By Todd Sanders
This quantity units out fresh considering on witchcraft in Africa, paying specific realization to diversifications in meanings and practices. It examines the way in which varied humans in several contexts are making feel of what 'witchcraft' is and what it could actually mean. Using contemporary ethnographic fabrics from around the continent, the amount explores how witchcraft articulates with specific smooth settings for instance: the nation in Cameroon; Pentecostalism in Malawi; the collage method in Nigeria and the IMF in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. The editors offer a well timed assessment and reconsideration of long-standing anthropological debates approximately 'African witchcraft', whereas at the same time elevating broader issues in regards to the theories of the western social sciences.
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Additional info for Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa
184 ISAK NIEHAUS 10 On dwelling in an international with witches: daily epistemology and non secular lack of confidence in a latest African urban (Soweto) 206 ADAM ASHFORTH eleven Witchcraft, improvement and paranoia in Cameroon: interactions among well known, educational and nation discourse 226 CYPRIAN F. FISIY AND PETER GESCHIERE Index 247 Recto operating head ix Figures four. 1 four. 2 four. three four. four 7. 1 7. 2 7. three eight. 1 eight. 2 Iyabo Akindele, who claims to have seven ogbaanje powers in her physique Ifeoma Ejiogu ‘with Ogbanje energy everywhere her physique’ Ogbanje Georgina Nwokwa Ngozi Nwosu, ‘queen of the coast, a Cobra’ natural medication lady divining to diagnose tezma-induced disorder Marabout guy operating with verses to insert into amulet baby donning protecting amulets opposed to malevolent forces Diviner at a traveling marketplace in Ihanzu, 1994 Diviner’s banner directory signs handled and drugs on the market eighty three eighty three eighty four eighty four 147 151 152 one hundred seventy five 176 Contributors Adam Ashforth is traveling affiliate Professor of Social technological know-how on the Institute for complicated examine, Princeton. he's the writer of The Politics of Official Discourse in 20th Century South Africa (Clarendon Press 1990) and Madumo, a guy Bewitched (Chicago collage Press and David Philip 2000) in addition to articles exploring the dynamics of witchcraft in post-apartheid Soweto. Misty L. Bastian is an affiliate Professor of Anthropology at Franklin and Marshall university in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She has released extensively on gender, pop culture, media, non secular perform and political economic climate in southeastern Nigeria. Her latest guides comprise articles in Anthropological Quarterly, Ethnology and the quantity nice principles for educating approximately Africa (Lynne Rienner 1999), edited with Jane L. Parpart. Cyprian F. Fisiy is the Social improvement area supervisor for the East Asia and Pacific zone of the area financial institution. Fisiy joined the financial institution in 1994. He has undertaken numerous social effect checks and mitigation making plans for Bank-funded initiatives. sooner than becoming a member of the financial institution, Fisiy got his Ph. D. in criminal Anthropology on the college of Leiden, and used to be additionally a post-doctoral fellow on the Agricultural collage in Wageningen, the Netherlands. He has released largely on witchcraft and sorcery, and maintains to submit and lecture on improvement concerns in Sub-Saharan Africa. Peter Geschiere is Professor of African Anthropology at Leiden collage and the collage of Amsterdam. contemporary courses contain The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa (University of Virginia Press 1997); Containing Witchcraft, specific factor (co-edited with Diane Ciekawy) of African stories evaluation forty-one, three (1998); and, with Francis Nyamnjoh, ‘Capitalism and autochthony: the seesaw of mobility and belonging’, in Public tradition 12, three: 423–453 (2000). Henrietta L. Moore is Professor of Social Anthropology on the London institution of Economics and used to be Director of the Gender Institute on the LSE from 1994 xii participants to 1999. Her fresh books contain Anthropological conception this present day (Polity 1999) and those that Play with hearth: Gender, Fertility and Transformation in East and Southern Africa (with Todd Sanders and Bwire Kaare; Athlone 1999).