overemphasis on magic

[JHOUBEN at rullet.LeidenUniv.nl]

On Thu, 13 Jun 1996 13:32:38 LGoehler at aol.com wrote: 

but the best book that I found on
this topic and that is not mentioned by Tambiah is: Pierre Bourdieu: Ce que
parler veut dire. L' economie des echanges linguistiques. Paris 1982.
Bourdieu writes against the Opposition of magic and rationality (my
translation - sorry in advance for mistakes): *Who, in the way of Max Weber,
opposes magic or charismatic law of a common oath or an ordeal to our law
which is predictable and calculateable, forgets that also this throughout
rationalized law is nothing more than a happy act (I took this formulation
from Austin - L.G.) of social magic.*  

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

See also the "reincarnation" of this statement in Language and Symbolic Power, 
Pierre Bourdieu, edited and introduced by John B. Thompson, translated by Gino 
Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Pollity Press, 1991), p. 42: 
"Those who, like Max Weber, have set the magical or charismatic law of the 
collective oath or the ordeal in opposition to a rational law based on 
calculability and predictability, forget that the most rigorously rationalized 
law is never anything more than an act of social magic which works." 

Although it does not directly address the topic of "magic", I would like to 
mention a recent article in which Bourdieu's (and Eugene Weber's, and Benedict 
Anderson's) theories on language and power are confronted with data in the 
history of Sanskrit, namely John D. Kelly's "What was Sanskrit for: 
metadiscursive strategies in Ancient India" (in Ideology and Status of 
Sanskrit: Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language, Leiden: Brill, 
in press). According to Kelly: "Our studies change when we approach texts not 
as windows to distant world views but as tools made for use and used 
effectively (though not necessarily as originally intended) in distant places 
and times." 

Jan E.M. Houben
Research fellow International Institute for Asian Studies
P.O. Box 9515
2300 RA  Leiden
jhouben at RULLET.LeidenUniv.NL