PRICEWILLIAMS, DOUGLASS

Professor emeritus in anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has, as part of his research into psychological anthropology and cross-cultural cognitive studies, written extensively on shamanism,altered states ofconsciousness, dreaming, andalien abduction. WithLarry Peters, Price-Williams argued for an “experiential approach” to shamanism in the early 1980s, part of the wider interest in insider and experiential anthropology gaining coherency at that time. More recently, he has been exploring dreaming as an interactional activity, rather than “the dream” being a thing in itself, as well as the cross-cultural consistencies in descriptions of UFO close encounters and shamanicinitiationsandrituals.