Academic Article Title of the Day

The following popped up in a search on JSTOR:

“Witchcraft Prosecutions and the Decline of Magic.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 40, No. 2, The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Autumn, 2009), pp. 263-293.

One does wonder, however, why the search algorithm gave me article in a search on “corporatism.”

The abstract actually sounds kind of interesting, as the study looks at the decline of prosecutions over witchcraft:  “The trials ended because the elite’s skepticism about the magnitude of the threat posed by witchcraft gave way to disbelief in the power of magic altogether.”

Which makes sense:  as people started to believe less and less in magic, then witches go from threats to just kooks from a societal POV.

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. Matt says:

    The next thing you know they’ll be putting harts and fake noses on people, just to gin up some excitement.

  2. Just go with fascism next time. Close enough. And after Blair Witch 2 I think we should have closed the book on all things witchy.