Book Review on The Method of Hope and Magic's Reason

This book review compares The Method of Hope by Hirokazu Miyazaki and Magic’s Reason: An Anthropology of Analogy by Graham M Jones. The relevance of the chosen books in contemporary anthropology is analyzed on a comparative basis.

Running head: BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BOOK REVIEW
In this particular book review two books on the discipline of anthropology shall be
compared and their relevance in the contemporary times in the discipline shall be presented. The
chosen books for the purpose are The Method of Hope by Hirokazu Miyazaki and Magic’s
Reason: An Anthropology of Analogy by Graham M Jones. After having provided their
respective reviews their relevance in the contemporary times shall be analyzed on a comparative
basis.
The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy and Fijian Knowledge, by
Hirokazu Miyazaki
This particular book deals with the aspect of the Fijian indigenous people, their history
and their tragedies. Miyazaki had suggested that the saying that hope springs eternal in the
human breast is best exemplified by devoting an insight into the lives of the people of Suvavou.
The original residents of the place were driven out and the capital Suva was established at the
cost of it in the year 1882.
The anthropological account deals in detail with the struggle of the Suvavou people in
articulating their interest and getting fulfilled by the civilian government to ensure that the
wrongs that had been inflicted upon them is rectified and they seek justice. Rarely, has such
instances been noticed whereby the indigenous people have been successful in ensuring that they
seek justice by means of mobilizing themselves against the government. Which is why the issue
of hope is very much significant in this context, which ix expressed in the form of the desire of
the indigenous people to inherit what they consider to be rightfully belonging to them. The
theoretical premise of hope is thus central to the Fijian indigenous people’s struggle against their
government to restore those which belonged to them.

2BOOK REVIEW
The Suvavou people had been proactive in establishing the truth and the ways they had
employed in finding it had been quite effective. The hope of finding the truth has thus played a
great role in ensuring that the homogenization of the Fijian identity without differentiating
between the indigenous identity and the identity of the immigrants is not turned in to the absolute
truth. The hope for achieving a claim to a distinctness of the identity has borne fruitful results for
the Fijian indigenous people. They have been able to deconstruct the idea that the Fijian national
identity is an organic whole. The struggle of the Suvavou people is thus reflective of the fact as
shown by Miyazaki that identity of a human being or a collectivity is central to their existence
and that any effort to deprive one of it shall cause untoward circumstances to occur which shall
challenge the status quo of a particular government and question its legitimacy until and unless
the demand to satisfy the need to assert the identity is fulfilled.
Miyazaki shows that the Fijian people having accepted the Christian religion and the
admixture of the indigenous cultural practices show that they are hopeful of the future to be a
bright one and that their present too shall be a prosperous one. Miyazaki had also shown how the
give and take between the various cultural backgrounds have led to a composite culture
formation in Fiji and the contemporary Fijian culture is but a product of the past and the present
harmoniously getting bound together to each other. Throughout the book, Miyazaki had very
skilfully tried to show the connection between the past, the present and the future that the
Suvavou people are hopeful of and that is the novelty of the book. Miyazaki thus provides a
different angle in viewing anthropology by not limiting it to just the study of the past (Miyazaki
2006).

3BOOK REVIEW
Magic’s Reason: An Anthropology of Analogy by Graham M Jones
The author of this particular book has studied extensively about the practice of magic and
other forms of practices which are in the contemporary world of today considered as blind faith
and superstitions. Jones (2017) had traced the development of magic as a form of entertainment
and also it assuming a means of consolidating power and position of predominance in all
societies whether western or non western. The book provides an account of the observations
conducted by the colonial ethnographers on the engagement between the magicians of France
and the ritual performers of North Africa.
Jones had tried to use the observations to deduce the contribution magic had in the drive
towards modernity, and had also used it make a cross cultural comparison between the east and
the west. He had portrayed that magic has lost its significance as providing solution to the human
problems in the western world where it is today but significant only as a form of entertainment.
Magic, in his opinion had immanent in itself the quality to propel human beings towards the
quest for reason and that had resulted in the ushering in of the age of modernity. Magic was used
by the practitioners to win over the gullible people and exploit them for deriving benefit and
when realization dawned that they were mere eyewash to make people believe that their
problems were being solved. For escaping one form of problem, human beings got into another
problem by taking recourse to magic for seeking solution has been projected by Jones in the
book. Through this projection Jones has tried to show that the seeds of progress to the modern
age were very much present in the past and in order to understand the present, one has to look
into the past and trace the trajectory of progress.
With regard to the cross cultural comparison, Jones has tried to show the difference
between the orient and the occident. While the occident has taken recourse to science and

4BOOK REVIEW
rationality, the orient still has a firm faith in magic and its role in solving the human problems.
This difference is evident when one compares the occident to the orient and the basis of it lies in
the level of development each of the societies have achieved which is evidently disparate. The
occident has managed to abandon magic as the source of answer, while the orient has not
completely hence the former is more developed (Jones 2017).
Comparison: Relevance of the chosen books in the contemporary anthropology
Both the authors of the books have very skilfully related the past the present and the
future in providing an answer as to why the discipline of anthropology is relevant to the
contemporary times and why their works are important in the contemporary anthropological
theories as well, which makes their works similar.
Muyazaki has used the imagery of hope to relate the trajectory of historical events from
the past to the present and the significance hope holds for the future. The Fijian example that
Miyazaki has provided is of utmost importance to the modern day in the sense that the methods
of articulating the interests by the Suvavou people can be applied by other indigenous people
who feel that they have been wronged and displaced by the immigrants. The Fijian model can be
applied by the Canadian indigenous people for example.
Jones has made a skilful attempt to relate the elements of progress to its presence in the
past and has like tried Miyazaki tried to relate the present to the past. Jones has tried to show that
the present generation must more often look to the past, especially the mistakes committed in
order to look for solutions to the problems of the present generation.
This particular element of similarity of looking to the past for finding solutions to the
problems of the contemporary period in the two books is extremely crucial for contemporary

5BOOK REVIEW
aspirants to the discipline of anthropology to take a note of. These books provide a holistic
justification about why should one look to the past.

6BOOK REVIEW
References
Jones, Graham M. Magic's reason: An anthropology of analogy. University of Chicago Press,
2017.
Miyazaki, Hirokazu. The method of hope: anthropology, philosophy, and Fijian knowledge.
Stanford University Press, 2006.