Beyond Rationalism: Rethinking Magic, Witchcraft and Sorcery

✍ Scribed by Bruce Kapferer (editor)

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 282
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book seeks a reconsideration of the phenomenon of sorcery and related categories. The contributors to the volume explore the different perspectives on human sociality and social and political constitution that practices typically understood as sorcery, magic and ritual reveal. In doing so the authors are concerned to break away from the dictates of a western externalist rationalist understanding of these phenomena without falling into the trap of mysticism. The articles address a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Americas.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION Outside All Reason: Magic, Sorcery and Epistemology in Anthropology
Chapter 2 BEYOND VODOU AND ANTHROPOSOPHY IN THE DOMINICAN-HAITIAN BORDERLANDS
Chapter 3 THE SMELL OF DEATH Theft, Disgust and Ritual Practice in Central Lombok, Indonesia
Chapter 4 SORCERY, MODERNITY AND THE CONSTITUTIVE IMAGINARY Hybridising Continuities
Chapter 5 THE SORCERER AS AN ABSENTED THIRD PERSON Formations of Fear and Anger in Vanuatu
Chapter 6 SORCEROUS TECHNOLOGIES AND RELIGIOUS INNOVATION IN SRI LANKA
Chapter 7 MALEFICENT FETISHES AND THE SENSUAL ORDER OF THE UNCANNY IN SOUTH-WEST CONGO
Chapter 8 FANTASY IN PRACTICE Projection and Introjection, or the Witch and the Spirit-Medium
Chapter 9 THE DISCOURSE OF ‘RITUAL MURDER’ Popular Reaction to Political Leaders in Botswana
Chapter 10 STRANGE FRUIT The South African Truth Commission and the Demonic Economies of Violence
Contributors
Authors Index
Subject Index