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Laughlin et al. show that ongoing experience is mediated by the brain and that competing neural networks are constantly entrained and re-entrained, thereby providing inexact models of ourselves and the world. Phases of "neural entrainments...punctuated by...rapid periods of reentrainments...organized about some object" are the structure of consciousness (neurological factors), while behavioural expressions of consciousness involve manipulation of symbols because society must assure that "proper associations are entrained" (cultural factors). Experiences of consciousness consist of sensations that penetrate neural entrainments thereby reaching consciousness (internal factors, such as altered states and dreams). Rituals and cosmology are "penetration devices" that "stimulate...a...theatre of mind" and provide meaning for individuals (p. 335). Our being, therefore, is "a community of cells" (pp. 34, 334) and we are "symbols to each other" (p. 232).
This brief summary does not do justice to complex ideas. Laudable is the holistic approach the authors advocate and try to achieve. Nevertheless, women's work, experiences, symbols and bodies are consistently ignored and, when gender is discussed, it is from a male perspective. For example, the authors claim that there was no field work before Malinowski (p. 23), but Alice Fletcher and Harriet Martineau were early ethnographers urging field work (S. Reinharz, Feminist Methods in Social Research [Oxford University Press, 1992], pp. 49-50). Patriarchal systems, ideologies and male practitioners are used to illustrate arguments. For instance, male shamans during their magical flight are said to experience a female "psychopomp" (p. 273), but female shamanistic knowledge is left unexplored. Cross-cultural examples mention only one female yogi (p. 311) and the only Western female considered subscribed to a patriarchal framework (p. 307). Discussion of Tibetan...