Kathryn Linn Geurts
Biographic Data
| ID | 146185 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kathryn Linn Geurts |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kathryn Linn |
| FAMILY NAME | Geurts |
| SIGNATURE | GEURTS K L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hamline University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 263 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Seselelãme
This article draws on both personal experience and long-term ethnographic research into Aŋlɔ bodily ways of knowing, as given in the Eʋe phrase seselelãme (perceive-perceive-at-flesh-inside). We use the term refractions in the title to signal how this local “foundational schema” is related to what has been dubbed an African Somaesthetics. We address such topics as body sculpting, kinaesthetic styles, forms of greeting, adornment and the idea of t…
Toward an African sensory psychology
Interpreting the Body
Enduring and Endearing Feelings and the Transformation of Material Culture in West Africa
This chapter postulates that seselelame may be a foundational schema, and as such it may serve as a possible source domain for an array of cultural models - including narrative, verbal formulas, and other language arts. It takes our understanding of seselelame further by contemplating its out-of-awareness characteristics and by using it to help account for how certain objects from precolonial times continue to possess the hearts and minds of some…
Culture and the Senses
Adding her stimulating and finely framed ethnography to recent work in the anthropology of the senses, Kathryn Geurts investigates the cultural meaning system and resulting sensorium of Anlo-Ewe-speaking people in southeastern Ghana. Geurts discovered that the five-senses model has little relevance in Anlo culture, where balance is a sense, and balancing (in a physical and psychological sense as well as in literal and metaphorical ways) is an ess…
Even Boxers Carry Mace
Culture and the SensesBodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community
This book investigates the cultural meaning system and resulting sensorium of Anlo-Ewe-speaking people in southeastern Ghana. It was discovered that the five-senses model has little relevance in Anlo culture, where balance is a sense, and balancing (in a physical and psychological sense as well as in literal and metaphorical ways) is an essential component of what it means to be human. Much of perception falls into an Anlo category of seselelame …
On Embodied Consciousness in Anlo-Ewe Worlds
Anlo-Ewe generally refers to a dialect of the Ewe language spoken in southeastern Ghana, with Anlo designating an ethnolinguistic group whose homeland is on a littoral between the Keta Lagoon and the sea. Etymologically, however, Anlo derives from the Ewe term 'nlo' which means rolling up or folding into oneself. This article describes moments of ethnographic fieldwork that led to tracing links among meanings assigned to 'nlo', a migration story …
On Rocks, Walks, and Talks In West Africa
In southeastern Ghana, among Anlo-Ewe-speaking people, a five-senses model (of sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell) has little relevance for theorizing about how we know what we know. Instead, Anlo people invoke a domain of experience called seselelame (literally "feel-feel-at-flesh-inside") that links sensation to emotion, disposition, and vocation. This article explores cultural models that govern sensory and other immediate bodily experien…
Childbirth and pragmatic midwifery in rural Ghana
Conceptual categories such as traditional, modern, and postmodern do not further our understanding of the empirical situation of midwifery in late 20th-century rural Ghana. Processes of "modernization," it is argued, have not had much impact on the domain of childbirth. And, despite efforts to "medicalize" birth (by the state and the international movement for safe motherhood and child survival), in Anlo-Ewe cultural contexts in the mid-1990s the…
Personal Politics in the Novels of Bessie Head
Culture and the SensesBodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community
This book investigates the cultural meaning system and resulting sensorium of Anlo-Ewe-speaking people in southeastern Ghana. It was discovered that the five-senses model has little relevance in Anlo culture, where balance is a sense, and balancing (in a physical and psychological sense as well as in literal and metaphorical ways) is an essential component of what it means to be human. Much of perception falls into an Anlo category of seselelame …
Culture and the Senses
Adding her stimulating and finely framed ethnography to recent work in the anthropology of the senses, Kathryn Geurts investigates the cultural meaning system and resulting sensorium of Anlo-Ewe-speaking people in southeastern Ghana. Geurts discovered that the five-senses model has little relevance in Anlo culture, where balance is a sense, and balancing (in a physical and psychological sense as well as in literal and metaphorical ways) is an ess…
On Rocks, Walks, and Talks In West Africa
In southeastern Ghana, among Anlo-Ewe-speaking people, a five-senses model (of sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell) has little relevance for theorizing about how we know what we know. Instead, Anlo people invoke a domain of experience called seselelame (literally "feel-feel-at-flesh-inside") that links sensation to emotion, disposition, and vocation. This article explores cultural models that govern sensory and other immediate bodily experien…
On Embodied Consciousness in Anlo-Ewe Worlds
Anlo-Ewe generally refers to a dialect of the Ewe language spoken in southeastern Ghana, with Anlo designating an ethnolinguistic group whose homeland is on a littoral between the Keta Lagoon and the sea. Etymologically, however, Anlo derives from the Ewe term 'nlo' which means rolling up or folding into oneself. This article describes moments of ethnographic fieldwork that led to tracing links among meanings assigned to 'nlo', a migration story …
Childbirth and pragmatic midwifery in rural Ghana
Conceptual categories such as traditional, modern, and postmodern do not further our understanding of the empirical situation of midwifery in late 20th-century rural Ghana. Processes of "modernization," it is argued, have not had much impact on the domain of childbirth. And, despite efforts to "medicalize" birth (by the state and the international movement for safe motherhood and child survival), in Anlo-Ewe cultural contexts in the mid-1990s the…
Even Boxers Carry Mace
Personal Politics in the Novels of Bessie Head
Childbirth and pragmatic midwifery in rural Ghana
Conceptual categories such as traditional, modern, and postmodern do not further our understanding of the empirical situation of midwifery in late 20th-century rural Ghana. Processes of "modernization," it is argued, have not had much impact on the domain of childbirth. And, despite efforts to "medicalize" birth (by the state and the international movement for safe motherhood and child survival), in Anlo-Ewe cultural contexts in the mid-1990s the…
On Rocks, Walks, and Talks In West Africa
In southeastern Ghana, among Anlo-Ewe-speaking people, a five-senses model (of sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell) has little relevance for theorizing about how we know what we know. Instead, Anlo people invoke a domain of experience called seselelame (literally "feel-feel-at-flesh-inside") that links sensation to emotion, disposition, and vocation. This article explores cultural models that govern sensory and other immediate bodily experien…
Culture and the SensesBodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community
This book investigates the cultural meaning system and resulting sensorium of Anlo-Ewe-speaking people in southeastern Ghana. It was discovered that the five-senses model has little relevance in Anlo culture, where balance is a sense, and balancing (in a physical and psychological sense as well as in literal and metaphorical ways) is an essential component of what it means to be human. Much of perception falls into an Anlo category of seselelame …
On Embodied Consciousness in Anlo-Ewe Worlds
Anlo-Ewe generally refers to a dialect of the Ewe language spoken in southeastern Ghana, with Anlo designating an ethnolinguistic group whose homeland is on a littoral between the Keta Lagoon and the sea. Etymologically, however, Anlo derives from the Ewe term 'nlo' which means rolling up or folding into oneself. This article describes moments of ethnographic fieldwork that led to tracing links among meanings assigned to 'nlo', a migration story …
Even Boxers Carry Mace
Culture and the Senses
Adding her stimulating and finely framed ethnography to recent work in the anthropology of the senses, Kathryn Geurts investigates the cultural meaning system and resulting sensorium of Anlo-Ewe-speaking people in southeastern Ghana. Geurts discovered that the five-senses model has little relevance in Anlo culture, where balance is a sense, and balancing (in a physical and psychological sense as well as in literal and metaphorical ways) is an ess…
Enduring and Endearing Feelings and the Transformation of Material Culture in West Africa
This chapter postulates that seselelame may be a foundational schema, and as such it may serve as a possible source domain for an array of cultural models - including narrative, verbal formulas, and other language arts. It takes our understanding of seselelame further by contemplating its out-of-awareness characteristics and by using it to help account for how certain objects from precolonial times continue to possess the hearts and minds of some…
Interpreting the Body
Seselelãme
This article draws on both personal experience and long-term ethnographic research into Aŋlɔ bodily ways of knowing, as given in the Eʋe phrase seselelãme (perceive-perceive-at-flesh-inside). We use the term refractions in the title to signal how this local “foundational schema” is related to what has been dubbed an African Somaesthetics. We address such topics as body sculpting, kinaesthetic styles, forms of greeting, adornment and the idea of t…
Toward an African sensory psychology
Psychology (8 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (3 works) · Anthropology (3 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Social Psychology (3 works)