| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £11.00
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Magic of the State for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £11.00, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Taussig offer[s] much of value for us to think about."
-"Religious Studies Review
"The clear allusions to the South American local of Taussig's fieldwork and the spooky accompanying photographs and drawings give the whole an errie verisimilitude. He seems to be saying, "You think this is fantasy, but it is and is not." Taussig's style of truthtelling roams in the fantasists privileged territory."
-"American Journal of Sociology, July, 1998
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
-"Religious Studies Review
"The clear allusions to the South American local of Taussig's fieldwork and the spooky accompanying photographs and drawings give the whole an errie verisimilitude. He seems to be saying, "You think this is fantasy, but it is and is not." Taussig's style of truthtelling roams in the fantasists privileged territory."
-"American Journal of Sociology, July, 1998
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Product Description
Set in the enchanted mountain of a spirit-queen presiding over an unnamed, postcolonial country, this ethnographic work of ficto-criticism recreates in written form the shrines by which the dead--notably the fetishized forms of Europe's Others, Indians and Blacks--generate the magical powers of the modern state.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
How naturally we entify and give life to such. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
How naturally we entify and give life to such. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Taussig starts with an impressionistic analysis of a Latin American spirit possesion cult and then uses it as a model to explain how the modern state relies on various mysterious incarnations as the basis of its legal system, economics, official history, even its highways. Mixes ethnography, political theory and cultural criticism in an often unsettling but ultimately convincing performance. You WILL believe in ghosts!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
The modern state as voodoo ceremony
22 Aug 1999
Format:Paperback
Taussig starts with an impressionistic analysis of a Latin American spirit possesion cult and then uses it as a model to explain how the modern state relies on various mysterious incarnations as the basis of its legal system, economics, official history, even its highways. Mixes ethnography, political theory and cultural criticism in an often unsettling but ultimately convincing performance. You WILL believe in ghosts!
20 of 24 people found the following review helpful
A fine example of Taussig's
5 Aug 2002
Format:Paperback
Taussig, as his career has progressed, has embraced more and more Nietzsche's dictum that cultural representation must - absolutely must - be inherently radical. The Magic of the State perhaps exemplifies this best - being of a different conceptual order than just about anything out there in large-press anthropology. However unorthodox Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man or Defacement may have been with their incorporation of the more literary voices in ethnography and cultural studies, The Magic of the State slips between orthodox and heterodox altogether - as it simply abandons anything resembling an enthographic model, and instead takes the form of a fictional narrative that might be called anthropological literature or, more accurately, surrealist anthropology...
If you can suspend your standard expectations of what state-theory should be all about, you will find Taussig's book extremely rewarding and even humorous in spots. If you remove the historical, traditional, and methodical bases of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, and inject a generous helping of hallucinatory imagery, dada-esque playfulness, and representational experimentation (and maybe some steriods), you MIGHT come within several kilometers of describing Taussig's masterful book. But in this case, to describe would be to "write around," and this is certainly a work that should be "written with" and celebrated for the vistas from which it enables us mere mortals to see.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Academic Philosophy
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Academic Sociology
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Government & Politics
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Philosophy
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Anthropology
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Sociology
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
