Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T06:59:18.705Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Witchcraft Suppression Practices and Movements: Public Politics and the Logic of Purification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2012

Maia Green
Maia Green
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Public practices for the suppression of witchcraft are periodically performed throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Anthropologists have generally sought to interpret such practices rather than explain them. This interpretation rests on assumptions about what such practices might mean for social actors rather than on the actual social processes which make their public performance possible. In the anthropological view, the performance of anti-witchcraft practices amounts to an expression of discontent with aspects of social and economic life deriving from the terms of Africa's engagement with the contemporary world. Antiwitchcraft practices and the witchcraft discourse of which they are part are understood to constitute locally constructed critiques of social transformation and modernity. But, whatever the coherence of the symbolic logic expressed in anti-witchcraft practices, such accounts fail to explain why large numbers of people participate in such practices from time to time or how such practices become public.

Type
Ritual Power
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , April 1997 , pp. 319 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1997

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

REFERENCES

Auslander, M. 1993. “‘Open the Wombs!’: The Symbolic Politics of Modern Ngoni Witchfinding,” in Modernity and its Malcontents, John, and Comaroff, Jean, eds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bayart, F. 1993. The State in Africa; the Politics of the Belly. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bayart, F., 1986. “Civil Society in Africa,” in Chabal, P., ed., Political Domination in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Beidelman, T. O. 1963. “Witchcraft in Ukaguru,” in Middleton, J. and Winter, E. H., eds., Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Beidelman, T. O., 1964. “Pig (Guluwe): An Essay on Ngulu Sexual Symbolism and Ceremony.” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 20:359–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyer, P. 1990. Tradition as Truth and Communication. A Cognitive Description of Traditional Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chabal, P. 1994. Power in Africa. An Essay in Political Interpretation. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
P., Chabal, ed. 1986. Political Domination in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chambers, R. 1983. Rural Development. Putting the Last First. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. 1985. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Craemer, W.; Vasnina, J.; and Fox, R. C.. 1976. “Religious Movements in Central Africa. A Theoretical Study.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 18:3, 458–75.Google Scholar
De Waal, A. 1989. Famine that Kills. Darfur, Sudan, 1984–1985. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Douglas, M. 1963. “Techniques of Sorcery Control in Central Africa,” in Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa, Middleton, J., and Winter, E. H., eds. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 123–142.Google Scholar
Douglas, M.. 1982. Natural Symbols. Explorations in Cosmology. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
M., Douglas, ed. 1970. Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Eliade, M. 1976. “Some Observations of European Witchcraft,” in his Witchcraft, Occultism and Cultural Fashion. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Favret-Saada, J. 1980. Deadly Words. Witchcraft in the Bocage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development”, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1962. Death Property and the Ancestors. A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Green, M. 1993. The Construction of ‘Religion’ and the Perpetuation of ‘Tradition’ among Pogoro Catholics, Southern Tanzania. PhD thesis, Anthropology Depart, London School of Economics, University of London.Google Scholar
Green, M. 1994.; “Shaving Witchcraft in Ulanga: Kunyolewa and the Catholic Church,” in Abrahams, R. G., ed., Witchcraft in Contemporary Tanzania. Cambridge: African Studies Centre.Google Scholar
Green, M. 1995. “Why Christianity is the ‘Religion of Business’: Perceptions of the Church among Pogoro Catholics, Southern Tanzania.” Journal of Religion in Africa, 15:1, 26–47.Google Scholar
Green, M. 1996. “Medicines and the Embodiment of Substances among Pogoro Catholics, Southern Tanzania.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, NS 2: 1–14.Google Scholar
Gwassa, G.C.K. 1973. The Outbreak and Development of the Maji Maji War 1905–1907. Phd Thesis, University of Dar es Salaam.Google Scholar
Huntingdon, W. R. 1973. “Death and the Social Order: Bara Funeral Customs (Madagascar).” African Studies, 32:65–84.Google Scholar
Iliffe, J. 1969. Tanganyika Under German Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Iliffe, J.. 1979. A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Larson, I. E. nd. Witchcraft Eradication Sequences among the Peoples of Mahenge District. Unpublished paper.Google Scholar
Larson, I. E.. 1976. A History of the Mahenge (Ulanga District), 1860–1957. PhD Thesis, University of Dar es Salaam.Google Scholar
Larson, I. E.. 1976. “Problems in the Study of Witchcraft Eradication Movements in Southern Tanzania.” Ufahamu, 3:88–100.Google Scholar
Lonsdale, J. 1986. “Political Accountability in African History,” in Chabal, P., ed., Political Domination in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maghimbi, S. 1990. Rural Development Policy and Planning in Tanzania. PhD Thesis, London University.Google Scholar
Marwick, M. G. 1950. “Another Modern Anti-Witchcraft Movement in East Central Africa.’ Africa, 20:2, 100–13.Google Scholar
Middleton, J. 1963. “Witchcraft and Sorcery in Lugbara,” in Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa, Middleton, J. and Winter, E. H., eds. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Ngubane, H. 1977. Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine. An Ethnography of Health and Disease in Nyuswa-Zulu Thought. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Parkin, D. J. 1968. “Medicines and Men of Influence.” Man (ns), 3:3, 425–39.Google Scholar
Probst, P. nd. “The Hybridity of Mchape.” Paper presented to the Satterthwaite Colloquium on African Religion and Ritual in 1996.Google Scholar
Ranger, T. O. 1966. “Witchcraft Eradication Movements in Central and Southern Tanzania and their Connection with the Maji Maji Rising.” University of Dar es Salaam Seminar Paper.Google Scholar
Ranger, T. O. nd. “Mchape: A Study in Diffusion and Interpretation.” Unpublished paper.Google Scholar
Ranger, T. O. 1983. “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in The Invention of Tradition, 211–63, Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. O.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Redmayne, A. 1970. “Chikanga: An African Diviner with an International Reputation,” in Douglas, M., ed., Witchcraft, Confessions and Accusations. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Richards, A. I. 1935. “A Modern Movement of Witchfinders.” Africa, 8:4, 448–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rigby, P. 1968. “Some Gogo Rituals of ‘Purification’: An Essay on Social and Moral Categories,” in Leach, E. R. ed., Dialectic in Practical Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ross, A. C. 1969. “The Political Role of the Witchfinder in Southern Malawi During the Crisis of October 1964 to May 1965,” in Willis, R. G., ed., Witchcraft and Healing, 55–70. Edinburgh: Centre of African Studies.Google Scholar
Rowlands, M.; and Warnier, J.. 1988. “Sorcery, Power and the Modern State in Cameroon.” Man (ns), 23:1, 118–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strathern, A. 1982. “Witchcraft, Greed, Cannibalism and Death: Some Related Themes from the New Guinea Highlands,” in Bloch, M. and Parry, J., eds., Death and the Regeneration of Life, 111–33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, V. W. 1968. The Drums of Affliction, A Study of Religious Processes among the Ndembu of Zambia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Willis, R. G. 1968. “Kamcape: An Anti-sorcery Movement in South West Tanzania.” Africa, 38:1, 1–15.Google Scholar
Willis, R. G. 1970. “Instant Millennium. The Sociology of African Witch Cleansing Cults,” in Douglas, M., Witchcraft, Confessions and Accusations. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Wilson, M. 1957. Rituals of Kinship among the Nyakyusa. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, M. 1963. Good Company. A Study of Nyakyusa Age Villages. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar