Graham M. Jones

"Anthropology has always traded on a cachet of romance and exoticism in attracting students, but even I--grizzled veteran that I am--found myself thinking 'how very cool to be hanging out with magicians in Paris!'. There is certainly nothing like this book in the anthropological literature. It is fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable." --Richard Bauman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Indiana University, Bloomington "A witty, learned, engaging trip through the world of French magic, Trade of the Tricks builds intriguing ideas on the deep knowledge that comes from prolonged, intensive observation." --Howard Becker, author of Art Worlds and Outsiders

Inside the Magician's Craft

Trade of the Tricks

In Magic’s Reason, Graham M. Jones tells the entwined stories of anthropology and entertainment magic. The two pursuits are not as separate as they may seem at first. As Jones shows, they not only matured around the same time, but they also shared mutually reinforcing stances toward modernity and rationality. It is no historical accident, for example, that colonial ethnographers drew analogies between Western magicians and native ritual performers, who, in their view, hoodwinked gullible people into believing their sleight of hand was divine. Using French magicians’ engagements with North African ritual performers as a case study, Jones shows how magic became enshrined in anthropological reasoning. Acknowledging the residue of magic’s colonial origins doesn’t require us to dispense with it. Rather, through this radical reassessment of classic anthropological ideas, Magic’s Reason develops a new perspective on the promise and peril of cross-cultural comparison.

Graham M. Jones

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