Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

This is a compelling, cross-cultural examination of health processes involving spiritual and digital avatars. Defining the avatar as an agent who serves as a vehicle or vessel of another's consciousness, the author explores the roles that such created selves play in two seemingly disparate societal arenas. Drawing on ethnographic data from the study of folk Hinduism involving Indian spirit possession, and from interviews with digital video game players who routinely extend themselves through avatars in games such as the World of Warcraft, Snodgrass (Colorado State Univ.) argues that avatars allow for the creation of a dissociative state and alternate identity. This creative act opens a social space wherein individuals can separate from their actual existence and occupy a state that holds the potential to either temporarily or otherwise alleviate the psychosocial stress of their actual lives. Thus, avatar identities provide an array of potentially therapeutic results. Avatar therapeutics can offer psychosocial, emotional, and social benefit derived from spiritual and digital avatar selves, given that these are conceptualized and understood in specific sociocultural contexts. The author's thesis is firmly rooted in theory, and his methods are drawn from a variety of disciplines ranging from anthropology to psychology. Readers will discover an analysis that demands further attention and thought.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. Students in two-year technical programs.