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Author: Mariano Pavanello Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1315439905 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
This volume draws on a range of ethnographic and historical material to provide insight into witchcraft in sub-Saharan Africa. The chapters explore a variety of cultural contexts, with contributions focusing on Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ghana, Mali, Ethiopia and Eritrean diaspora. The book considers the concept of witchcraft itself, the interrelations with religion and medicine, and the theoretical frameworks employed to explain the nature of modern African witchcraft representations.
Author: Mariano Pavanello Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1315439905 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
This volume draws on a range of ethnographic and historical material to provide insight into witchcraft in sub-Saharan Africa. The chapters explore a variety of cultural contexts, with contributions focusing on Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ghana, Mali, Ethiopia and Eritrean diaspora. The book considers the concept of witchcraft itself, the interrelations with religion and medicine, and the theoretical frameworks employed to explain the nature of modern African witchcraft representations.
Author: Elias Kifon Bongmba Publisher: State University of New York Press ISBN: 0791490505 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 254
Book Description
This work of African philosophy and theology uses the thought of Emmanuel Levinas to provide an analysis of tfu (witchcraft) among the Wimbum people of Cameroon along with a critique of intersubjective relations. Taking an approach he calls "critical contextualism," author Elias Bongmba employs Levinas's philosophy, particularly the concept of the Other, to engage in cross-cultural philosophy that does not destroy the perspective of the culture under study. Insights from anthropology, African studies, and the author's own experiences are also important throughout the book. Bongmba discusses the cultural background of the Wimbum people and explores the concepts and terms used to discuss the acquisition of several categories of power generally described as tfu. Bongmba argues that when properly explored and understood, these terms refer to complex practices that involve power that can be used for good and power that can be abused. Drawing from Levinas, the author demonstrates that negative use of tfu constitutes a totalizing praxis. He goes on to endorse Levinas's call for a phenomenology of eros as a way of reconfiguring interpersonal relationships.
Author: Peter Geschiere Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022604775X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
In Dante’s Inferno, the lowest circle of Hell is reserved for traitors, those who betrayed their closest companions. In a wide range of literatures and mythologies such intimate aggression is a source of ultimate terror, and in Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Trust, Peter Geschiere masterfully sketches it as a central ember at the core of human relationships, one brutally revealed in the practice of witchcraft. Examining witchcraft in its variety of forms throughout the globe, he shows how this often misunderstood practice is deeply structured by intimacy and the powers it affords. In doing so, he offers not only a comprehensive look at contemporary witchcraft but also a fresh—if troubling—new way to think about intimacy itself. Geschiere begins in the forests of southeast Cameroon with the Maka, who fear “witchcraft of the house” above all else. Drawing a variety of local conceptions of intimacy into a global arc, he tracks notions of the home and family—and witchcraft’s transgression of them—throughout Africa, Europe, Brazil, and Oceania, showing that witchcraft provides powerful ways of addressing issues that are crucial to social relationships. Indeed, by uncovering the link between intimacy and witchcraft in so many parts of the world, he paints a provocative picture of human sociality that scrutinizes some of the most prevalent views held by contemporary social science. One of the few books to situate witchcraft in a global context, Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Trust is at once a theoretical tour de force and an empirically rich and lucid take on a difficult-to-understand spiritual practice and the private spaces throughout the world it so greatly affects.
Author: Khaukanani Mavhungu Publisher: Langaa Rpcig ISBN: 9789956728374 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 132
Book Description
This is a comparative ethnographic study of witchcraft and associated violence between the kingdoms of Kom and Venda in Cameroon and South Africa respectively. The book shows why despite its prevalence in both societies, witchcraft does not lead to open violence in Kom, while such large-scale violence is commonplace in Venda. It reveals that this difference can be explained by factors such as the variations in local ideas on witches, differences in the role of traditional authorities, and various state interventions on witchcraft matters. The book demonstrates, through a rich collection of detailed cases, that contrary to anthropological theory that views witchcraft as a mechanism for the expression and resolution of social tensions and conflicts, witchcraft may at times become a disturbance of amicable social relations. Witchcraft accusations may occur in a context where strained social relations have not preceded them. The knowledge and experience that people have about witchcraft is sufficient to trigger an accusation and a violent reaction. Different forms of witchcraft account for variations in witchcraft attributions and accusations. This comparison provides a valuable contribution to ongoing witchcraft policy discourse amid widespread citizen anxiety over witchcraft, and the increasing call on the post-colonial state to intervene and protect its citizens against occult aggression.
Author: John Middleton Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 113655145X Category : Reference Languages : en Pages : 315
Book Description
Containing ten essays by anthropologists on the beliefs and practices associated with witches and sorcerers in Eastern Africa, the chapters in this book are all based on field research and new information which is studied within its wider social context. First published in 1963.
Author: Henrietta L. Moore Publisher: Presbyterian Publishing Corp ISBN: 0203398254 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
'Magical Interpretations, Material Realities brings together many of today's best scholars of contemporary Africa. The theme of "witchcraft" has long been associated with exoticizing portraits of a "traditional" Africa, but this volume takes the question of occult as a point of entry into the moral politics of some very modern African realities.' - James Ferguson, University of California, USA 'These essays bear eloquent testimony to the ongoing presence and power of the occult imaginary, and of the intimate connection between global capitalism and local cosmology, in postcolonial Africa. A major contribution to scholarship that aims to rework the divide between modernity and tradition.' - Charles Piot, Duke University, USA This volume sets out recent thinking on witchcraft in Africa, paying particular attention to variations in meanings and practices. It examines the way different people in different contexts are making sense of what 'witchcraft' is and what it might mean. Using recent ethnographic materials from across the continent, the volume explores how witchcraft articulates with particular modern settings for example: the State in Cameroon; Pentecostalism in Malawi; the university system in Nigeria and the IMF in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. The editors provide a timely overview and reconsideration of long-standing anthropological debates about 'African witchcraft', while simultaneously raising broader concerns about the theories of the western social sciences.
Author: Heidi Holland Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa ISBN: 0143527851 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 233
Book Description
Africa's traditional beliefs - including ancestor worship, divination and witchcraft - continue to dominate its spiritual influences. Readers in search of a better understanding of the continent will be enriched by this book's timely exploration of sub-Saharan Africa's natural philosophy. The author's meticulous research reveals that, whereas technology-driven Western societies prefer to rely largely on logical explanations, many Africans continue to obey their intuition - trusting in images, dreams and divination to rationalise misfortune and illness. African Magic explains why so many Africans understand the relationship between people and unfortunate events not through the Western concept of chance in the case of accidents, or germ theory in the case of illness, but through belief in witchcraft. The book records a collection of true stories which illustrate this traditional belief system. Included are the famous Malawian diviner whose prophecies were considered so accurate that people flocked from neighbouring countries to consult him; a group of Western-trained Mozambican psychologists who successfully refined cross-cultural therapy by working with traditional healers to combat post-traumatic stress syndrome among child soldiers; Ghanaian and Zimbabwean 'witches' living in a nightmare world where popular belief becomes their reality; and a Zambian archbishop whose attempt to embrace traditional African beliefs provoked serious conflict within his Christian church.
Author: Jean La Fontaine Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 1785330861 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 156
Book Description
Devil worship, black magic, and witchcraft have long captivated anthropologists as well as the general public. In this volume, Jean La Fontaine explores the intersection of expert and lay understandings of evil and the cultural forms that evil assumes. The chapters touch on public scares about devil-worship, misconceptions about human sacrifice and the use of body parts in healing practices, and mistaken accusations of children practicing witchcraft. Together, these cases demonstrate that comparison is a powerful method of cultural understanding, but warns of the dangers and mistaken conclusions that untrained ideas about other ways of life can lead to.