In class we talked about a few anthropologists who had something to say about the practice of magic. Why according to anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski who did his fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands, do people engage in what we see as “magic”? How did Malinowski’s insights, which became the common thinking in the discipline, inform the work of George Gmelch when he turned his anthropological eye on baseball? Both saw magic as a way for people to alleviate the stress and anxieties that emerge from uncertainty. But then Luke gave you the example of the practice of magic witnessed in Papua New Guinea, among the Wamira people, by anthropologist Miriam Kahn. How does Kahn’s work seem to contradict Malinowski and Gmelch? What does this say about the relationship between the practice of magic (and religion) and being anxious and uncertain?
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