Posts tagged OT

Graeber concludes his piece by explaining that his saying as an anthropologist – like his informants themselves said – that certain spirit-charms probably didn’t work, actually allows for the possibility that other charms might do so. Skepticism about magic is thus a necessary part of its possibility, and we actually take the ‘radically other’ possibilities of our research participants’ worlds more seriously when we recognize that they are often just as hard-to-swallow, inconclusive, weird or paradoxical for our research participants themselves.

via https://perfumedskull.com/2015/12/11/on-weird-cultural-beliefs-anthropologists-wizard-envy-and-the-skeptical-native/#more–729