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The New Science of the Enchanted Universe - Marshall Sahlins

By Marshall Sahlins

Release Date: 2022-04-26

Genre: Anthropology

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One of the world’s preeminent cultural anthropologists leaves a last work that fundamentally reconfigures how we study most other cultures

From the perspective of Western modernity, humanity inhabits a disenchanted cosmos. Gods, spirits, and ancestors have left us for a transcendent beyond, no longer living in our midst and being involved in all matters of everyday life from the trivial to the dire. Yet the vast majority of cultures throughout human history treat spirits as very real persons, members of a cosmic society who interact with humans and control their fate. In most cultures, even today, people are but a small part of an enchanted universe misconstrued by the transcendent categories of “religion” and the “supernatural.” The New Science of the Enchanted Universe shows how anthropologists and other social scientists must rethink these cultures of immanence and study them by their own lights.

In this, his last, revelatory book, Marshall Sahlins announces a new method and sets an exciting agenda for the field. He takes readers around the world, from Inuit of the Arctic Circle to pastoral Dinka of East Africa, from ArawetĂ© swidden gardeners of Amazonia to Trobriand Island horticulturalists. In the process, Sahlins sheds new light on classical and contemporary ethnographies that describe these cultures of immanence and reveals how even the apparently mundane, all-too-human spheres of “economics” and “politics” emerge as people negotiate with, and ultimately usurp, the powers of the gods.

The New Science of the Enchanted Universe offers a road map for a new practice of anthropology that takes seriously the enchanted universe and its transformations from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary America.

The New Science of the Enchanted Universe - Marshall Sahlins

By Marshall Sahlins

Release Date: 2022-04-26

Genre: Anthropology

(0 ratings)
Read Download
One of the world’s preeminent cultural anthropologists leaves a last work that fundamentally reconfigures how we study most other cultures

From the perspective of Western modernity, humanity inhabits a disenchanted cosmos. Gods, spirits, and ancestors have left us for a transcendent beyond, no longer living in our midst and being involved in all matters of everyday life from the trivial to the dire. Yet the vast majority of cultures throughout human history treat spirits as very real persons, members of a cosmic society who interact with humans and control their fate. In most cultures, even today, people are but a small part of an enchanted universe misconstrued by the transcendent categories of “religion” and the “supernatural.” The New Science of the Enchanted Universe shows how anthropologists and other social scientists must rethink these cultures of immanence and study them by their own lights.

In this, his last, revelatory book, Marshall Sahlins announces a new method and sets an exciting agenda for the field. He takes readers around the world, from Inuit of the Arctic Circle to pastoral Dinka of East Africa, from ArawetĂ© swidden gardeners of Amazonia to Trobriand Island horticulturalists. In the process, Sahlins sheds new light on classical and contemporary ethnographies that describe these cultures of immanence and reveals how even the apparently mundane, all-too-human spheres of “economics” and “politics” emerge as people negotiate with, and ultimately usurp, the powers of the gods.

The New Science of the Enchanted Universe offers a road map for a new practice of anthropology that takes seriously the enchanted universe and its transformations from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary America.

More by Marshall Sahlins

How "Natives" Think

Islands of History

Culture and Practical Reason

What Kinship Is-And Is Not

On Kings

Stone Age Economics

The New Science of the Enchanted Universe

The Western Illusion of Human Nature

L'economia dell'etĂ  della pietra

Esperando Foucault, ainda

Âge de pierre, Ăąge d'abondance. L'Ă©conomie des sociĂ©tĂ©s primitives

EtnografĂ­a. Seis visiones

Stone Age Economics

Der Tod des KapitÀn Cook

Die ursprĂŒngliche Wohlstandsgesellschaft

Un univers enchanté

Un grosso sbaglio l'idea occidentale di natura umana

Neue Wissenschaft des verwunschenen Universums

Les LumiĂšres en anthropologie ?

Über Könige

Ilhas de HistĂłria

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