Harvey Whitehouse is chair of

social anthropology Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...

and professorial fellow of

Magdalen College Magdalen College ( ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by Bishop of Winchester William of Waynflete. It is one of the wealthiest Oxford colleges, as of 2022, and one of the strongest academically, se ...

at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

Education and early career

Whitehouse received his B.A. degree in

from the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded ...

in 1985. He completed his PhD in anthropology at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

in 1990. Whitehouse is generally regarded as one of the founders of the

cognitive science of religion Cognitive science of religion is the study of religious thought, theory, and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive sciences. Scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religious thoughts, pract ...

field. After carrying out two years of field research on a '

cargo cult Cargo cults were diverse spiritual and political movements that arose among indigenous Melanesians following Western colonisation of the region in the late 19th century. Typically (but not universally) cargo cults included: charismatic prophet ...

' in

New Britain New Britain () is the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago, part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea. It is separated from New Guinea by a northwest corner of the Solomon Sea (or with an island hop of Umboi Island, Umboi the Dampie ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

, in the late 1980s, he developed a theory of " modes of religiosity" that has been the subject of extensive critical evaluation and testing by

social anthropologists Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...

historians A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

archaeologists Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

, and

sociologists This list of sociologists includes people who have made notable contributions to sociological theory or to research in one or more areas of sociology. A * Peter Abell, British sociologist * Andrew Abbott, American sociologist * Margaret ...

. The theory of modes of religiosity seeks to explain the role of

ritual A ritual is a repeated, structured sequence of actions or behaviors that alters the internal or external state of an individual, group, or environment, regardless of conscious understanding, emotional context, or symbolic meaning. Traditionally ...

in processes of group bonding and in the evolution of

social complexity In sociology, social complexity is a conceptual framework used in the analysis of society. In the sciences, contemporary definitions of complexity are found in systems theory, wherein the phenomenon being studied has many parts and many possible ...

. Two modes are distinguished:

imagist Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized literary modernism, modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism has bee ...

ic and

doctrinal Doctrine (from , meaning 'teaching, instruction') is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a belief system. The etymolog ...

. In the imagistic mode, collective rituals are infrequent and highly emotional, giving rise to tightknit local groups. In the doctrinal mode, rituals are frequent and relatively tame, producing indefinitely expandable communities with standardized beliefs and practices. Whitehouse's published corpus includes a trilogy of books outlining his theory on modes of religiosity and the dysphoric pathway to identity fusion.

Later research and career

Since the turn of the millennium, Whitehouse has focused increasingly on developing trans-disciplinary collaborations using methods as diverse as ethnographic fieldwork, experiments, interviews, and surveys in lab, field, and online settings, database construction,

semantic network A semantic network, or frame network is a knowledge base that represents semantic relations between concepts in a network. This is often used as a form of knowledge representation. It is a directed or undirected graph consisting of vertices, ...

analysis, and other methods. In the process, Whitehouse's research programme has gradually expanded beyond religion to examine the role of rituals of all kinds in binding groups together and motivating inter-group competition, including warfare. Together with

John Alderdice John Thomas Alderdice, Baron Alderdice (born 28 March 1955), is a Northern Ireland politician. He was the Speaker and a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for East Belfast from 1998 to 2004 and 1998 to 2003, respectively. Alderdic ...

Scott Atran Scott Atran (born February 6, 1952) is an American-French cultural anthropologist who is Emeritus Director of Research in Anthropology at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris, Research Professor at the University of Michigan ...

, and Richard Davis, Whitehouse is a founding fellow of Oxford's Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at

Harris Manchester College Harris Manchester College (HMC) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It was founded in Warrington in 1757 as a college for Unitarian students and moved to Oxford in 1893. It became a full college of the un ...

. He is also a founding editor of Seshat: Global History Databank, together with

Peter Turchin Peter Valentinovich Turchin (; born 22 May 1957) is a Russian-American complexity scientist, specializing in an area of study he and his colleagues developed called cliodynamics—mathematical modeling and statistical analysis of the dynamics o ...

and Pieter Francois. Whitehouse's other long-term collaborators include Quentin Atkinson,

Amy Bogaard Amy Bogaard FBA is a Canadian archaeologist and Professor of Neolithic and Bronze Age Archaeology at the University of Oxford. Education Bogaard earned a PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2002, supervised by Glynis Jones. Career Boga ...

, Michael Buhrmester, Thomas Currie, Michael Hochberg,

Ian Hodder Ian Richard Hodder (born 23 November 1948, in Bristol) is a British archaeologist and pioneer of postprocessualist theory in archaeology that first took root among his students and in his own work between 1980 and 1990. At this time he had suc ...

, Jonathan Jong, Jonathan Lanman, Cristine Legare, Ryan McKay, and William B. Swann. Whitehouse was founding director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture (

Queen's University Belfast The Queen's University of Belfast, commonly known as Queen's University Belfast (; abbreviated Queen's or QUB), is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. The university received its charter in 1845 as part of ...

) and the Centre for Anthropology and Mind (University of Oxford). While Head of the School of Anthropology at the University of Oxford (2006-2009) he established the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology. Whitehouse has been principal investigator on several large collaborative initiatives including: the Explaining Religion project, funded by the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

, the Ritual, Community and Conflict project funded by the UK's

Economic and Social Research Council The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), formerly the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). UKRI is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) funded by the UK government. ESRC provides fundi ...

, and the Ritual Modes project funded by an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council.

Selected publications

* Whitehouse, H. (1995). ''Inside the cult : religious innovation and transmission in Papua New Guinea''. Oxford: Clarendon Press. . * Whitehouse, H. (2000). ''Arguments and icons : divergent modes of religiosity''. Oxford:

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. .

OCLC OCLC, Inc. See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the ...

43083393. * Whitehouse, H. (2004). ''Modes of religiosity : a

cognitive Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

theory of religious transmission''. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. .

53231221. * Whitehouse, H. & Laidlaw, J. (2004). ''Ritual and memory : toward a comparative anthropology of religion''. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. .

54365082. * Whitehouse, H. (2005). ''Mind and Religion : Psychological and Cognitive Foundations of Religion.'' AltaMira Press. .

856869641. * Whitehouse, H., & Hodder, I. (2010). Modes of religiosity at Çatalhöyük. In Religion in the emergence of civilization: Çatalhöyük as a

case study A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case (or cases) within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular f ...

(pp. 122–145).

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

, Cambridge. * Atkinson, Q. & Whitehouse, H. (2011). "The cultural morphospace of ritual form". ''Evolution and Human Behavior''. 32 (1): 50–62
doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.09.002
* Whitehouse, H. & Lanman, J. (2014). "The Ties That Bind Us: Ritual, Fusion, and Identification". ''Current Anthropology''. 55 (6): 674–695
doi:10.1086/678698.
* Whitehouse, H., McQuinn, B., Buhrmester, M., & Swann, W. (2014). "Brothers in arms: Libyan revolutionaries bond like family". ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences''. 111 (50): 17783–17785.

ISSN An International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is an eight-digit to uniquely identify a periodical publication (periodical), such as a magazine. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title. ISSNs a ...

0027-8424.

PMID PubMed is an openly accessible, free database which includes primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of ...

25385591. doi:10.1073/pnas.1416284111. * * Whitehouse, H., François, P., & Turchin, P. (2015). "The Role of Ritual in the Evolution of Social Complexity: Five Predictions and a Drum Roll". ''Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution''. 6 (2).

2373-7530. doi:10.21237/c7clio6229624. * Whitehouse, H., Jong, J., Buhrmester, M., Gómez, Á., Bastian, B.; Kavanagh, C., Newson, M., Matthews, M., & Lanman, J. (2017). "The evolution of extreme cooperation via shared dysphoric experiences". ''Scientific Reports''. 7
ISSN
nbsp;2045-2322
doi
10.1038/srep44292. * Whitehouse, H. (2024). ''Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World''. Belknap Press. .

References

External links

Harvey Whitehouse's Science Site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whitehouse, Harvey English anthropologists Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford British social anthropologists Living people 1964 births