December 22, 2007
Anthropology 361
Magic and ‘Magic(al) Realism’
in American Social and Economic Life
Spring 2008
Professor Lawrence Rosen
131 Aaron Burr Hall
Description:
This course will focus on the idea of magic both in the theories of various disciplines and in comparative perspective. Special emphasis will be given to the ways in which Americans seek to conduce the physical world to conform to their desires through means that are not necessarily connected to the world of physical causation as it is known or imagined in religious or scientific domains. Thus at each point – whether in our study of the marketplace or the structure of emotions – we will seek alternative explanations for the allure and implications of a realm whose causation actually or apparently escapes us.
Requirements:
There will be a short paper (5-7 pages) in lieu of a mid-term examination and a final paper (12-15 pages). Possible topics will be discussed in class.
The following required book will be available at Labyrinth Books:
Mary Douglas, Risk Acceptability According to Social Sciences. New York : Russell Sage Foundation, 1985 (ISBN 0-87154-211-0)
Topics and Readings:
Week 1 – February 5: Thinking about Magic – ‘Us’ and ‘Them’
George Gmelch, “Baseball Magic,” reprinted in Elvio Angeloni, ed., Annual Editions, Anthropology, 2004-5, McGraw Hill/Dushkin, 2004, pp. 169-73
L. A. Winokur, “Pushing Their Luck: Zuni Indians Peddle ‘Magical’ Charms," The Wall Street Journal, April 28, 1993, p. 1 ff.
Claude Levi-Strauss, “The Sorcerer and His Magic,” in his Structural
Anthropology, Anchor Books, 1967, ch. IX (pp. 161-80)
Week 2 – February 12: Thinking (Anthropologically) about Magic
J. G. Frazer, “Sympathetic Magic,” reprinted in William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt, eds., Reader in Comparative Religion, 3rd edn., Harper & Row, 1972, pp. 415-30
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, “The Morphology and Function of Magic: A Comparative Study of Trobriand and Zande Ritual and Spells,” American Anthropologist, vol. 31 (1929), pp. 619-41
Stanley Tambiah, “Form and Meaning of Magical Acts,” abridged and reprinted from Culture, Thought, and Social Action ( Harvard U. P., 1985, pp. 60-86) in Michael Lambek, ed., A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, Blackwell Publishing, 2002, pp. 340-57
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, Nottingham : Brynmill Press, 1979, pp. 1e-7e, reprinted without footnotes in Michael Lambek, A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, Blackwell Publishing, 2002, pp. 85-89
Bryan A. Wilson, Magic and the Millenium, Harper & Row, 1973, ch. 3 (“Miracles and the Control of Magic”), pp. 70-101
Week 3 – February 19: Thinking (Rationally?) about the Irrational: Alternative Disciplines, Alternative Theories
Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic, Routledge, 2006, chapters 2 and 5, pp. 22-30, 174-78
Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion, Anchor Books, 1948, (“Magic, Science and Religion”, section II), pp. 25-36
Benedict Carey, “Do You Believe in Magic?” The New York Times, January 23, 2007
Robin Marantz Henig, “ Darwin ’s God,” The New York Times Magazine, March 4, 2007
Mary Douglas, Risk Acceptability According to Social Sciences, ch. 1-3 (pp. 1-39)
Week 4 – February 26: Are We Deceiving Ourselves? Explaining Deception Sociologically and Psychologically
Paul Schiff Berman, “Rats, Pigs, and Statues on Trial: The Creation of Cultural Narratives in the Prosecution of Animals and Inanimate Objects,” N. Y. U. Law Review, vol. 69, no. 2 (1994) pp. 288-326
Peter M. Worsley, “Cargo Cults,” Scientific American, vol. 200, no. 5 (May 1959)
Richard P. Feynman, “Cargo Cult Science,” Engineering and Science [California Institute of Technology], June 1974, pp. 10-13
Stuart Suntherland, Irrationality: The Enemy Within, London : Constable, 1992, ch. 19: pp. 258-6
Week 5 – March 4: Witch Crazes and the End (?) of Magic: Europe
Roy Porter, “Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment, Romantic and Liberal Thought,” in Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark, eds., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe : The Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Centuries, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999, pp. 193-210, 219-36, 263-74Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England, Princeton U. P., 1983, pp. 3-14, 194-226, 267-72
Ingrid Rowland and Anthony Grafton, “The Witch Hunter’s Crusade,” New York Review of Books, September 26, 2002, pp. 68-70
Week 6 – March 11: Witchcraft and Magic in American Culture
Joyce Bednarski, “The Salem Witch Scare Viewed Sociologically,” in Max Marwick, ed., Witchcraft and Sorcery, Penguin, 1970, pp. 151-63
Paul Rozin and Carol Nemeroff,” The Laws of Sympathetic Magic,” in J. Stigler, G. Herdt, and R. A. Shweder, eds., Cultural Psychology, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 205-32
National Research Council, “The Polygraph and Lie Detector: Executive Summary,” www.nap.edu/catalog/10420.html
Assignment: Look for materials about Madonna and Kaballah
Week 7 – March 25: Magic in the Market – Bubbles, Manias, Irrational Exuberance, and the Magic of the CEO
Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance, 2nd edn., Princeton University Press, 2005, Chs. 8 & 9: pp. 147-73
Burton Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, W. W. Norton , 9th edn 2007, chapters 2 and 5 (pp. 34-51and 99-125)
Nassim Taleb, Fooled by Randomness, Random House, 2nd edn, 2005, Chapter 3 (pp. 43-69)
Rakesh Khurana, Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs, Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 1-19, 51-80, 186-206
Week 8 – April 2: “Any Sufficiently Advanced Science is Indistinguishable from Magic” (Sir Arthur C. Clarke): Does Science Destroy the Magic of Magic, or Become a New Version of It?
Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 214-50
Alfred W. Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 125-1600. Cambridge U. P., 1997, Chapters 1 (“Pantometry: An Introduction”), 7 (“Visualization: An Introduction”), and 11 (“The New Model”) (pp. 3-19, 129-37, and 225-40)
David Nyberg, The Varnished Truth, University of Chicago Press, 1993, Chapter 5 (pp. 81-108)
Week 9 – April 8: American Numerology – History and Fetish
Paul Krugman, “The Big Meltdown,” The New York Times, March 2, 2007
Richard E. Rubenstein, Aristotle’s Children, Harcourt, 2003, Chapter 8: “’God Does Not Have to Move These Circles Anymore’” (pp. 270-98)
John Hockenberry, “Pentium and Our Crisis of Faith,” New York Times, December 28, 1994, p. A13
Mary Douglas, Risk Acceptability According to Social Science, pp. 41-82
Malcolm Gladwell, “What I. Q. Doesn’t Tell You about Race,” The New Yorker, December 17, 2007, pp. 92-96
Stephen Jay Gould, “The Median Isn’t the Message,” Discover, June 1985
Week 10 – April 15: ‘Magical Realism’ and the Literary Imagination
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, Vintage, 2006, pp. 57-61, 74-75, 152-53
William Faulkner, “The Old People,” in his Go Down, Moses, Random House, 1942, pp. 163-87
Henry James, “The Jolly Corner,” in his Selected Tales, Penguin Books, 2001, pp. 550-76
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, New York : Viking, 1989, Chapters 2 and 3
Week 11 – April 22: Suicide Bombers and Political Magic
Judith M. Weightman, “ Peoples Temple as a Continuation and an Interruption of Religious Marginality in America ,” in Rebecca Moore and Fielding McGehee III, eds., New Religious Movements, Mass Suicide, and Peoples
Temple, Lewiston : The Edwin Mellen Press, 1989, pp. 5-21Andrea Elliott, “Where Boys Grow up to be Jihadists,” New York Times Magazine, November 25, 2007, pp. 72 ff.
David Bukay, “The Religious Foundations of Suicide Bombing,” Middle East Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 4 (Fall 2006) pp. 27-36
Assignment: What theories are being offered for suicide bombings?
Week 12 – April 29: Modern Movements and the World of Magic
Gustave Niebuhr, “Witches Cast as the Neo-Pagans Next Door,” New York Times, October 31, 1999, p. 1ff
Ronald Hutton, “Modern Pagan Witchcraft,” pp. 17-20, 70-79; and Willem de Blécourt, et. al, “The Witch, Her Victim, the Unwitcher and the Researcher,” pp. 197-202, both in Bengt Ankerloo and Stuart Clark, eds, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe : The Twentieth
Century, Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999Mary Douglas, Risk Acceptability According to Social Sciences, pp. 83-101