Социално пространство на магията. „Сили“ и стопани
The Social Space of Magic. “Powers” and Hosts

Summary/Abstract: The study is based on materials, collected in 1988-2003 in a local social community, selected for the purpose: a bush-like group of North Russian villages from three regions of the Vologda area. The task has been, within the context of social practice, to present magic as a specific kind of symbolisation of the social space, whose outlets are peculiar strategies in the way of speaking and behaving. A determining factor for the magic activity is the structure of social space. Operating in it are two kinds of hosts: on the one hand, the spirits, the “powers”-hosts (of the house, the courtyard, the forest, the field, the water), and on the other – the people who had received the status of hosts by acquiring some kind of social assets (property, family, land, cattle, a forest plot, etc.). The hosts – spirits and people – make up a joint community sharing the ownership of a uniform social territory on the principle of partnership. The etiquette of the interrelations in the joint community of mythical and real hosts is initiated and regulated by the people by way of their practice of speaking and behaving.

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