ATS2371 Chap.2 Foundations of the Anthropology of Magic
Foundations of the Anthropology of Magic
Week 2 opens the historical argument the whole unit is a reply to. Frazer sorted magic into two principles, homeopathic magic working by imitation and contagious magic working through prior contact, and then placed magic below religion and science on a single evolutionary ladder, calling it a false science and an abortive art.
He wrote from other people's reports rather than from fieldwork, which is why the method is remembered as armchair anthropology. The week then puts Evans-Pritchard's Azande material against it. Witchcraft there does not deny how a granary falls; it answers a different question, which is why it fell on this person at this moment. The comparison is the unit's first real methodological lesson.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Frazer's two principles: homeopathic magic by imitation, contagious magic through prior contact, both grouped as sympathetic magic
- 02
The evolutionary ladder from an age of magic to an age of religion to an age of science, and the assumptions it smuggles in
- 03
Armchair method versus fieldwork, and the language warning the unit attaches to reading these authors
- 04
Azande categories kept apart: witchcraft as psychic malevolence, magic as remedy and technique, sorcery as the conscious evil use of magic
- 05
The granary case: what the Azande already know about termites, and what witchcraft is actually being asked to explain
- 06
Oracles as an institution: how a private suspicion becomes an authoritative and accepted verdict
Separate the two chains of causation in a misfortune
- 1First chain: how stalls collapse. Wind load exceeded what the frame could carry, and that knowledge is not in dispute for anyone involved.
- 1Second chain: why this trader, at this hour, when eleven others were standing under the same roof.
- 1Witchcraft answers only the second. It supplies the particular conditions that tie one individual to a natural happening in such a way that he takes the injury.
- 1Explain the misreading: the objection compares a general causal account with a particular one. They are answers to different questions, so neither displaces the other.
Key terms
- Sympathetic magic
- Frazer's umbrella for practices assumed to work through a hidden sympathy between things, subdivided by him into the homeopathic and contagious principles.
- Witchcraft
- In the Azande material, the sending of malevolence by psychic means, requiring no medicine or rite and possible without the witch being aware of doing it.
- Sorcery
- In the Azande material, the deliberate use of magical technique to cause harm, which unlike witchcraft is a conscious act with implements behind it.
- Witch doctor
- The Azande specialist in magic understood as remedy and technique, consulted to identify or counter the effects of witchcraft.
- Armchair anthropology
- Comparative theorising built from missionary and traveller reports rather than the writer's own residence among the people described.
- Evolutionism
- The framing that ranks societies on one ladder from magic to religion to science, with the theorist's own society placed at the top.
- Reflexivity
- Keeping active critical awareness of your own methods and position while studying others, which is the discipline's own response to its colonial inheritance.
Foundations of the Anthropology of Magic FAQ
What is the difference between homeopathic and contagious magic?
Homeopathic magic works by imitation, on the principle that like produces like, so a model or a mimed action is held to bring about what it resembles. Contagious magic works through prior physical contact, on the principle that things once joined continue to act on one another after separation. Frazer groups both under sympathetic magic.
Why does the unit attach a language warning to Week 2?
Because these authors wrote in the language of their period and applied words such as primitive and savage to non-European peoples. The unit asks you to read them anyway, while noting how far anthropology and colonial rule made each other what they were, and to treat that noticing as part of the analysis rather than a preface to it.
What exactly does Evans-Pritchard change?
The question asked. Frazer measured other people's reasoning against his own and found it wanting. Evans-Pritchard built an empirical picture of Zande life first and then asked what assumptions gave those beliefs credibility, and he insisted the same task be performed on Western society.
Do the Azande think a witch performs a ritual?
No, and the distinction matters for the tutorial questions. Witchcraft in this material is psychic and needs no medicines or rites, and a witch may act without knowing it. Sorcery is the category that involves conscious technique.
Why do oracles matter to the explanation?
Because they turn a private suspicion into a public answer. The oracle functions as an institution whose process is socially approved and whose verdict participants treat as authoritative, which is what allows the accusation to be acted on rather than merely felt.
Assessment move
Write Frazer's two principles and the three Azande terms on one card and keep it beside you for the rest of the semester. Weeks 4 and 6 both come back to this vocabulary, and the tutorial in Week 2 asks you to map Frazer's ladder and say which of its assumptions later fieldworkers rejected.
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