The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity

One of the world's leading cultural anthropologists, Marshall Sahlins, has written a book that challenges how we study other cultures. He argues that most cultures throughout history treat spirits as real persons who interact with humans and control their fate. Sahlins suggests that anthropologists and other social scientists must rethink these cultures and study them by their own lights. He takes readers around the world, from Inuit in the Arctic Circle to pastoral Dinka in East Africa, and reveals how even the mundane spheres of economics and politics emerge as people negotiate with and usurp the powers of the gods. The book offers a road map for a new practice of anthropology that takes seriously the enchanted universe and its transformations.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 05 December 2023
Publisher: Princeton University Press

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 demonstrates 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 the Inuit of the Arctic Circle to pastoral Dinka of East Africa, from the Araweté swidden gardeners of Amazonia to the 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 seemingly 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.

Weight: 338g
Dimension: 155 x 234 x 17 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691215938