tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6836086390387532058.post1951206943350336758..comments2024-03-22T03:31:55.302-07:00Comments on fieldwork: The Ethics of Enchantment, I: Must We Be Disenchanted?Jedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077628902165628366noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6836086390387532058.post-30902564502254151702010-11-20T15:59:09.932-08:002010-11-20T15:59:09.932-08:00Hi, Jed,
You know I don't have to be convince...Hi, Jed,<br /><br />You know I don't have to be convinced that there's something worth investigating in modern institutions' persistent enchanted or magical aspects. As someone who's on record asserting that modern adjudication has a potentially legitimate magical mode, I'm completely in sympathy with this project. I'm also on board with violating the good critical practices we were taught in (post) modern humanities classes and making generalizations about culture. I think it's the only way we are ever going to get to what is interesting or worthwhile about this problem of the persistence of magic or enchantment in our own avowedly rationalist culture.<br /><br />One thing that seems crucial for your project is to think about how instrumental rationality and enchantment can coexist. Obviously Weber defined enchantment in opposition to modernity, maturity and rationality. That doesn't mean we're stuck with that opposition. This is one place that ethnographic work can really help. I thought immediately upon reading your post about Malinowski's assertion that magic is not a misunderstanding of nature but an aspect of people's relationship with nature. He pointed out that the Trobriand Islanders knew how to build seaworthy canoes based on accurate principles of hydrodynamics. Their magic rites didn't interfere with their technical rationality as boat builders -- the magic was for something else. Have you read Stanley Tambiah's "Magic, Science and Religion and the Scope of Rationality"? This book really turned me on to this point.<br /><br />Another book I read recently that seems relevant to your project is Ritua and Its Consequences by Adam Seligman et al This book totally goes to town on the broad cross cultural comparisons in a very brave way that I think pays off big. Their main point is that many different cultures (if not all cultures) partake of two aspects they call "ritual" and "sincerity" and that one or the other aspect tends to be dominant in different times and places but never goes it all alone. <br /><br />The point about the coexistence of technical rationality and magic seems important not only practically but theoretically. As a practical matter, obviously we don't want to give up good science in our understanding of the environment. On the theory side, if enchantment works with instrumental reason, that kind of defeats the tired Piagetian identification of instrumental reason as the more mature, advanced, civilized approach and the identification of enchantment with childish attitudes.<br /><br />Anyway, thanks for the provocative post and I look forward to more.<br /><br />Jessie AllenAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com