This book is a collection of twelve studies written between 2006 and 2012 by scholars who
mostly are or were connected with the Department of Anthropology at Copenhagen
University; others include anthropologists from Aarhus University as well as scholars at
the (Danish) National Institute of Public Health. The single foreign voice comes from
professor Richard Jenkins, Sheffield, who has already co-edited an earlier volume about
somewhat similar problems,
Nearly all of these studies have a strong empirical base, even if the observations and interviews were often mere byproducts of larger studies. For example, Mikkel Bunkenberg refers to some cases from his field studies in China that may be subsumed under magical use and, above all, destruction of objects (like incense). Inger Sjorslev relies on her studies of Candomblé in Brazil (here with reference to the cult of Exu or Legba), Maria Louw on her fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan (here with reference to dream omens), and Nils Bubandt writes about a witch affair in Indonesia in 2004 in which the traditional concept of a witch was essentially altered by TV influences: vampire movies and the concept of "trauma."
Nearer to the common Western lifeways are articles that rely on fieldwork about public health problems in Denmark: substance abuse treatment and prevention (Steffen Jöhnke, Morten H. Rod, here from the angle of bureaucratic rationalization and control vs. traditional experience), and infertility treatment and breast cancer (Tine Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, Helle Ploug Hansen, here from the angle of how the women and the clinical staff manage uncertainty about the outcome). Somewhat comparable are the negotiations between institutional and private points of view with reference to the use of a horseshoe in wedding rituals of the Danish National Church (Cecilia Rubow, Anita Engdahl-Hansen).
A distinct part of the book features studies about borderline experiences in Denmark and in Western countries: spiritualism (Vibeke Steffens, Richard Jenkins), ghost and haunting experiences (Kirsten Raahauge), and, most interestingly, the "Hearing Voices Movement" in which people diagnosed with schizophrenia insist on taking seriously the voices that speak to them (Sidsel Busch).
The odd man out is Martin Skydstrup with his attempt to interprete paleo-hydrodynamics (in Greenland) as something near to magic, relying on the use of magic and ghosts within the lingo of the scientists themselves.
On the whole, the book suffers from a problematic tendency in modern anthropological writing. In earlier times, one would have expected the scholar to situate (and dispute) his work in the context of former empirical studies on similar subjects. (This is here best done by Vibeke Steffens, but rather as an exception.) In our times, the scholars tend to place their work immediately in the context of big ideas and broad abstractions, as produced by Weber, Mauss, Evans-Pritchard, Giddens, or—here mostly—Bruno Latour. This is not completely uninteresting; in particular, Skydstrup's sketch on page 131 is really helpful. Skydstrup distinguishes between early modernism (magic is an ancestor of science), high modernism (magic and science are different practical rationalities), and postmodernism (there is a continuity, sameness, or coevalness between the efficacy and make-believe of magic and science); he leaves open whether Latour's a-modernism is more than a mere variety of postmodernism.
But the relation between experience and theory is rather vague. As those abstract concepts are never condensed into precise theories, the empirical studies cannot be used as confirmation or refutation of those theories. That leaves two possibilities: either the abstract concept is to make the concrete empirical findings more understandable plan which hardly ever works—or the empirical study serves as a mere illustration of the abstract concept—a dreary task that does not do justice to the labors of the researcher. The dilemma here is most obvious in the case of Inger Sjorslev's introduction of the "Gestalt" concept into her analysis of the Exu/Legba cult.
If we sincerely want to take a more theoretical approach, we have at first to overcome the variety of definitions: science/rationality and magic are mostly not defined on the basis of a common conceptual frame. Magic is defined differently by different anthropologists. As for science/rationality, we must above all distinguish between definitions of science as-it-is and the more ambitious definitions of “good science” as proposed by methodologists. That said, there is definitely an overlap between rationality and magic: take B.F. Skinner's study about how pigeons' learning by reinforcement, which is not so different from rational inductive reasoning, can lead to "superstitious" results. Thus, there is no reason to doubt the idea underlying this book; and if ever there will be a systematic approach to all this, the essays here collected will proffer useful material for sophisticated distinctions and reasoning: for this the index of concepts and names, mostly of scientists, will be most helpful.
Folklorists will be interested to learn about the Danish Folklore Archive's project titled "Supernatural Experiences in Denmark," an online collection of stories from 2012 onwards (13).
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[Review length: 833 words • Review posted on October 18, 2016]