Description
Book SynopsisStatues, paintings, and maskslike the bodies of shamans and spirit mediumsgive material form and presence to otherwise invisible entities, and sometimes these objects are understood to be enlivened, agentive on their own terms. This book explores how magical images are expected to work with the shamans and spirit mediums who tend and use them in contemporary South Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bali, and elsewhere in Asia. It considers how such things are fabricated, marketed, cared for, disposed of, and sometimes transformed into art-market commodities and museum artifacts.
Trade Review"
Mediums and Magical Things makes a valuable contribution to the study of material religion, anthropology of religion, and religion in modernity. It is a timely volume that will no doubt fulfill Kendall’s hope that it ‘propel others down similar paths’." * Nova Religio *
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Mediums and Magic Things contributes to the study of material religion and the anthropology of religion in a very readable and easily accessible way." * Religious Studies Review *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Conventions
1. MacGuffins and Magical Things
2. Ensoulments
3. Materiality, Making, and Magic
4. Agency and Assemblage
5. The Ambiguities of the Unsacred
6. Afterlives
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
