Magic and Supernaturalism Today

Dear Colleagues,

Contemporary global culture is filled with enormous amounts of religious creativity, and large numbers of people are drawn to practices and beliefs that are configured as magical. Powerful information technologies and popular media have fueled the spread of new ideas and practices and the development of new religious movements and subcultures. The purpose of this Special Issue is to explore a number of these phenomena and to consider the particular effects produced by labeling them as magical, either by their practitioners or by outside observers.

What does the proliferation of new supernaturalist subcultures show us about the dynamics and potential of cultural creativity in the contemporary world? How do the members of these communities respond to the social prominence of modern science, and how do they respond to the dominant social norms of modernity more broadly? How does the rhetoric of magic serve either to empower or to marginalize particular subcultures? What new understandings of human identity and subjectivity are at play in these practices?

The Special Issue seeks articles that explore particular contemporary supernaturalist communities and practices, that reflect on the potency of labeling specific practices and beliefs as magical, and that consider the broader cultural dynamics at work in supernaturalism in the contemporary world.

Prof. Dr. Randall Styers
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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