Anthropologists and the irrational

pp. 233-256

in: I. C. Jarvie, Thinking about society, Berlin, Springer, 1986

Abstract

Sir Raymond Firth, most distinguished living representative of the great tradition of British social anthropology, once wrote, "Science and magic ordinarily represent to two poles of reason and unreason, but it is not easy to draw a rigid line between the rational and the irrational spheres of human activity".¹ Anthropologists have not always found the drawing of this line to be as difficult as Firth makes it out to be. Sir James Frazer, for one, had no doubts that bloodthirsty savages dancing about in the skins of their enemies were irrational, whilst scholars writing about these matters in their studies in Cambridge were rational. To anthropologists, the irrational has meant the dark forces: magic, superstition, witchcraft, voodoo, and the like. Since anthropologists adopted participant-observation they can reasonably claim to have greater intimacy with such matters than anyone except the initiates themselves.