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| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld Susan Greenwood, 2020-08-02 Anthropology's long and complex relationship to magic has been strongly influenced by western science and notions of rationality. This book takes a refreshing new look at modern magic as practised by contemporary Pagans in Britain. It focuses on what Pagans see as the essence of magic - a communication with an otherworldly reality. Examining issues of identity, gender and morality, the author argues that the otherworld forms a central defining characteristic of magical practice. Integrating an experiential ethnographic approach with an analysis of magic, this book asks penetrating questions about the nature of otherworldly knowledge and argues that our scientific frameworks need re-envisioning. It is unique in providing an insider's view of how magic is practised in contemporary western culture. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft -- Pearson eText Rebecca L Stein, Philip Stein, 2015-08-07 This book emphasizes the major concepts of both anthropology and the anthropology of religion and examines religious expression from a cross-cultural perspective while incorporating key theoretical concepts. It is aimed at students encountering anthropology for the first time. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft Rebecca L. Stein, 2013 |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion Michael Lambek, 2002 A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion is a collection of some of the most significant classic and contemporary writings on the anthropology of religion. It includes both material whose theme is 'religion' in a straightforward and obvious sense, as well as material that has expanded how we might look at religion - and the horizons of what we mean by 'religion' - linking it to broader questions of culture and politics. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft Rebecca L. Stein, Philip L. Stein, Benjamin R. Kracht, Marjorie M. Snipes, 2024-07-16 This concise and accessible textbook introduces students to the anthropological study of religion. It examines religious expression from a cross-cultural perspective and exposes students to the complexities of religion in small-scale and complex societies. The chapters incorporate key theoretical concepts and a wide range of ethnographic material. The fifth edition of The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft offers: • a revised introduction covering the foundations of the anthropology of religion, anthropological methods, and a push toward decolonizing the anthropology of religion, • expanded coverage of symbols, healing, wizardry, and the intersections of religion with other social institutions, • new case study material with examples drawn from around the globe, especially from Indigenous communities, • marginalia in each chapter introducing provocative small-case examples related to the chapter—many of these can be used as prompts for further research, small in-class case studies, or examples for hands-on learning, • a new chapter on religion and healing, especially useful for Anthropology programs without representation of four fields, as it provides a wider and more interdisciplinary application of the discipline, • a consistent review of foundations from chapter to chapter, linking material and enabling students to connect what they are learning throughout the course, and • further resources via a comprehensive companion website, including interactive activities, critical case studies, updated study questions, bibliographical suggestions (including video), and color images. This is an essential guide for students encountering the anthropology of religion for the first time and also for those with an ongoing interest in this fascinating field. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft Rebecca L. Stein, 2011 |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Moral Power Koen Stroeken, 2010-07-01 Neither power nor morality but both. Moral power is what Sukuma farmers in Tanzania in times of crisis attribute to an unknown figure they call their witch. A universal process is involved, as much bodily as social, which obstructs the patient’s recovery. Healers turn the table on the witch through rituals showing that the community and the ancestral spirits side with the victim. In contrast to biomedicine, their magic and divination introduce moral values that assess the state of the system and that remove the obstacles to what is taken as key: self-healing. The implied ‘sensory shifts’ and therapeutic effectiveness have largely eluded the literature on witchcraft. This book shows how to comprehend culture other than through the prism of identity politics. It offers a framework to comprehend the rise of witch killings and human sacrifice, just as ritual initiation disappears. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Field Manual for the Archaeology of Ritual, Religion, and Magic C. Riley Augé, 2022-07-08 By bringing together in one place specific objects, materials, and features indicating ritual, religious, or magical belief used by people around the world and through time, this tool will assist archaeologists in identifying evidence of belief-related behaviors and broadening their understanding of how those behaviors may also be seen through less obvious evidential lines. Instruction and templates for recording, typologizing, classifying, and analyzing ritual or magico-religious material culture are also provided to guide researchers in the survey, collection, and cataloging processes. The bulleted formatting and topical range make this a highly accessible work, while providing an incredible wealth of information in a single volume. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft Rebecca Lynne Stein, Philip L. Stein, 2017 |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Introducing Anthropology of Religion Jack David Eller, 2007-08-07 This lively and readable survey introduces students to key areas of the field and shows how to apply an anthropological approach to the study of contemporary world religions. Written by an experienced teacher, it covers all of the traditional topics of anthropology of religion, including definitions and theories, beliefs, symbols and language, and ritual and myth, and combines analytic and conceptual discussion with up-to-date ethnography and theory. Eller includes copious examples from religions around the world – both familiar and unfamiliar – and two mini-case studies in each chapter. He also explores classic and contemporary anthropological contributions to important but often overlooked issues such as violence and fundamentalism, morality, secularization, religion in America, and new religious movements. Introducing Anthropology of Religion demonstrates that anthropology is both relevant and essential for understanding the world we inhabit today. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Religions in Practice John R. Bowen, 2015-08-07 Examines religious practices from an anthropological perspective Religions in Practice, 6/e, offers an issues-oriented perspective on everyday religious behaviors – prayer, sacrifice, initiation, healing, etc. – by focusing on such topics as transnationalism, gender, and religious laws. The text examines a full spectrum of religions, from small-scale societies to major, established religions. The in-depth treatment of Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity is particularly noteworthy and easily supplemented with field projects directly related to the text. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Religion and the Decline of Magic Keith Thomas, 2003-01-30 Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the belief that a blessed amulet could prevent the assaults of the Devil to the use of the same charms to recover stolen goods. At the same time the Protestant Reformation attempted to take the magic out of religion, and scientists were developing new explanations of the universe. Keith Thomas's classic analysis of beliefs held on every level of English society begins with the collapse of the medieval Church and ends with the changing intellectual atmosphere around 1700, when science and rationalism began to challenge the older systems of belief. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Naming the Witch Kimberly Stratton, 2022-01-04 Kimberly B. Stratton investigates the cultural and ideological motivations behind early imaginings of the magician, the sorceress, and the witch in the ancient world. Accusations of magic could carry the death penalty or, at the very least, marginalize the person or group they targeted. But Stratton moves beyond the popular view of these accusations as mere slander. In her view, representations and accusations of sorcery mirror the complex struggle of ancient societies to define authority, legitimacy, and Otherness. Stratton argues that the concept magic first emerged as a discourse in ancient Athens where it operated part and parcel of the struggle to define Greek identity in opposition to the uncivilized barbarian following the Persian Wars. The idea of magic then spread throughout the Hellenized world and Rome, reflecting and adapting to political forces, values, and social concerns in each society. Stratton considers the portrayal of witches and magicians in the literature of four related periods and cultures: classical Athens, early imperial Rome, pre-Constantine Christianity, and rabbinic Judaism. She compares patterns in their representations of magic and analyzes the relationship between these stereotypes and the social factors that shaped them. Stratton's comparative approach illuminates the degree to which magic was (and still is) a cultural construct that depended upon and reflected particular social contexts. Unlike most previous studies of magic, which treated the classical world separately from antique Judaism, Naming the Witch highlights the degree to which these ancient cultures shared ideas about power and legitimate authority, even while constructing and deploying those ideas in different ways. The book also interrogates the common association of women with magic, denaturalizing the gendered stereotype in the process. Drawing on Michel Foucault's notion of discourse as well as the work of other contemporary theorists, such as Homi K. Bhabha and Bruce Lincoln, Stratton's bewitching study presents a more nuanced, ideologically sensitive approach to understanding the witch in Western history. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Witches and Demons Jean La Fontaine, 2016-04-01 Devil worship, black magic, and witchcraft have long captivated anthropologists as well as the general public. In this volume, Jean La Fontaine explores the intersection of expert and lay understandings of evil and the cultural forms that evil assumes. The chapters touch on public scares about devil-worship, misconceptions about human sacrifice and the use of body parts in healing practices, and mistaken accusations of children practicing witchcraft. Together, these cases demonstrate that comparison is a powerful method of cultural understanding, but warns of the dangers and mistaken conclusions that untrained ideas about other ways of life can lead to. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Witchcraft and Magic Helen A. Berger, 2011-03-19 Magic, always part of the occult underground in North America, has experienced a resurgence since the 1960s. Although most contemporary magical religions have come from abroad, they have found fertile ground in which to develop in North America. Who are today's believers in Witchcraft and how do they worship? Alternative spiritual paths have increased the ranks of followers dramatically, particularly among well-educated middle-class individuals. Witchcraft and Magic conveys the richness of magical religious experiences found in today's culture, covering the continent of North America and the Caribbean. These original essays survey current and historical issues pertinent to religions that incorporate magical or occult beliefs and practices, and they examine contemporary responses to these religions. The relationship between Witchcraft and Neopaganism is explored, as is their intersection with established groups practicing goddess worship. Recent years have seen the growth in New Age magic and Afro-Caribbean religions, and these developments are also addressed in this volume. All the religions covered offer adherents an alternative worldview and rituals that are aimed at helping individuals redefine themselves and make their interactions with the environment more empowered. Many modern occult religions share an absence of dogma or central authority to determine orthodoxy, and have become a contemporary experience embracing modern concerns like feminism, environmentalism, civil rights, and gay rights. Afro-Caribbean religions such as Santería, Palo, and Curanderismo, which do have a more developed dogma and authority structure, offer their followers a religion steeped in African and Hispanic traditions. Responses to the growth of magical religions have varied, from acceptance to an unfounded concern about the growth of a satanic underground. And, as magical religions have flourished, increased interest has resulted in a growing commercialization, with its threat of trivialization. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: The Encyclopedia Of Magic & Witchcraft Susan Greenwood, 2014-01-07 A detailed historical and anthropological study of the traditions of witchcraft round the world, with an in-depth examination of magic and its relationship with religion, from prehistory to the post-modern era. , |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations of Divination and Magic Jesper Sørensen, Anders Klostergaard Petersen, 2021-05-03 In Theoretical and Empirical Investigations of Divination and Magic ten leading scholars of religion provide up-to-date investigations into the classic domains of divination and magic. Spanning historical, anthropological, cognitive, philosophical and theoretical chapters, the volume’s authors invite the reader to explore how divinatory practices and magical rituals, both apart and in interaction, can be reconceptualized in line with 21st century scholarship. Following an introduction addressing the ever-pertinent discussion of the status and epistemological value of the categories inherited from our scholarly predecessors, the volume includes analyses of divinatory and magic practices in particular historical areas, as well as comparative, theoretical and philosophical discussions, making this an indispensable volume for anyone interested in broader comparative approaches to magic and divination. Contributors are Lars Albinus, Edward Bever, Gideon Bohak, Corby Kelly, Lars Madsen, Anders Klostergaard Petersen, Jörg Rüpke, Jesper Frøkjær Sørensen, Jørgen Podemann Sørensen, Dimitris Xygalatas. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa Roy Richard Grinker, Stephen C. Lubkemann, Christopher B. Steiner, Euclides Gonçalves, 2019-02-06 An essential collection of scholarly essays on the anthropology of Africa, offering a thorough introduction to the most important topics in this evolving and diverse field of study The study of the cultures of Africa has been central to the methodological and theoretical development of anthropology as a discipline since the late 19th-century. As the anthropology of Africa has emerged as a distinct field of study, anthropologists working in this tradition have strived to build a disciplinary conversation that recognizes the diversity and complexity of modern and ancient African cultures while acknowledging the effects of historical anthropology on the present and future of the field of study. A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa is a collection of insightful essays covering the key questions and subjects in the contemporary anthropology of Africa with a key focus on addressing the topics that define the contemporary discipline. Written and edited by a team of leading cultural anthropologists, it is an ideal introduction to the most important topics in the field, both those that have consistently been a part of the critical dialogue and those that have emerged as the central questions of the discipline’s future. Beginning with essays on the enduring topics in the study of African cultures, A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa provides a foundation in the contemporary critical approach to subjects of longstanding interest. With these subjects as a groundwork, later essays address decolonization, the postcolonial experience, and questions of modern identity and definition, providing representation of the diverse thinking and scholarship in the modern anthropology of Africa. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Age Antonia Tripolitis, 2002 This insightful read traces the development of the principal Western religions and their philosophical counterparts from the beginnings of Alexander the Great's empire in 331 B.C.E. to the emergence of the Christian world in the fourth century C.E. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: The Anti-Witch Jeanne Favret-Saada, 2015-03-15 Jeanne Favret-Saada is arguably one of France’s most brilliant anthropologists, and The Anti-Witch is nothing less than a masterpiece. A synthesis of ethnographic theory and psychoanalytic revelation, where the line between researcher and subject is blurred—if not erased—The Anti-Witch develops the contours of an anthropology of therapy, while deeply engaging with what it means to be caught in the logic of witchcraft. Through an intimate and provocative sharing of the ethnographic voice with Madame Flora, a “dewitcher,” Favret-Saada delivers a critical challenge to some of anthropology’s fundamental concepts. Sure to be of interest to practitioners of psychoanalysis as well as to anthropologists, The Anti-Witch will bring a new generation of scholars into conversation with the work of a truly innovative thinker. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Naming the Witch James T. Siegel, 2006 Naming the Witch explores the recent series of witchcraft accusations and killings in East Java, which spread as the Suharto regime slipped into crisis and then fell. After many years of ethnographic work focusing on the origins and nature of violence in Indonesia, Siegel came to the conclusion that previous anthropological explanations of witchcraft and magic, mostly based on sociological conceptions but also including the work of E.E. Evans-Pritchard and Claude Lévi-Strauss, were simply inadequate to the task of providing a full understanding of the phenomena associated with sorcery, and particularly with the ideas of power connected with it. Previous explanations have tended to see witchcraft in simple opposition to modernism and modernity (enchantment vs. disenchantment). The author sees witchcraft as an effect of culture, when the latter is incapable of dealing with accident, death, and the fear of the disintegration of social and political relations. He shows how and why modernization and witchcraft can often be companions, as people strive to name what has hitherto been unnameable. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Anthropology of Indigenous Religions Arnaud F. Lambert, 2017-08-10 |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe E. Bever, 2008-06-11 Exploring the elements of reality in early modern witchcraft and popular magic, through a combination of detailed archival research and broad-ranging interdisciplinary analyses, this book complements and challenges existing scholarship, and offers unique insights into this murky aspect of early modern history. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: The Anthropology of Magic Susan Greenwood, 2009-11-01 Magic is arguably the least understood subject in anthropology today. Exotic and fascinating, it offers us a glimpse into another world but it also threatens to undermine the foundations of anthropology due to its supposed irrational and non-scientific nature. Magic has thus often been 'explained away' by social or psychological reduction. The Anthropology of Magic redresses the balance and brings magic, as an aspect of consciousness, into focus through the use of classic texts and cutting-edge research. Suitable for student and scholar alike, The Anthropology of Magic updates a classical anthropological debate concerning the nature of human experience. A key theme is that human beings everywhere have the potential for magical consciousness. Taking a new approach to some perennial topics in anthropology - such as shamanism, mythology, witchcraft and healing - the book raises crucial theoretical and methodological issues to provide the reader with an engaging and critical understanding of the dynamics of magic. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Fortune and the Cursed Katherine Swancutt, 2012 Innovation-making is a classic theme in anthropology that reveals how people fine-tune their ontologies, live in the world and conceive of it as they do. This ethnographic study is an entrance into the world of Buryat Mongol divination, where a group of cursed shamans undertake the 'race against time' to produce innovative remedies that will improve their fallen fortunes at an unconventional pace. Drawing on parallels between social anthropology and chaos theory, the author gives an in-depth account of how Buryat shamans and their notion of fortune operate as 'strange attractors' who propagate the ongoing process of innovation-making. With its view into this long-term 'cursing war' between two shamanic factions in a rural Mongolian district, and the comparative findings on cursing in rural China, this book is a needed resource for anyone with an interest in the anthropology of religion, shamanism, witchcraft and genealogical change. Katherine Swancutt is a Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. She has carried out fieldwork on shamanic religion across Inner Asia, working among Buryats in northeast Mongolia and China since 1999, and among the Nuosu of Southwest China since 2007. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, 1937 |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Jokes and the Linguistic Mind Debra Aarons, 2012-02-27 Through the lens of cognitive science, Jokes and the Linguistic Mind investigates jokes that play on some aspect of the structure and function of language. In so doing, Debra Aarons shows that these 'linguistic jokes' can evoke our tacit knowledge of the language we use. Analyzing hilarious examples from movies, plays and books, Jokes and the Linguistic Mind demonstrates that tacit linguistic knowledge must become conscious for linguistic jokes to be understood. The book examines jokes that exploit pragmatic, semantic, morphological, phonological and semantic features of language, as well as jokes that use more than one language and jokes that are about language itself. Additionally, the text explores the relationship between cryptic crossword clues and linguistic jokes in order to demonstrate the difference between tacit knowledge of language and rules of language use that are articulated for a particular purpose. With its use of jokes as data and its highly accessible explanations of complex linguistic concepts, this book is an engaging supplementary text for introductory courses in linguistics, psycholinguistics and cognitive science. It will also be of interest to scholars in translation studies, applied linguistics and philosophy of language. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, Gareth Roberts, 1996 This important collection brings together both established figures and new researchers to offer fresh perspectives on the ever-controversial subject of the history of witchcraft. Using Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic as a starting point, the contributors explore the changes of the last twenty-five years in the understanding of early modern witchcraft, and suggest new approaches, especially concerning the cultural dimensions of the subject. Witchcraft cases must be understood as power struggles, over gender and ideology as well as social relationships, with a crucial role played by alternative representations. Witchcraft was always a contested idea, never fully established in early modern culture but much harder to dislodge than has usually been assumed. The essays are European in scope, with examples from Germany, France, and the Spanish expansion into the New World, as well as a strong core of English material. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Anthropology of Religion: The Basics James S Bielo, 2015-04-10 Anthropology of Religion: The Basics is an accessible and engaging introductory text organized around key issues that all anthropologists of religion face. This book uses a wide range of historical and ethnographic examples to address not only what is studied by anthropologists of religion, but how such studies are approached. It addresses questions such as: How do human agents interact with gods and spirits? What is the nature of doing religious ethnography? Can the immaterial be embodied in the body, language and material objects? What is the role of ritual, time, and place in religion? Why is charisma important for religious movements? How do global processes interact with religions? With international case studies from a range of religious traditions, suggestions for further reading, and inventive reflection boxes, Anthropology of Religion: The Basics is an essential read for students approaching the subject for the first time. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Magical Consciousness Susan Greenwood, Erik D. Goodwyn, 2015-08-20 How does a mind think magically? The research documented in this book is one answer that allows the disciplines of anthropology and neurobiology to come together to reveal a largely hidden dynamic of magic. Magic gets to the very heart of some theoretical and methodological difficulties encountered in the social and natural sciences, especially to do with issues of rationality. This book examines magic head-on, not through its instrumental aspects but as an orientation of consciousness. Magical consciousness is affective, associative and synchronistic, shaped through individual experience within a particular environment. This work focuses on an in-depth case study using the anthropologist’s own experience gained through years of anthropological fieldwork with British practitioners of magic. As an ethnographic view, it is an intimate study of the way in which the cognitive architecture of a mind engages the emotions and imagination in a pattern of meanings related to childhood experiences, spiritual communications and the environment. Although the detail of the involvement in magical consciousness presented here is necessarily specific, the central tenets of modus operandi is common to magical thought in general, and can be applied to cross-cultural analyses to increase understanding of this ubiquitous human phenomenon. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Ritual and Belief David Hicks, 2010-03-15 Ritual and Belief: Readings in the Anthropology of Religion is intended to satisfy the needs of students in undergraduate courses in the anthropology of religion and comparative religion. It may be used either as a stand-alone text or as a supplement. This is a text that is more instructor- and student-friendly than any other anthology currently available. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Language Play David Crystal, 2001-06-11 In this exhilarating and often hilarious book, David Crystal examines why we devote so much time and energy to language games, how professionals make a career of them, and how young children instinctively take to them. Crystal makes a simple argument-that since playing with language is so natural, a natural way to learn language is to play with it-while he discusses puns, crosswords, lipograms, comic alphabets, rhymes, funny voices taken from dialect and popular culture, limericks, anagrams, scat singing, and much more. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Civilizations of the Supernatural Fabrizio Conti, 2020-12-31 Civilizations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Ritual, and Religious Experience in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Traditions brings together thirteen scholars of late-antique, medieval, and renaissance traditions who discuss magic, religious experience, ritual, and witch-beliefs with the aim of reflecting on the relationship between man and the supernatural. The content of the volume is intriguingly diverse and includes late antique traditions covering erotic love magic, Hellenistic-Egyptian astrology, apotropaic rituals, early Christian amulets, and astrological amulets; medieval traditions focusing on the relationships between magic and disbelief, pagan magic and Christian culture, as well as witchcraft and magic in Britain, Scandinavian sympathetic graphophagy, superstition in sermon literature; and finally Renaissance traditions revolving around Agrippan magic, witchcraft in Shakespeare's Macbeth, and a Biblical toponym related to the Friulan Benandanti's visionary experiences. These varied topics reflect the multifaceted ways through which men aimed to establish relationships with the supernatural in diverse cultural traditions, and for different purposes, between Late Antiquity and the Renaissance. These ways eventually contributed to shaping the civilizations of the supernatural or those peculiar patterns which helped men look at themselves through the mirror of their own amazement of being in this world. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Studies in Witchcraft, Magic, War, and Peace in Africa Beatrice Nicolini, 2006 This collection of essays offers opportunities towards a better understanding of African societies and their historical role in numerous political and military conflicts, and also within peace-building processes. This book broadens the focus from invocations of the supernatural in military and political mobilizations to rituals of healing in post-conflict societies. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Magic, Science and Religion Bronislaw 1884-1942 Malinowski, 2021-09-09 This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: The Myth of Disenchantment Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, 2017-05-16 A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines’ founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world. By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion: A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion Pamela Moro, James Myers, 2009-09-18 This comparative reader takes an anthropological approach to the study of religious beliefs and practices, both strange and familiar. The engaging articles on all key issues related to the anthropology of religion grab the attention of students, while giving them an excellent foundation in contemporary ideas and approaches in the field. The multiple authors included in each chapter represent a range of interests, geographic foci, and ways of looking at each subject. Divided into 10 chapters, this book begins with a broad view of anthropological ways of looking at religion and moves on to some of the core topics within the subject, such as myth, ritual, and the various types of religious specialties. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Religion and Anthropology Brian Morris, 2006 This important textbook provides a critical introduction to the social anthropology of religion, focusing on more recent classical ethnographies. Comprehensive, free of scholastic jargon, engaging, and comparative in approach, it covers all the major religious traditions that have been studied concretely by anthropologists - Shamanism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and its relation to African and Melanesian religions and contemporary Neopaganism. Eschewing a thematic approach and treating religion as a social institution and not simply as an ideology or symbolic system, the book follows the dual heritage of social anthropology in combining an interpretative understanding and sociological analysis. The book will appeal to all students of anthropology, whether established scholars or initiates to the discipline, as well as to students of the social sciences and religious studies, and for all those interested in comparative religion. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Understanding Social Inequality Oxford, 2016-10-07 Now in its third edition, Understanding Social Inequality examines the full scope of inequality in Canada today. The text's two-part structure introduces theories of class, gender, age, ethnicity, and race before examining case studies and examples demonstrating the consequences of inequality.This allows students to form their own conclusions about why social inequality remains prevalent and the potential actions that can be taken to eradicate it. |
| anthropology of religion magic and witchcraft: Magic and Modernity Birgit Meyer, Peter Pels, 2003 This is the first book to explore comparatively how magic--usually portrayed as the antithesis of the modern--is also at home in modernity. |
Anthropology | Definition, Meaning, Branches, History, & Facts
Jun 9, 2025 · Anthropology, ‘the science of humanity,’ which studies human beings in aspects ranging from the biology and evolutionary history of Homo sapiens to the features of society …
The study of anthropology and its various branches | Britannica
anthropology, The “science of humanity.” Anthropologists study human beings in aspects ranging from the biology and evolutionary history of Homo sapiens to the features of society and …
Anthropology - Cultural, Biological, Archaeology | Britannica
Jun 9, 2025 · Anthropology - Cultural, Biological, Archaeology: Cultural anthropology is that major division of anthropology that explains culture in its many aspects. It is anchored in the …
Anthropology - Cultural, Biological, Archaeology | Britannica
Jun 9, 2025 · Anthropology - Cultural, Biological, Archaeology: The modern discourse of anthropology crystallized in the 1860s, fired by advances in biology, philology, and prehistoric …
Cultural anthropology | Definition, Examples, Topics, History,
Cultural anthropology, a major division of anthropology that deals with the study of culture in all of its aspects and that uses the methods, concepts, and data of archaeology, ethnography and …
Anthropology - Cultural, Biological, Archaeology | Britannica
May 7, 2025 · Anthropology - Cultural, Biological, Archaeology: Anthropologists working in Africa and with African materials have made signal contributions to the theory and practice of …
Anthropology - Cultural, Archaeological, Biological | Britannica
Jun 9, 2025 · Anthropology - Cultural, Archaeological, Biological: The anthropology of religion is the comparative study of religions in their cultural, social, historical, and material contexts. The …
Anthropology - Culture, Society, Human Behavior | Britannica
Jun 9, 2025 · Anthropology - Culture, Society, Human Behavior: The term social anthropology emerged in Britain in the early years of the 20th century and was used to describe a distinctive …
Anthropology - Culture, Society, Human Behavior | Britannica
Jun 9, 2025 · Anthropology - Culture, Society, Human Behavior: A distinctive “social” or “cultural” anthropology emerged in the 1920s. It was associated with the social sciences and linguistics, …
Physical anthropology | Human Evolution, Genetics & Adaptation
physical anthropology, branch of anthropology concerned with the origin, evolution, and diversity of people. Physical anthropologists work broadly on three major sets of problems: human and …
Anthropology | Definition, Meaning, Branches, History, & Facts
Jun 9, 2025 · Anthropology, ‘the science of humanity,’ which studies human beings in aspects ranging from the biology and evolutionary history of Homo sapiens to the features of society and …
The study of anthropology and its various branches | Britannica
anthropology, The “science of humanity.” Anthropologists study human beings in aspects ranging from the biology and evolutionary history of Homo sapiens to the features of society and culture …
Anthropology - Cultural, Biological, Archaeology | Britannica
Jun 9, 2025 · Anthropology - Cultural, Biological, Archaeology: Cultural anthropology is that major division of anthropology that explains culture in its many aspects. It is anchored in the collection, …
Anthropology - Cultural, Biological, Archaeology | Britannica
Jun 9, 2025 · Anthropology - Cultural, Biological, Archaeology: The modern discourse of anthropology crystallized in the 1860s, fired by advances in biology, philology, and prehistoric …
Cultural anthropology | Definition, Examples, Topics, History,
Cultural anthropology, a major division of anthropology that deals with the study of culture in all of its aspects and that uses the methods, concepts, and data of archaeology, ethnography and …
Anthropology - Cultural, Biological, Archaeology | Britannica
May 7, 2025 · Anthropology - Cultural, Biological, Archaeology: Anthropologists working in Africa and with African materials have made signal contributions to the theory and practice of …
Anthropology - Cultural, Archaeological, Biological | Britannica
Jun 9, 2025 · Anthropology - Cultural, Archaeological, Biological: The anthropology of religion is the comparative study of religions in their cultural, social, historical, and material contexts. The …
Anthropology - Culture, Society, Human Behavior | Britannica
Jun 9, 2025 · Anthropology - Culture, Society, Human Behavior: The term social anthropology emerged in Britain in the early years of the 20th century and was used to describe a distinctive …
Anthropology - Culture, Society, Human Behavior | Britannica
Jun 9, 2025 · Anthropology - Culture, Society, Human Behavior: A distinctive “social” or “cultural” anthropology emerged in the 1920s. It was associated with the social sciences and linguistics, …
Physical anthropology | Human Evolution, Genetics & Adaptation
physical anthropology, branch of anthropology concerned with the origin, evolution, and diversity of people. Physical anthropologists work broadly on three major sets of problems: human and …
