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Hello all, I have been interested to read the comments raised here on this list about my new book The Anthropology of Magic. This work builds on my two ethnographies - Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld, and The Nature of Magic - and is a textbook, as well as a contribution to scholarly research on magic. I am particularly grateful for Sabina’s insightful overview of the book posted here and do not want to repeat the points that she has so eloquently made, but will add the following reflections on my aim in writing the work: Firstly, I wanted to counter the prevailing rationalism in anthropology and the social sciences that uses methods of analysis that ultimately renders the experience of magic invisible. To this end, I developed an important but largely misunderstood and misrepresented debate in anthropology between Levy-Bruhl and Evans-Pritchard regarding mystical mentality. The conclusion to this debate was that mystical mentality was not limited to so-called primitive peoples but is potentially common to all human thought, and that all people have the capacity for different orientations – what we would now describe as magical or scientific. My development of the concept of mystical mentality is through a sustained examination of magical consciousness. I examine a thread of thinking and analysis that has been consistently marginalised due to the still largely rationalist parameters of academic social science disciplines. The work makes the case that all human beings are ‘natives’ of this type of thought; it also provides an experiential methodology for anthropologists that takes the process of magical participation further through subjective experience. This focuses on the dynamics of magical experience rather than the more usual reduction of magic to sociological or psychological explanations. Secondly, I have provided a foundation for a more inclusive analytical framework that can lead to more in-depth analysis of magical thought than previously allowed due to the reasons already mentioned. This research can examine how people might hold what might appear to be conflicting beliefs in ‘magic’ and ‘science’. The theoretical framework in this book has the potential to bring conflicting positions of supposed ‘rationality’ and ‘irrationality’ into a broader and more multi-faceted area of scientific investigation. I hope that this work will contribute usefully to the on-going debate on magic. Susan Greenwood Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:57:37 -0800 From: "Magliocco, Sabina" <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: review of Greenwood (2009) Anthropology of Magic Francis et al., I have been reading Greenwood's book over the last several weeks and I must= say I disagree with your assessment. I find it a stimulating and importan= t work. I'm not going to address minor issues here, such as the author's r= eference to Aubrey Beardsley, which might be obscure to students withouth a= n annotation. Rather, I want to call attention to what I deem are the book= 's major contributions. First, the author provides an overview of anthropological treatments of mag= ic and magical consciousness from the late 19th century to the present in a= format accessible to most educated readers, including undergraduates. Thi= s is a valuable service in itself. But further, she fully grasps and expli= cates how Levy-Bruhl''s comments on "the savage mind" and its understanding= of the world have been distorted and misrepresented by later anthropologis= ts to reflect evolutionist and exclusivist perspectives. The _way_ she doe= s this is clever and lends itself well to pedagogical adaptation: she imagi= nes and reconstructs a dialogue between Levy-Bruhl and E.E. Evans-Pritchard= , another important anthropological voice in the study of magical systems o= f thought, based on correspondence between the two scholars. This reconstr= ucted exchange, while fictional, is creative and instructive for students, = in that it clarifies the positions of both scholars and shows how Levy-Bruh= l's theory opens the door for the co-existence of both rational and magical= worldviews in ALL human societies. It dismantles the evolutionist, ethnoc= entric assumptions that have permeated the anthropological study of magic f= or most of the history of the discipline and opens the door for a more nuan= ced view based on the non-exclusivity of either a "raitonnalist" or a "magi= cal" worldview. Greenwood's work deals not with ritual magic or magic as it might be descri= bed by a practitioner (and I write here as both an ethnographer and a parac= titioner, so don't get your knickers in a knot), but with magical vs. so-ca= lled rational understandings of the world -- in other words, with the found= ations of belief. It allows us to see how people in a range of human socie= ties, in different historical epochs, ahve simultaneously veiwed the world = as animated by spiritual/ magicla forces and run according to "natural" law= s of causality. It shows us the contextual nature of belief, and opens the= door for a more humanistic and less stigmatizing view of those who, like m= ost of us (like most human beings, truth be told), hold conflicting beliefs= , and make use of them in different contexts. As for issues of objectivity, I beleive, like other respondents, that this = has been dealt with ad nauseam not only on this list, but in the field of a= nthropology itself and particularly in the field of modern Pagan studies an= d religious studies more broadly. I found the author dealt openly and fair= ly with her dual perspectives, and used exampels from her field exeprience = to illustrate principles she presented. This is the purpose of participant= -observation, after all. For more in-depth treatments of some of her infor= mants who also appear in this book, readers might wish to look at her ethno= graphies which Francis mentioned at the beginning of his review. This book makes an important contribution to anthropology, religious studie= s, folkloristics and any field dealing with issues of belief. It is access= ible to a wide range of audiences and suitable for use in undergraduate cla= sses; I plan to adopt it for use in my course "The Supernatural in the Mode= rn World" in Fall 2010. More importantly, it provides me with a foundation= from which I am building arguments for my ongoing work on magico-religious= healing in Italy and North America, and more broadly for the nature of bel= ief and the ways folklorists and anthropologists ahve approached it. While= no work is perfect and we can certainly find flaws in any published work, = I highly recommend this book. Sabina Magliocco Professor and Chair Department of Anthropology California State University - Northridge 18111 Nordhoff St. Northridge, CA 91330-8244