Practices and rituals of magical control in East Asia

The resilience and apparent popularity of “non-rational” ritual practices performed for “rational” reasons within the context of late modern society represent an important window into key sociological and anthropological themes surrounding urbanization and modernization. Specifically, the widespread presence of sacred sites like small streetside shrines tucked into urban spaces and the common rituals and prayers folded into modern daily life across East Asia call us to reexamine theoretical assumptions regarding the meanings and forms of “magical” rites and our definitions of rational/non-rational action. Based on fieldwork in Japan and Hong Kong, this talk discusses preliminary reflections on our collaborative research project which looks at this set of issues through the lens of contemporary German theory of social practices (Bartmanski) and American anthropological frameworks (Gagné) and seeks to provide new perspectives on the theoretical and practical implications of the resilience of practices and rituals of magical control in modern societies.

Dominik Bartmanski is Heisenberg Fellow based at the Chair of Cultural Sociology at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. He is the author of Matters of Revolution: Urban Spaces and Symbolic Politics in Berlin and Warsaw After 1989 (Routledge 2022), co-author of Labels: Making Independent Music and Vinyl: The Analogue Record in the Digital Age (Routledge 2020), and the co-editor of Iconic Power: Materiality and Meaning in Social Life (Springer 2012). He is currently a Guest Researcher at the DIJ.