Document Type

Book Review

Publication Version

Published Version

Publication Date

Winter 2007

Journal or Book Title

Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft

Volume

2

Issue

2

First Page

217

Last Page

220

DOI

10.1353/mrw.0.0028

Abstract

Magic and its relation to Western modernity has been a flourishing subject of late. Among those interested in this topic have been anthropologists studying indigenous cultures in Africa, South Asia, and the Americas, and also, in the case of the Americas, forcibly imported non-European (i.e., slave) cultures. Scholarly focus has fallen on the interaction of such cultures with Western modernity in a colonial and postcolonial context. Also exploring this topic have been historians of modern Europe, who have begun to articulate how the explosion of interest in spiritualism and occultism among middle- [End Page 217] class Europeans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries grew out of complex reactions to modernity. This volume serves as a fine introduction to work in the former area; it might have benefited (if one may put one’s quibbles about a book at the beginning of a review rather than in their more traditional place at the end) from more inclusion of the latter area as well.

Comments

This is a book review from Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 2 (2007): 217, doi:10.1353/mrw.0.0028. Posted with permission.

Rights

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of scholarly citation, none of this work may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. For information address the University of Pennsylvania Press, 3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112.

Copyright Owner

University of Pennsylvania Press

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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