive set of e…
Radical Egalitarianism: Local Realities, Global Relations
In this volume, leading scholars in anthropology, religion, and area studies engage global and local perspectives dialectically to develop a historically grounded, ethnographically driven social science. The book’s chapters, drawing on research in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, are also in conversation with the extensive work of editor and contributor Stanley J. Tambiah: They all investigate some aspect of what Tambiah…
Believe it and/or not: Opening up to ontological pluralities in Northern Thailand
In this article, I argue that the study of belief in anthropology generally connotes an "either/or" dichotomy-either one believes something or one does not-which exceeds the concept of belief and stems from monotheistic and totalizing biases rampant throughout the discipline. Thus, I take up John Mair's recent call to study cultures of belief in relation to cosmo- and pluriverse politics. Drawing on a Pali philosophical lineage, I list overlappin…
Sensing the presence of gods and spirits across cultures and faiths
Significance The sensory presence of gods and spirits is central to many of the religions that have shaped human history—in fact, many people of faith report having experienced such events. But these experiences are poorly understood by social scientists and rarely studied empirically. We present a multiple-discipline, multiple-methods program of research involving thousands of people from diverse cultures and religions which demonstrates that tw…
Similarities and differences in concepts of mental life among adults and children in five cultures
From karma to sin: A kaleidoscopic theory of mind and Christian experience in northern Thailand
In this essay, I argue for a 'kaleidoscopic' theory of mind implicit in people's common-sense awareness of themselves, others, and reality in northern Thailand. Phenomenal experience is here generally understood as contingent on a host of factors, from personal habits to the influence of others, such that sensory perceptions themselves are in part a consequence of prior action (karma) with moral import. When Thai people convert to Christianity, t…
Everyday Care and Precarity: Buddhaghosa and Thai Social Story-Making
In this article, Buddhaghosa's fifth century philosophy provides a productive framework for deciphering contemporary social caregiving in Thailand. In particular, his work and the tradition it inspired helps bring forth a local theory of mind and related narrative forms that, when utilized in examination of group patterns of interaction, illuminate the intertwining of care and precarity in everyday practices of providing for others. In turn, I ca…
Narrating the Future: Population Aging and the Demographic Imaginary in Thailand
Middle-aged, working- and middle-class people in urban Northern Thailand are using demographic categories to imagine their future identities as 'senior citizens'. I here introduce the term demographic imaginary to provide a conceptual framework for understanding how characterizations of the population at large are constructed, take hold, and shape group identification. More than simply justification for study and action, demographic categories an…
Rituals of care for the elderly in northern Thailand: Merit, morality, and the everyday of long-term care
Caregivers' quotidian actions challenge prevailing views of care that rely on the emotional or attentive orientation of the caregiver. The routinized care tasks provided by two middle-aged women for their bedridden mother in northern Thailand reveal the realities of long-term caregiving. For these sisters, care transforms "merit" and "karma" without reliance on internal conviction. This context in turn reflects how people enact values and maintai…
Bridging Graduate Education in Public Health and the Liberal Arts
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is part of Five-Colleges Inc, a consortium that includes the university and four liberal arts colleges. Consortium faculty from the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the university and from the colleges are working to bridge liberal arts with public health graduate education. We outline four key themes guiding this effort and exemplary curricular tools for innovative community-based and multidi…
Perceiving the Social Body: A Phenomenological Perspective on Ethical Practice in B uddhist T hailand
This essay develops the concept of the "social body" as a metaphorical representation of hierarchical relationships in T hailand, as well as the physical embodiment of social, religious, and political structures. To do so, I trace the symbolic coordinates of groups that correspond to conceptions of individual bodies, along with the habituated means of perceiving as part of a collective. I argue that conventional T hai social interactions involve …
Radical Egalitarianism: Local Realities, Global Relations
In this volume, leading scholars in anthropology, religion, and area studies engage global and local perspectives dialectically to develop a historically grounded, ethnographically driven social science. The book's chapters, drawing on research in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, are also in conversation with the extensive work of editor and contributor Stanley J. Tambiah: They all investigate some aspect of what Tambiah…
Asian flus in ethnographic and political context: A biosocial approach
This collection highlights some of the social, cultural, political and economic factors that must be considered in developing a biosocial approach to pandemic influenza control and prevention. To date, most discussions of the current spread of avian influenza and a predicted human influenza pandemic have lacked rigorous analysis of the local contexts in which flus arise and in which the effects of a pandemic would most strongly be felt. Such loca…
Rituals of care for the elderly in northern Thailand: Merit, morality, and the everyday of long-term care
Caregivers' quotidian actions challenge prevailing views of care that rely on the emotional or attentive orientation of the caregiver. The routinized care tasks provided by two middle-aged women for their bedridden mother in northern Thailand reveal the realities of long-term caregiving. For these sisters, care transforms "merit" and "karma" without reliance on internal conviction. This context in turn reflects how people enact values and maintai…
Perceiving the Social Body: A Phenomenological Perspective on Ethical Practice in B uddhist T hailand
This essay develops the concept of the "social body" as a metaphorical representation of hierarchical relationships in T hailand, as well as the physical embodiment of social, religious, and political structures. To do so, I trace the symbolic coordinates of groups that correspond to conceptions of individual bodies, along with the habituated means of perceiving as part of a collective. I argue that conventional T hai social interactions involve …
Asian flus in ethnographic and political context: A biosocial approach
This collection highlights some of the social, cultural, political and economic factors that must be considered in developing a biosocial approach to pandemic influenza control and prevention. To date, most discussions of the current spread of avian influenza and a predicted human influenza pandemic have lacked rigorous analysis of the local contexts in which flus arise and in which the effects of a pandemic would most strongly be felt. Such loca…
From karma to sin: A kaleidoscopic theory of mind and Christian experience in northern Thailand
In this essay, I argue for a 'kaleidoscopic' theory of mind implicit in people's common-sense awareness of themselves, others, and reality in northern Thailand. Phenomenal experience is here generally understood as contingent on a host of factors, from personal habits to the influence of others, such that sensory perceptions themselves are in part a consequence of prior action (karma) with moral import. When Thai people convert to Christianity, t…
Similarities and differences in concepts of mental life among adults and children in five cultures
Everyday Care and Precarity: Buddhaghosa and Thai Social Story-Making
In this article, Buddhaghosa's fifth century philosophy provides a productive framework for deciphering contemporary social caregiving in Thailand. In particular, his work and the tradition it inspired helps bring forth a local theory of mind and related narrative forms that, when utilized in examination of group patterns of interaction, illuminate the intertwining of care and precarity in everyday practices of providing for others. In turn, I ca…
Narrating the Future: Population Aging and the Demographic Imaginary in Thailand
Middle-aged, working- and middle-class people in urban Northern Thailand are using demographic categories to imagine their future identities as 'senior citizens'. I here introduce the term demographic imaginary to provide a conceptual framework for understanding how characterizations of the population at large are constructed, take hold, and shape group identification. More than simply justification for study and action, demographic categories an…
Asian flus in ethnographic and political context: A biosocial approach
This collection highlights some of the social, cultural, political and economic factors that must be considered in developing a biosocial approach to pandemic influenza control and prevention. To date, most discussions of the current spread of avian influenza and a predicted human influenza pandemic have lacked rigorous analysis of the local contexts in which flus arise and in which the effects of a pandemic would most strongly be felt. Such loca…
Radical Egalitarianism: Local Realities, Global Relations
In this volume, leading scholars in anthropology, religion, and area studies engage global and local perspectives dialectically to develop a historically grounded, ethnographically driven social science. The book's chapters, drawing on research in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, are also in conversation with the extensive work of editor and contributor Stanley J. Tambiah: They all investigate some aspect of what Tambiah…
Perceiving the Social Body: A Phenomenological Perspective on Ethical Practice in B uddhist T hailand
This essay develops the concept of the "social body" as a metaphorical representation of hierarchical relationships in T hailand, as well as the physical embodiment of social, religious, and political structures. To do so, I trace the symbolic coordinates of groups that correspond to conceptions of individual bodies, along with the habituated means of perceiving as part of a collective. I argue that conventional T hai social interactions involve …
Bridging Graduate Education in Public Health and the Liberal Arts
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is part of Five-Colleges Inc, a consortium that includes the university and four liberal arts colleges. Consortium faculty from the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the university and from the colleges are working to bridge liberal arts with public health graduate education. We outline four key themes guiding this effort and exemplary curricular tools for innovative community-based and multidi…
Rituals of care for the elderly in northern Thailand: Merit, morality, and the everyday of long-term care
Caregivers' quotidian actions challenge prevailing views of care that rely on the emotional or attentive orientation of the caregiver. The routinized care tasks provided by two middle-aged women for their bedridden mother in northern Thailand reveal the realities of long-term caregiving. For these sisters, care transforms "merit" and "karma" without reliance on internal conviction. This context in turn reflects how people enact values and maintai…
Narrating the Future: Population Aging and the Demographic Imaginary in Thailand
Middle-aged, working- and middle-class people in urban Northern Thailand are using demographic categories to imagine their future identities as 'senior citizens'. I here introduce the term demographic imaginary to provide a conceptual framework for understanding how characterizations of the population at large are constructed, take hold, and shape group identification. More than simply justification for study and action, demographic categories an…
From karma to sin: A kaleidoscopic theory of mind and Christian experience in northern Thailand
In this essay, I argue for a 'kaleidoscopic' theory of mind implicit in people's common-sense awareness of themselves, others, and reality in northern Thailand. Phenomenal experience is here generally understood as contingent on a host of factors, from personal habits to the influence of others, such that sensory perceptions themselves are in part a consequence of prior action (karma) with moral import. When Thai people convert to Christianity, t…
Everyday Care and Precarity: Buddhaghosa and Thai Social Story-Making
In this article, Buddhaghosa's fifth century philosophy provides a productive framework for deciphering contemporary social caregiving in Thailand. In particular, his work and the tradition it inspired helps bring forth a local theory of mind and related narrative forms that, when utilized in examination of group patterns of interaction, illuminate the intertwining of care and precarity in everyday practices of providing for others. In turn, I ca…
Sensing the presence of gods and spirits across cultures and faiths
Significance The sensory presence of gods and spirits is central to many of the religions that have shaped human history—in fact, many people of faith report having experienced such events. But these experiences are poorly understood by social scientists and rarely studied empirically. We present a multiple-discipline, multiple-methods program of research involving thousands of people from diverse cultures and religions which demonstrates that tw…
Similarities and differences in concepts of mental life among adults and children in five cultures
Radical Egalitarianism: Local Realities, Global Relations
In this volume, leading scholars in anthropology, religion, and area studies engage global and local perspectives dialectically to develop a historically grounded, ethnographically driven social science. The book’s chapters, drawing on research in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, are also in conversation with the extensive work of editor and contributor Stanley J. Tambiah: They all investigate some aspect of what Tambiah…
Believe it and/or not: Opening up to ontological pluralities in Northern Thailand
In this article, I argue that the study of belief in anthropology generally connotes an "either/or" dichotomy-either one believes something or one does not-which exceeds the concept of belief and stems from monotheistic and totalizing biases rampant throughout the discipline. Thus, I take up John Mair's recent call to study cultures of belief in relation to cosmo- and pluriverse politics. Drawing on a Pali philosophical lineage, I list overlappin…
Care and karmic stories
This article elucidates a common relationship between care and temporality in contemporary Thai social worlds through attention to circulating narratives and their effects on both the experience of time and practices of care. I begin with ordinary stories about ghosts, spirit mediums, and past lives. These “karmic stories” make evident cause and effect across lifetimes. Through such karmic storytelling, particular values and an extensive set of e…
Sociology (11 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (6 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works)