Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann and her colleagues are doing really fascinating work on cross-cultural differences among people who hear voices in the U.S., Ghana, and India–and suggesting implications for ways that culture shapes phenomenological experience more generally:

However, in India and Africa, the subjects were not as troubled by the voices – they seemed on one level to make sense in a more relational world. Still, differences existed between the participants in India and Africa; the former’s voice-hearing experience emphasized playfulness and sex, whereas the latter more often involved the voice of God.

This work, along with various publication and online resources created by the Hearing Voices Network, could make an interesting research project. We’ll read a short essay by Luhrmann in a couple of weeks.