Neuroethnology as a tool to comprehend the connections of the Self with the Surrounding: A Conceptual Enquiry with Hermeneutic Analysis.

Abstract

Background: The relationship between the self and its surroundings is often conceptualised as a distinction between individuals and the external world. Objective: This study employs hermeneutic analysis to explore neuroethnology and introduce the term as a means of understanding how the self differentiates from its surroundings while remaining interconnected. Methods: A modified Delphi-informed consensus process, conducted over seven sessions, identified six analytical domains. From 471 pooled records, 78 sources were selected for iterative thematic analysis and hermeneutic synthesis. Findings: The analysis differentiates between culture and ethnoculture, transmission and incorporation, embeddedness and embodiment, and biological embedding and inherited cognition. Ethnoculturally available meanings and practices become self-specific through embodiment and ethnocognition, which organise attention, appraisal, and actions. Recurrent neurocognitive and somatocognitive patterns, understood as plastic rather than fixed, may confer pre-reflective self-relevance prior to the emergence of an explicit self-concept. The term “chronopersonalisation” is introduced to describe the progressive temporal localisation of behavioural ecology into characteristic yet adaptable self-organisation. Reflexivity is considered both a method and a subject, enabling the organization derived from surroundings to be examined and reorganized. Indic accounts of lineage and self-enquiry are acknowledged as epistemic antecedents of this mode of enquiry. Conclusion: Neuroethnology complements neuroanthropology, cultural neuroscience, and neurophenomenology by focusing on the evolving self–surrounding relationship as one of its units of enquiry.