The illusions of “magical thinking”: Whose chimera, ours or theirs?

Abstract

The “ontological turn” has been in fashion right from the start in anthropology; and its challenges (and misunderstandings) arise whenever two minds meet (for example, the inquiring anthropologist and her interlocutor) and there is a misalignment between their metaphysical beliefs. I tried to face up to some of those challenges at an interdisciplinary conference titled “Magical Thinking and Food Today” held in Paris on October 19–20, 1994, organized by the French anthropologist Claude Fischler. I am grateful to Carlos Londoño-Sulkin and Luiz Costa for encouraging me to publish the unearthed English version of that talk and thus place it in a contemporary theoretical light.