Genre and Authority in the Scholarly Construction of Charm and Prayer: A View from the Margins

This paper presents a critique and some theoretical reflections on the relationship between the genres of charm and prayer in folklore and religions scholar-ship. I draw special attention to the construction of the liminal genre of ‘archaicprayer’ in Hungarian scholarship and its relationship to magic and the ‘charm’genre as elucidated in the work ethnographers Éva Pócs, Zsuzsanna Erdélyi andIrén Lovász amongst others. It is commonly recognised that scholarly distinc-tions between genres cut across emic categories and insider knowledge struc-tures.Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this paper critiques the dis-course on archaic prayer in relation to the dichotomy between magic and reli-gion and the emic/etic distinction through a focus on power/knowledge relationsand the politics of language in the religious field.