Trade of the Tricks

Graham Jones is a cultural and linguistic anthropologist, whose research focuses on knowledge and rationality in practice, performance, and interaction generally. After studying literature at Reed College (BA, 1998) and anthropology at New York University (PhD, 2007), he was a postdoctoral member of the Princeton Society of Fellows (2007-2010). Drawing on nearly two years of ethnographic fieldwork in France, his book Trade of the Tricks: Inside the Magician's Craft (California, 2011) explores the production, circulation, and display of secrets within the subculture of entertainment magic. Focusing on forms of performance that blur boundaries between enchantment and disenchantment, he has also written about intercultural magic performances in colonial contact zones, and the resignification of magical practices by evangelical Christian conjurers. Collaborating with Bambi B. Schieffelin, he has written extensively about the linguistic dimensions of Computer-Mediated Communication, with a particular focus on reflexive language. At MIT, he teaches classes on a range of subjects, including: the anthropology of play; the language of mediated communication; and ethnographic research methods.