The Impact of Values, Vol. 4 Book

The contributors to this volume are broadly concerned with offering a critique of the broad spectrum of received wisdom in historical witchcraft studies, taking as their primary point of reference the field-defining work of Keith Thomas in his Religion and the Decline of Magic. They address a range of theoretical and historiographic issues relating to witchcraft's sociological context, including the implications of, and in, the spheres of politics, religion, gender, and media culture. That being said, while readers familiar with the field can still find some insights among the chapters collected here, in the more than twenty years since its publication many of the basic arguments have been more fully developed, nuanced, and critiqued elsewhere.