"Magic has been present throughout human cultures in history, proving equally constant and mutable. It persists until this day, when we encounter a new kind of magical thinking in highly technical, digitized environments. Moreover, since the...
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"Magic has been present throughout human cultures in history, proving equally constant and mutable. It persists until this day, when we encounter a new kind of magical thinking in highly technical, digitized environments. Moreover, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, magic has enjoyed a growing visibility in popular culture and scholarship. Contributing to this field of interest, this volume illuminates this multi-faceted topic from a variety of perspectives. The chapters collected here investigate diverse aspects and shapes of magic to uncover its manifold material and immaterial appearances in past and present cultures. While offering a broad overview, this book also provides close readings and in-depth specialist example analyses. By tracing magic's strong interrelation with colonial discourses, politics, economy, and the arts, it further reveals magic's role as going beyond that of an explanatory belief system or a form of entertainment. Magic is also a political act, a means of empowerment and protest, an economic metaphor, an instrument of oppression and liberation alike. This broad spectrum of magic discourses and their permeation into different aspects of cultures in history, present day and fiction is analysed by the more than 30 authors of this book"--
