Capturing Imagination: A Cognitive Approach to Cultural Complexity

With few exceptions, it has been assumed that the production of a generalizing anthropological theory of human cognition must necessarily entail a reduction of ethnographic complexity. No case‐centred analysis has been offered to show that a cognitive approach to cultural complexity is possible. In this article, I want to show that a different cognitive perspective can improve our understanding of ethnographic facts and help us critically to revise a number of traditional anthropological concepts. In order to do so, I will discuss the example of a messianistic religious movement born among the Western Apache of San Carlos and White Mountain (Arizona).