Magic's Reason
eBook - ePub

Magic's Reason

An Anthropology of Analogy

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Magic's Reason

An Anthropology of Analogy

About this book

In Magic's Reason, Graham M. Jones tells the entwined stories of anthropology and entertainment magic. The two pursuits are not as separate as they may seem at first. As Jones shows, they not only matured around the same time, but they also shared mutually reinforcing stances toward modernity and rationality. It is no historical accident, for example, that colonial ethnographers drew analogies between Western magicians and native ritual performers, who, in their view, hoodwinked gullible people into believing their sleight of hand was divine.

Using French magicians' engagements with North African ritual performers as a case study, Jones shows how magic became enshrined in anthropological reasoning. Acknowledging the residue of magic's colonial origins doesn't require us to dispense with it. Rather, through this radical reassessment of classic anthropological ideas, Magic's Reason develops a new perspective on the promise and peril of cross-cultural comparison. 

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Yes, you can access Magic's Reason by Graham M. Jones in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Scienze sociali & Storia europea. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. List of Figures
  7. INTRODUCTION / Dangerous Doubles
  8. ONE / The War on Miracles
  9. TWO / Disanalogy
  10. THREE / Conjuring Equivalences
  11. FOUR / Counteranalogy
  12. FIVE / An Anthropologist among the Spirits
  13. SIX / The Magic of Analogy
  14. SEVEN / Meta-Analogy, or, Once More with Meaning
  15. CONCLUSION / Regimes of Enchantment
  16. Acknowledgments
  17. Notes
  18. References
  19. Index