Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:38:24.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Antiwitchcraft Shrines among the Akan: Possession and the Gathering of Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Jane Parish
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article examines the epistemological certainties and uncertainties of Akan spirit possession and witchcraft knowledge. It is based on fieldwork carried out between 1990 and 1991 in Dormaa-Ahenkro, Brong-Ahafo region, Ghana. The article examines the transcendental knowledge found among antiwitchcraft shrine gods and their priests and how the sacred knowledge of gods is utilized to counter witchcraft in the modern postcolony. This, it is argued, is an ambiguous process, involving the “partial” knowledge of the shrine priest versus the “complete” picture of events held by the god. However, it is suggested that antiwitchcraft practices are very popular among priests because this type of knowledge allows the priest to manage uncertainty at first hand. The witch confesses directly to the priest, and this knowledge is not mediated through a god.

Résumé:

Résumé:

Cet article se propose d’étudier les certitudes et les incertitudes épistémologiques de la possession par les esprits et du savoir en sorcellerie chez les Akan. Nos recherches se basent sur une enquête de terrain effectuée entre 1990 et 1991 à Dormaa-Ahenkro, dans la région de Brong-Ahafo au Ghana. Nous examinons le savoir transcendantal découvert chez les dieux des lieux de culte anti-sorcellerie et leurs prêtres, et nous montrons comment le savoir sacré des dieux est utilisé pour contrecarrer la sorcellerie dans la postcolonie moderne. Nous soutenons que ce processus est ambigu car il oppose le savoir “partial” du prêtre du lieu de culte à la vision divine des événements, qui, elle, est “totale.” Nous suggérons cependant que la pratique de la sorcellerie est très populaire chez les prêtres parce que ce type de savoir permet au prêtre de gérer l’incertain à la source. Le sorcier (ou la sorcière) se confesse directement au prêtre et ce savoir ne passe pas par l’intermédiaire d’un dieu.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , December 2003 , pp. 17 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Apter, A. 1993. “Antinga Revisited: Yoruba Witchcraft and the Cocoa Economy, 1950–1951.” In Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J., eds., Modernity audits Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ashforth, A. 1996. “Of Secrecy and the Commonplace: Witchcraft and Power in Soweto.” Social Research 63 (4): 1183–1234.Google Scholar
Ashforth, A. 2001. “On Living in a World with Witches: Everyday Epistemology and Spiritual Insecurity in a Modern African City.” In Moore, H. and Sanders, T., eds., Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Auslander, M. 1993. “‘Open the Wombs!’ The Symbolic Politics of Modern Ngoni Witchfinding.” In Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J., eds., Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bascom, W. 1969. Ifa Divination: Communication between Gods and Men in West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. 1994. “Contentious Subjects: Moral Being in the Modern World.” Suomen Antropologi 19: 2–17.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J., and Comaroff, J.. 1993. “Introduction.” In Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J., eds., Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J., and Comaroff, J.. 1999. “Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction: Notes from the South African Postcolony.” American Ethnologists 26 (2): 279–303.Google Scholar
Englund, H. 1996. “Witchcraft, Modernity and the Person: The Morality of Accumulation in Central Malawi.” Critique of Anthropology 16 (3): 257–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, M. 1960. Search For Security. London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Fink, H. G. 1990. Religion, Disease and Healing in Ghana: A Case Study of Traditional Dormaa Medicine. Munich: Trickster Wissenschaft.Google Scholar
Fortes, M. 1948. “The Ashanti Social Survey: A Preliminary Report.” Rhodes-Livingston Journal 6: 1–36.Google Scholar
Geschiere, P. 1988. “Sorcery and the State: Popular Modes of Action among the Maka of Southeastern Cameroon.” Critique of Anthropology 8 (1): 35–63.Google Scholar
Geschiere, P. 1992. “Kinship, Witchcraft and ‘the Market’: Hybrid Patterns in Cameroonian Societies.” In Dilley, R., ed., Contesting Markets: Analyses of Ideology, Discourse and Practice. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Geschiere, P. 1997. The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.Google Scholar
Geschiere, P., and Fisiy, C.. 1994. “Domesticating Personal Violence: Witchcraft, Courts and Confessions in Cameroon.” Africa 64 (3): 323–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geschiere, P., and Meyer, B., eds. 1998. “Globalisation and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure.” Development and Change 29: 601–15.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1957. “Anomie in Asante.” Africa 27: 356–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goody, J., ed. 1975. “Changing Social Structure.” In Ghana: Essays in the Comparative Sociology of a New State and an Old Tradition. London: International African Institute.Google Scholar
Masquelier, A. 2000. “Of Headhunters and Cannibals: Migrancy, Labour and Consumption in the Mawri Imagination.” Cultural Anthropology 15 (1): 84–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCaskie, T. C. 1981 “Anti-Witchcraft Cults in Asante: An Essay in the Social History of an African people.” History in Africa 8: 125–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCaskie, T. C. 1986. “Okomfo Anokye of Asante Meaning: History and Philosophy in an African Society.” Journal of African History 27 (2): 315–39.Google Scholar
McCaskie, T. C. 1989. “Death and the Asantehene: A Historical Mediation.” Journal of African History 30: 417–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCaskie, T. C. 1992. “People and Animals: Constructing the Asante Experience.” Africa 62 (2): 221–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLeod, M. 1965. “Survey of the Literature on Witchcraft in Ghana.” B.Litt. thesis, Oxford University.Google Scholar
McLeod, M. D. 1981. The Asante. London: British Museum Publications.Google Scholar
McLeod, M. 1975. “On the Spread of Anti-Witchcraft Cults in Modern Asante.” In Goody, J., ed., Changing Social Structure in Ghana: Essays in the Comparative Sociology of a New State and an Old Tradition, 107–17. London: International African Institute.Google Scholar
Meyer, B. 1995. “Delivered from the Powers of Darkness: Confessions of Satanic Riches in Christian Ghana.” Africa 65: 236–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, B. 1999. Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. London: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, H., and Sanders, T., eds. 2001. Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. London: Roudedge.Google Scholar
Parish, J. 1999. “The Dynamics of Witchcraft and Indigenous Shrines among the Akan.” Africa 69 (3): 426–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parish, J. 2000. “From the Body to the Wallet: Conceptualising Akan Witchcraft at Home and Abroad.” JRAI 6: 487–500.Google Scholar
Parish, J. 2001 “Black Market, Free Market: Anti-Witchcraft Shrines and Fetishes among the Akan.” In Moore, Henrietta and Sanders, Todd, eds., Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. London: Roudedge.Google Scholar
Rattray, R. S. 1927. Religion and Art in Ashanti. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rowlands, M., and Warnier, J. P.. 1988. “Sorcery, Power and the Modern State in Cameroon.” Man 23: 118–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanders, T. 1999.” Modernity, Wealth and Witchcraft in Tanzania.” Research in Economic Anthropology 20: 117–31.Google Scholar
Sanders, T. 2001. “Save Our Skins: Structural Adjustment, Morality and the Occult in Tanzania.” In Moore, Henrietta and Sanders, Todd, eds., Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. London: Roudedge.Google Scholar
Shaw, R. 1997. “The Production of Witchcraft/Witchcraft as Production: Memory, Modernity and the Slave Trade in Sierra Leone.” American Ethnologist 24 (4): 856–76.Google Scholar
Shaw, R. 2001. “Cannibal Transformations: Colonialism and Commodification in the Sierra Leone Hinterland.” In Moore, Henrietta and Sanders, Todd, eds., Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. London: Roudedge.Google Scholar
Ward, B. E. 1956. “Some Observations on Religious Cults in Asante.” Africa 26: 7–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Werbner, R. P. 1973. “The Superabundance of Understanding: Kalanga Rhetoric and Domestic Divination.” American Anthropologist 75: 414–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Werbner, R. P. 1989. Ritual Passage, Sacred Journey: The Process and Organisation of Religious Movement. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Werbner, R. P. 2001. “Truth-on-Balance: Knowing the Opaque Other in Tswapong Wisom.” In Bond, George Clement and Ciekawy, Diane M., eds., Witchcraft Dialogues: Anthropological and Philosophical Exchanges. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar