Here's the deal with hoary theorists. While cleaving slavishly to their theories, or using them exclusively to inform one's work, is certainly to be avoided (if one doesn't want to be known as retrograde), some theorists have become part of the canon, and it equally does not do to ignore their contributions. Thus, failing to cite Levi-Strauss's contributions to the discourse on magic or myth-making in a literature review is misguided. And as I just explained to a student, not mentioning Turner's concepts of liminality and anti-structure in discussing a ritual that is obviously analyzable according to those terms just makes one look ignorant.
So it's a delicate balance between acknowledging the canon, and using up-to-date theories in one's own work.
Best,
Sabina
Sabina Magliocco
Professor
Department of Anthropology
California State University
18111 Nordhoff St.
Northridge, CA 91330-8244
---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 10:50:05 -0400
>From: "Christopher I. Lehrich" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Emic and etic -- please don't (was magic & rhetoric etc.)
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Daniel Harms wrote:
>
> (I do wonder where the same principle leaves our
> previous Claude Levi-Strauss discussion,
> though...)
>
> If someone weighs in to say, "Here's the wonderful
> theory that is obviously the basis for current work,
> and it's called bricolage and it works like this,"
> the proper response is the same -- oy ve.
> Nevertheless I think that Levi-Strauss did a number
> of things that continue to have enormous and to a
> significant degree unexplored potential for us. You
> might think of Marshall Sahlins as an example of
> what I mean here: he's obviously in a sort of direct
> lineage from Levi-Strauss, he obviously takes that
> corpus extremely seriously, but he's hardly an
> old-fashioned Levi-Straussian structuralist. Does
> that help?
>
> Chris Lehrich
>
> --
> Christopher I. Lehrich
> Assistant Professor of Religion
> Associate Director, Division of Religious and Theological Studies
> Boston University
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