jacqueline simpson wrote:

>Interesting, what you say about TL's undamaged
>reputation in USA, whereas in my (limited) experience
>UK folklorists/anthropologists disapproved of her
>being so tolerant towards the outlooks and practices
>she described --- exactly the opposite reason to that
>given by some participants in theis list! As a friend
>of mine used to say, 'If you walk down the middle of
>the road you're probably on the right track, but you
>do get shot at from both sides.'
>
>Jacqueline
>  
>
Jacqueline hits the nail on the head here.  Look back over this whole 
discussion for a minute.  Notice that Luhrman has simultaneously been 
accused of (or at least criticized for) too much distance, too much 
attempt at objectivity, too much involvement, too much subjectivity.  
Notice also the apparent disparities between the range of academic 
replies and those of the informants.

To be sure, the book is hardly perfect, but the methodological and 
epistemological challenges here are obviously extreme.  I doubt very 
much whether it is possible to write an analytical book focused on 
modern practitioner communities, in the US or the UK, that pleases more 
or less everyone.  My experience at the Association for the Study of 
Esotericism conference was indicative here, I thought: like this list, 
the conference is intended to be scholarly and basically academic, and 
nearly all papers fit that model.  My own paper remarked on this 
directly, discussing methodological issues.  After the paper, several 
practitioners took issue with this, because from their perspective 
methodology must accept the reality (in every sense) of magical effects; 
on a logical basis, however, there is no reason whatever that such an a 
priori decision must be made.

In the end, the large version of this question -- reality, objectivity, 
perspective -- is going to be the fundamental methodological problem of 
the scholarly study of magic.  Let's be straightforward about it: a 
great many academics still think magic is basically silly or 
irrational.  Luhrman had this problem with her colleagues, and Hutton 
has mentioned it many times; I've had the same experience.  This isn't 
something that is going to go away easily, for a number of institutional 
and structural reasons mostly having to do with the construction of 
rationality within mainstream western intellectual history of the last 
few centuries.  As I see it, there are therefore three basic options:

1. Insist upon a scientific objective-style model approach, accepting a 
radical disparity between practitioner perspectives and thought and 
scholarly ones.  This is currently championed by W. Hanegraaff, who has 
revived Marvin Harris's anthropological re-formulation of Pike's 
"emic/etic."

2. Insist upon the definite validity and reality of the practitioner 
perspective and strive to represent that directly.  This is very much a 
continuation of the W.C.Smith approach, under which the scholar often 
becomes something of an advocate for the informants.

3. Seek alternative analytical and philosophical means to challenge the 
problem head-on.

My own position is as follows:

#1 will fail.  Practitioners are not, I think, going to be happy with 
this radical divorce from their way of looking at the world.  I gather 
something of this response has occurred in reference to Luhrmann; it 
should be considerably stronger in reference to Hanegraaff and his 
approach.  At the same time, anthropologists and members of some allied 
disciplines largely discarded Harris's "emic/etic" thing some 15-20 
years ago, for good reason.  People who know those debates are likely to 
find Hanegraaff's approach naive and even ignorant, especially 
considering that I find no awareness of these debates in his 
bibliography or notes (admittedly I have not read all his methodological 
articles yet).  Thus this solution will displease practitioners, prompt 
scorn from cutting-edge academics, and furthermore fail intellectually 
for the very reasons this distinction didn't work in the first place.

#2 will fail.  It may please practitioners; in the short run, it might 
please some academics, but if I may be blunt the people who really love 
this sort of approach often love it because it allows them to assuage 
colonial and related guilt.  There is a lot of defending the oppressed 
and the like, which is why such approaches often work in tandem with 
analyses of identity politics.  While I think this is valuable on its 
own merits, it seems to be on the wane in anthropology and religious 
studies; once again, our little subfield is coming to the party rather 
late.  I would guess that in ten years this sort of approach will be 
considered old-fashioned, much as I think Hanegraaff's approach is 
old-fashioned now.  Furthermore, in the end this approach does not so 
much attempt a solution to the epistemological or methodological problem 
(unlike #1, for example) as set it aside for later.

#3 is the only option, I think.  The problem is that it will require a 
level of theoretical and analytical sophistication that we have not yet 
achieved.  As I've tried to indicate with these sketches of #1 and #2, 
much of the theoretical work being done currently is subordinate to 
initial presentation of material -- a necessary task, let me insist!  
For example, Hanegraaff's book on the New Age is largely a summary of a 
vast range of material.  Luhrmann's work also goes a long way toward 
presenting a world and a worldview.  Hutton's book on Wicca is a 
stunning descriptive and partly narrative history.  But in all these 
works, theory is ultimately somewhat secondary, for good reasons.  These 
are not books wherein we will find real answers to these hairy problems 
-- nor it is reasonable to ask that of them.

Politically and institutionally, it is necessary for people studying 
magic and dealing with a certain sort of academic disapproval or disdain 
to demonstrate analytical superiority.  We have to be at the cutting 
edge of several fields, not a little bit behind in everything.  We have 
to situate ourselves and prove ourselves such that academics from 
several disciplines are immediately inclined to listen to us because, 
whatever the topic under analysis, we are among the most impressive and 
exciting thinkers around.  And that means addressing this nightmarish 
epistemological and methodological problem head-on, drawing from every 
related disciplinary discussion over the last fifty years and more.

Along the way, I suspect that those of us who try this plan will find 
that practitioners simply do not find us or our work interesting, 
congenial, or helpful.  They will find it excessively difficult reading, 
presuming enormous prior academic knowledge of a vast range of things, 
and presuming most of all an extensive experience of reading highly 
abstract intellectual analysis couched in a traditional academic style.  
I doubt that the practitioners of my acquaintance would find this 
interesting, though I can certainly hope they would not find it 
offensive either.

In the end, the troubled history of this list already demonstrates the 
difficulty in spades.

Practically speaking, I suggest thinking seriously about whether, as an 
academic scholar of magic, you the reader are personally more committed 
to the descriptive (i.e. collecting, collating, formulating, and 
presenting data) or the theoretical (i.e. analyzing the methodological 
and epistemological implications of such work and such data).  Obviously 
there is no absolute divide, but it's a worthwhile distinction 
heuristically.  My suspicion, and this is no criticism, is that most 
members here are in the former camp.  That's as it should be, in my 
opinion.  In that case, advancing the field institutionally is largely a 
matter of meeting high standards of excellence in a particular 
mainstream discipline: classics, history, anthropology, etc.  To widen 
the problem beyond such a frame raises questions that simply cannot be 
dealt with pragmatically or ideologically.


Chris Lehrich


-- 
Christopher I. Lehrich
Boston University