ethnography paper

[ladyofannwn]

It's spring and time to write a paper on an ethnography again; this time it's for my magic, witchcraft and sorcery class. There are a lot of options out there, but does anybody have any favorites in this area?

edit: as i mentioned the other day, i might be heading to India this summer. anything nifty out there dealing w/ that part of the world?

Comments

[catsnstuff]

I like Stoller, also - if you look at his earlier works, I would suggest also looking at The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The senses in anthropology also, where he discusses things that he experienced while learning about sorcery, but felt he couldn't write in a "proper" ethnography.

I have an interest in modern Neo-Pagan Witchcraft. Tanya Luhrmann is interesting in this, as she wrote Persuasions of the Witch's Craft in the 1980s - it was a fundamental piece that is always referenced in studies of modern Neo-Paganism, but it has also been heavily criticised by other scholars within Pagan Studies (e.g. look at Researching Paganisms: Practicing the Witch's craft, edited by Doug Ezzy et al) because her avowed athiesm led her to treat the magical beliefs pretty much as delusions. I came to this piece of writing through Pagan Studies, not through Anthropology (my background is Sociology), and it was interesting to me to then hear some anthropologists speak quite favourably of her and her work. I would be very curious to hear more about this from an anthropologist's perspective - it relates to the issue of studying magical beliefs among middle-class "Western" people who weren't born to it, how this may be approached differently to magical beliefs in the "other", and what perhaps should be done in such situations.

(As a Neo-Pagan myself, of course, I'm somewhat biased! :))

[sporkyoracle]

still, Luhrmann's study is fascinating because she actually did engage in the practice of witchcraft, and became quite a competent witch. Her study is more on what specific practices in witchcraft make it more or less reasonable. She didn't necessarily treat it as delusions, just a culturally determined system. Which, given her anthropological audience, makes a lot sense. Ironic also that because she actually engaged in witchcraft, anthropologists find her suspicious.

[ladyofannwn]

huh. that does sound interesting.