Conjuring Hope: Healing and Magic in Contemporary RussiaNotions of magic and healing have been changing over past years and are now understood as reflecting local ideas of power and agency, as well as structures of self, subjectivity and affect. This study focuses on contemporary urban Russia and, through exploring social conditions, conveys the experience of living that makes magic logical. By following people’s own interpretations of the work of magic, the author succeeds in unraveling the logic of local practice and local understanding of affliction, commonly used to diagnose the experiences of illness and misfortune. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 23 | |
Magic as Semiotic Changes Ontologies Rituals and Terms of Affliction | 53 |
Magic as Management of Emotions | 81 |
The Icons of Power Constructing Charisma from the Means at Hand | 113 |
Charisma of the Office Healing Power and Biomedical Legitimacy | 137 |
The Unspeakable Emotions Spells and Their Use in Working Life | 170 |
The Magic of Business and Fostering of Hope | 199 |
Social FIelds Fields of the Game Minefields Hazards of Interpretation | 228 |
Bibliography | 237 |
Index | 245 |
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advertisement agency anger Anna anthropology apartment asked babka biomedical blat body boss Bourdieu Centaur centre channels Chapter charisma charismatic individual Church clients clinic connected consciousness Csordas cultural demonic demonic possession diagnosed Dmitrii emotions energy everyday existential feeling fieldwork folk magic friends Georgii God’s healers hope human husband iconic and indexical icons of power illusio institutions interaction interpretation Katerina told kinship curse language Ledeneva Liuba living logic look magi magic and healing magus means medical anthropology Misha moral Moscow mother never Nina Nina’s obida Object one’s ontologies passions patients people’s perestroika person phenomenology porcha practices practitioners pragmatic problems propiska psychoanalysis recognised Representamen ritual romantic love Russian Orthodox Russian Orthodox Church séances semiosis semiotic shamans shared signification signs situation social someone Soviet spells started story strategy structures subjectivity symbolic talk Tatiana today’s tradition treatment Western woman words Zinaida