1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910798123603321

Titolo

Beyond rationalism : rethinking magic, witchcraft, and sorcery / / edited by Bruce Kapferer

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Berghahn Books, , [2003]

©2003

ISBN

1-57181-418-3

0-85745-855-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (282 p.)

Disciplina

306.4

Soggetti

Witchcraft

Occultism

Rationalism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Nota di contenuto

Title Page; Table of Contents; Chapter 1: Introduction; Chapter 2: Beyond Vodou and Anthroposophy in the Dominican-Haitian Boarderlands; 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-MediumChapter 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; Indexes

Sommario/riassunto

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.