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Caelum Rainieri wrote: > More precisely, for the academics who are not practitioners, I'm > curious as to why you would pick such a field? Particularly after > reading Chris's post wherein he mentions the negative feedback he, and > others I presume, get from their colleagues. As others have said, because it's interesting. I tend not to care very much whether something is "important" or "relevant": if I think it's interesting, it's interesting enough for me, you might say. Furthemore, I find it very interesting and stimulating to think about whence these weird problems and reactions arise. That's vaguely masochistic, I suppose, but it's also a kind of reflexivity. Finally, while I agree with others that these epistemological and methodological problems are in no sense unique to magic, I do think they manifest in extreme forms in that context. I find this fascinating. > For an academic who's also a practitioner, it's understandable. For an > academic who's not a practitioner..., why take the risk? Why choose a > field that is so loaded with negative connotations and, as a result, > may hurt your professional career? To top it off, I don't think that really good academics, as a rule, choose their fields strategically. You choose your dissertation topic that way, sometimes, especially when your committee is hostile or controlling, but you choose your field because you like it. Personally, I still get a kick out of wandering into a library and digging through books about demonology. And if mainstream academia thinks that makes me a weirdo, then I have one obvious option: publish so powerfully that they sit up and take notice. That takes a while, but it does provide a good incentive. Adversity can be a useful thing. > Chris, I notice that you also do quite a bit of writing on RPG game > theory in which you intersperse actual magical theory and history, is > that right? Have you found that to be any kind of buffer for you, or > is it just a natural extension of your personal interests? In other > words, have you found that writing about arcane magical theory in the > context of RPGs is more acceptable among your peers? Yes, I do write about this stuff. It's a hobby, and it's very useful to me professionally, but not for the reasons you mention. I'll explain, because it might be helpful to you or others here. As a theorist, the #1 problem I face is that nobody really understands the majority of the theories they kick around. Some people just limit their usage, some avoid theory entirely, and a few unfortunately just try to fake it. The people who really get it are quite rare. Furthermore, I find that relatively few of those who really do get it are capable of explaining it well to people who don't. This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, and it's largely responsible for the still-common use of the word "theory" as a pejorative in a number of disciplines. And, as a theorist, I hate this. So I think that a big part of my job is to explain theory, however intricate and difficult, extremely clearly. That's a lot of work. So I try it out on multiple audiences. In my courses, I teach people like Levi-Strauss, not simply because they're important and brilliant but also because it requires me to explain these people clearly. In writing about RPGs and theory, I do the same thing for a quite different audience. I figure that if I can explain to a big classroom of freshmen and a vastly disparate group of gaming hobbyists how _bricolage_ works, I'm well on the way toward making this crystal-clear to my academic readers. It also gives me practice explaining things in prose. As to RPGs or whatever as a buffer, well, no. I think this is probably rather worse than studying magic: I mean, Frances Yates studied magic, and she was OK, but gaming is obviously geek silliness. (I hope it's clear I don't agree with this.) All of which comes around to your first question. Is this the most strategic, intelligent way to land a great job in this field? Hell no. That's okay, though, because it's fun. Chris Lehrich -- Christopher I. Lehrich Boston University