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Making Magic: Religion, Magic, and Science in the Modern World
Since the emergence of religious studies and the social sciences as academic disciplines, the concept of "magic" has played a major role in defining religion and in mediating the relation of religion to science. Across these disciplines, magic has regularly been configured as a definitively non-modern phenomenon, juxtaposed to distinctly modern models of religion and science. Yet this notion of magic has remained stubbornly amorphous.
In Making Magic , Randall Styers seeks to account for the extraordinary vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic despite its failure to do just that. He argues that this persistence can best be explained in light of the Western drive to establish and secure distinctive norms for modern identity, norms based on narrow forms of instrumental rationality, industrious labor, rigidly defined sexual roles, and the containment of wayward forms of desire. Magic has served to designate a form of alterity or deviance against which dominant Western notions of appropriate religious piety, legitimate scientific rationality, and orderly social relations are brought into relief. Scholars have found magic an invaluable tool in their efforts to define the appropriate boundaries of religion and science. On a broader level, says Styers, magical thinking has served as an important foil for modernity itself. Debates over the nature of magic have offered a particularly rich site
at which scholars have worked to define and to contest the nature of modernity and norms for life in the modern world.
In Making Magic , Randall Styers seeks to account for the extraordinary vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic despite its failure to do just that. He argues that this persistence can best be explained in light of the Western drive to establish and secure distinctive norms for modern identity, norms based on narrow forms of instrumental rationality, industrious labor, rigidly defined sexual roles, and the containment of wayward forms of desire. Magic has served to designate a form of alterity or deviance against which dominant Western notions of appropriate religious piety, legitimate scientific rationality, and orderly social relations are brought into relief. Scholars have found magic an invaluable tool in their efforts to define the appropriate boundaries of religion and science. On a broader level, says Styers, magical thinking has served as an important foil for modernity itself. Debates over the nature of magic have offered a particularly rich site
at which scholars have worked to define and to contest the nature of modernity and norms for life in the modern world.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 4, 2013
A very useful academic book. I doubt non-specialists would enjoy it, but it's very clearly written, and although it drinks fairly deep from the well of critical theory it manages still to make important points. While JZ Smith (e.g., Trading Places) is a more lively read centered in older material, Making Magic lays out the argument, basically, that "magic" is an insider/participant/emic concept rather than an outsider/observer/etic concept. And that the ways academics use "magic" in their analysis gives insights into their "emic" sensibilities. Hard to feel that you're competent to write about these topics academically without understanding the concepts Styers presents. (Others have made similar arguments; this is a convenient monograph that contains most or all of the relevant material.)
July 1, 2013
When a book opens with a Bruno Latour quote I get nervous. I'm not a fan of the abstruse writings of social theorists and their wacky postmodern ways. But this was an interesting book for those of us interested in magical theory. The author gives us a crash course in all the major theories of magic from just about every field. Some of the writing was still a bit difficult, being that I'm not a specialist but a lay reader, but he writes smoothly. He could have used a few examples to help explain certain concepts. But then again, this is very comprehensive book for the specialist or the (very) educated layperson. His section on shamanism is fascinating.
August 9, 2015
Although a revised dissertation, this history of modern magic is nevertheless interesting. Scholars have long been fascinated and repelled by magic, and Styers does a good job of showing that interaction. For further thoughts see Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.
May 10, 2016
Very heavy reading. I often had to go back and re-read sentences, but entirely worth it. He has a great critique of how we categorize ideas when we ought not. He shows how we are complicit in agendas of power in our very classifications of what we study.
I think what I liked best was that he does not offer a solution, because that would make him part of the problem and not a critic.
I think what I liked best was that he does not offer a solution, because that would make him part of the problem and not a critic.
May 24, 2016
Very safe theorizing in the introduction and conclusion, with a very dry lit review in between. Standard academic text. Why bother?
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews