Perception of magic in different generations in the context of traditional and modern societies: The example of Baby Boomer generation and generation Z

It has been accepted that the existence of magic, which preserves its existence and effectiveness in societies with the belief of Shamanism in the traditional society structure, continues its effect until today's modern society structure. In the belief of shamanism, the rituals applied through the shaman have created a great hope in solving the problems in the society. Despite the fact that with the acceptance of Islam, magic became one of the forbidden ones, its influence continued. Although the increasing technological developments in the developing and changing society structure, scientific studies and the competitive process in life have reduced the effect of magic, it has not destroyed its existence. In this research, the perception of magic was investigated with the transition from traditional society to modern society. At the same time, it has been investigated how effective magic is in the changing social structure and how effective it is as a belief dimension. The theoretical basis of the research is James Frazer's study of the relationship between magic and religion, and the Law of Similarity and the Law of Contamination (Contact) Theory. Trabzon province was determined as the spatial limit of the research. The study group consists of individuals aged 20-30 and 20 individuals aged 60 and over. The phenomenological approach was used in this research, in which the qualitative method was preferred in order to reach wider data throughout the research process. Research data; It was obtained by conducting semistructured in-depth interviews with 20 participants who were targeted with the criterion sampling technique. The data obtained at the end of the research were interpreted using the descriptive analysis technique. With the transition from the traditional society to the modern society, the effect of belief in magic was broken and the magic procedures applied decreased.