The New Science of the Enchanted Universe

An Anthropology of Most of Humanity

De: Marshall Sahlins

Narrado por: BJ Harrison

From the perspective of Western modernity, humanity inhabits a disenchanted cosmos. Gods, spirits, and ancestors have left us for a transcendent beyond. 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 shows 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 listeners around the world. In the process, Sahlins sheds new light on classical and contemporary ethnographies that describe these cultures of immanence and reveals how even the apparently 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.

©2022 Princeton University Press (P)2023 Tantor

Fine work ruined by reader. Get the physical book!

The narrator BJ Harrison has absolutely no idea what he is saying when he reads. Extremely glib as if he knows all of the content and yet manages to mispronounce so many words and names that if you did not already know this stuff you would never understand. For instance, anything referring to Giambattista Vico is VEE-KI-AN - spelled Vichian though Harrison pronounces it VEE-SHEE-AN as though it refers to the French Vichy. Likewise, the South American people Achuar - A-SHUAR is pronounced by Harrison A-CHOO-AR. Also manages to mispronounce Malinowski and Levi-Strauss which anyone who has taken even Anthro 101 would get right. All in all, Harrison is completely out of his depth, having a marked tendency to intone anything that seems to him cosmic or new age in a decidedly more intimate manner as if imparting some new secret by which we should live our lives. I have been reading Marshall Sahlin's work since c. 1987 and what he had to say deserves better, to wit, the time to be understood before pronouncing the words of the text. So get the physical book. I have both the audible which I thought would re-inforce my reading while driving or walking but it ended up - as you can probably tell - pissing me off.

Bonus: Anthropology joke told to me at the AA conference in Chicago, c. 1991:
Q: Do you know how to recognize a Pomo basket?
A: It doesn't hold water!
(which to explain the joke and therefore ruin it, you need to know that Pomo are a indigenous people in Northern California known for their baskets (they didn't make pottery) and Pomo also refers to Post-Modern (whose arguments do not hold water).

Get the physical book!