Magic

A central concern in the intellectual history of magic and religion is modernity. This requires an understanding of how Western scholarship has created grand narratives that present Western societies and their political projects, notably colonialism, in a favorable light. It is clear that one of the most distinctive elements of Europe's construction or imagination of itself has been its self-designation as civilized and progressive. The simultaneous construction of other groups of people as the opposite—backward, primitive, and undeveloped—was assisted by discourses in the social sciences, philosophy, and religious studies.

The theories and assumptions about magic that scholars have used, particularly in writings prior to the work of Lévi-Strauss, demonstrate particular patterns. The ways that they chose to contrast and compare material from different cultures and societies often created an opposition between Western and non-Western, advanced and backward, and civilized and primitive cultures. When magic was contrasted with religion, it was viewed to be less comprehensive and focused on practical ends, rather than ontological or existential ones. When placed in contrast to science it was seen to be either limited or incorrect, since it did not contain a logic that could test its propositions nor question its own premises. In early-twenty-first-century analyses, magic has been compared favorably to science, and there is a general assumption that it works toward an understanding of the natural world and relies on analogical reasoning. Most scholars view magic as an aspect of religion that exists in all societies. It can be viewed as part of everyday life, guiding thought and action.

People in societies across the globe have been influenced by Western thought on magic, with its attending characterizations of culture. Magic has been present in the discourses of colonial rule, Christian conversion, educational institutions, state administrative organizations, and development policies. Whether the thought comes from popular culture or scholarly investigations, the production and reproduction of dichotomies, that according to Levi-Strauss present what is "outside" as inferior, continue to present problems for scholarship. Despite the relative lack of theoretical reflections and ethnographic works on magic prior, early-twenty-first-century scholarship is poised to extend the terrain of what can be considered to be magical and to conceptualize the new forms that magic takes in modernity.