{"id":3384,"date":"2011-11-03T13:16:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-03T19:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3384"},"modified":"2011-11-03T15:07:30","modified_gmt":"2011-11-03T21:07:30","slug":"the-ethnographer-and-the-magicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3384","title":{"rendered":"The Ethnographer and the Magicians"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the site freq.uenci.es, described as “a collaborative genealogy of spirituality” (“Ask scholars, writers, and artists what they think of when they think of the word spirituality<\/em>.”), anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann<\/a> glosses an anecdote from her time studying British occultists in the 1980s.<\/a><\/p>\n

Her book Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England<\/em><\/a> (Harvard U. Press, 1989) still resonates, although not always in ways that Professor Luhrmann intended.<\/p>\n

For some, it became a case study in how not to do research on new religious movement. In her article “Psychology of Religion and the Study of Paganism,” published in the collection Researching Paganisms<\/em><\/a>, Melissa Harrington<\/a> writes, “[Luhrmann’s] resulting thesis presents a rich ethnography, replete with original anthropological material, but with a weak conclusion that has been refuted by practitioners and academics alike.”<\/p>\n

In the same volume, sociologist Douglas Ezzy<\/a> critiques her “methodological atheism,” although he admits that “there is a long history of academic disciplinary boundary maintenance that this argument derives from.”<\/p>\n

(Her faculty web page<\/a> describes the work this way: “Her first project was a detailed study of the way reasonable people come to believe apparently unreasonable beliefs.”)<\/p>\n

Ezzy continues, “The methodological atheism at the heart of Luhrmann’s thesis does not derive from an attempt to sensitively understand the experience of Witches, but from her enforced adherence, on pain of significant social sanction, to the atheistic tenets of academe.”<\/p>\n

In her defense, you expect a PhD student to be acutely aware of “social sanction.”<\/p>\n

I would have to say that Researching Paganisms<\/em> (Google sample here<\/a>) was party a response to Luhrmann’s 1980s work, or as the editors wrote, “In particular, it highlights the relationships of researchers with the communities researched, ‘ownership’ of knowledge so created, and problems in presenting a nonmainstream, and seemingly ‘nonrational,’ area within academic discourses across discipline boundaries.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the site freq.uenci.es, described as “a collaborative genealogy of spirituality” (“Ask scholars, writers, and artists what they think of when they think of the word spirituality.”), anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann glosses an anecdote from her time studying British occultists in the 1980s. Her book Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England (Harvard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,30,4],"class_list":["post-3384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-anthropology","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-SA","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1229,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1229","url_meta":{"origin":3384,"position":0},"title":"Greenwood’s Anthropological Study of Magic","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"British anthropologist Susan Greenwood is interviewed at Pagans for Archaeology about her new book, The Anthropology of Magic.In this new book I have taken that argument further and related it to a classical anthropological debate on mystical mentality; and I have also explored the nature of reality in relation to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"anthropology\"","block_context":{"text":"anthropology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=anthropology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1845206711","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4","url_meta":{"origin":3384,"position":1},"title":"By the banks of Hardscrabble Creek","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 7, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Since it has been several years since I have published any of the print versions of \"Letter from Hardscrabble Creek,\" I am creating this blog to talk about the process and progress of writing and also to comment on what I think are the best new books on contemporary Paganism\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":470,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=470","url_meta":{"origin":3384,"position":2},"title":"Online goddess-spirituality studyA doctoral student\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 15, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Online goddess-spirituality studyA doctoral student at the California Institute for Integrative Studies (a pricey, private graduate school) is seeking female participants for her research on \"A Survey of Women\u2019s Experiences and Implications for Therapy.\" If you are part of a \"hidden population,\" you have just been \"snowballed.\"","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9050,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9050","url_meta":{"origin":3384,"position":3},"title":"Now We Are Fifteen","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 7, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This blog turns fifteen today, which means that it is an adolescent who thinks that it knows more than it does. Sounds about right. Hey, here's an idea. Check out the archives \u2014 see the button in the right-hand column. By the Banks of Hardscrabble Creek Since it has been\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9050#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7356,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7356","url_meta":{"origin":3384,"position":4},"title":"Quick, Download this Paper Now","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Israeli scholar of Paganism has published a paper on \"Connecting British Wicca with Radical Feminism and Goddess Spirituality during the 1970s and 1980s: The Case Study of Monica Sj\u00f6\u00f6\" in the Journal of Contemporary Religion. It is currently available as a free download. Here is the abstract: This article attempts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":487,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=487","url_meta":{"origin":3384,"position":5},"title":"In memorium Monica SjooMonica Sjoo,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 9, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"In memorium Monica SjooMonica Sjoo, artist, writer, and a key figure in Goddess spirituality, died Monday. With Barbara Mor, she coauthored The Great Cosmic Mother: Discovering the Religion of the Earth (Harper San Francisco: 1987). She also wrote Return of the Dark\/Light Mother and other works.In an email circulated this\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3384"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3389,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384\/revisions\/3389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}