Magic's Reason: An Anthropology of Analogy (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780226518541)

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.

Author: Graham M. Jones
ISBN-10: 022651854X
ISBN-13: 9780226518541
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 12/06/2017
Pages: 240
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 0.70d