Magical Interpretations, Material
Realities
Witchcraft is alive and well in Africa today both among the disenchanted and downtrodden as well as the educated elite. 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.
Clearly, the promises of countless western social theorists that such enchantments would die a sudden death with modernity have not come to pass. In fact, despite growing democracy and development throughout the region, the general sentiment on the continent is that witchcraft is increasing. Indeed, witchcraft is routinely implicated in modern state politics, free markets and legal systems. But why, and why now?
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 International Monetary Fund (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. This book will be widely read and used by anthropologists, social scientists, development theorists and policy makers.
Henrietta L. Moore is Professor of Anthropology and Todd Sanders is a Research Fellow, both in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.
Magical Interpretations,
Material Realities
Modernity, witchcraft and the
occult in postcolonial Africa
Edited by Henrietta L. Moore
and Todd Sanders
London and New York
First published 2001
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
2001 selection and editorial matter, Henrietta L. Moore and Todd Sanders; individual chapters, the contributors
is an adaptation of Cannibal Transformations, in Memories of the Slave Trade, which will be published by The University of Chicago Press, 2002 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Magical interpretations, material realities: modernity, witchcraft, and the occult in postcolonial Africa / edited by Henrietta L. Moore and Todd Sanders.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Witchcraft Africa, Sub-Saharan. I. Moore, Henrietta L.
II. Sanders, Todd, 1965
BF1584.A357 M34 2001
133.43096 dc21
2001048185
ISBN 0-203-39825-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-39969-2 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0415258669 (hbk)
ISBN 0415258677 (pbk)
In Memory of Bwire T.M. Kaare
19542000
Contents
HENRIETTA L. MOORE AND TODD SANDERS
FRANCIS B. NYAMNJOH
ROSALIND SHAW
MISTY L. BASTIAN
RIJK VAN DIJK
JANE PARISH
SUSAN RASMUSSEN
TODD SANDERS
ISAK NIEHAUS
ADAM ASHFORTH
CYPRIAN F. FISIY AND PETER GESCHIERE
Figures
Contributors
Adam Ashforth is Visiting Associate Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He is the author of The Politics of Official Discourse in Twentieth Century South Africa (Clarendon Press 1990) and Madumo, A Man Bewitched (Chicago University Press and David Philip 2000) as well as articles exploring the dynamics of witchcraft in post-apartheid Soweto.
Misty L. Bastian is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She has published widely on gender, popular culture, media, religious practice and political economy in southeastern Nigeria. Her most recent publications include articles in Anthropological Quarterly, Ethnology and the volume Great Ideas for Teaching about Africa (Lynne Rienner 1999), edited with Jane L. Parpart.
Cyprian F. Fisiy is the Social Development Sector Manager for the East Asia and Pacific Region of the World Bank. Fisiy joined the Bank in 1994. He has undertaken several social impact assessments and mitigation planning for Bank-funded projects. Before joining the Bank, Fisiy obtained his Ph.D. in Legal Anthropology at the University of Leiden, and was also a post-doctoral fellow at the Agricultural University in Wageningen, the Netherlands. He has published extensively on witchcraft and sorcery, and continues to publish and lecture on development issues in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Peter Geschiere is Professor of African Anthropology at Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam. Recent publications include The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa (University of Virginia Press 1997); Containing Witchcraft, special issue (co-edited with Diane Ciekawy) of African Studies Review 41, 3 (1998); and, with Francis Nyamnjoh, Capitalism and autochthony: the seesaw of mobility and belonging, in Public Culture 12, 3: 423453 (2000).
Henrietta L. Moore is Professor of Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics and was Director of the Gender Institute at the LSE from 1994 to 1999. Her recent books include Anthropological Theory Today (Polity 1999) and Those Who Play with Fire: Gender, Fertility and Transformation in East and Southern Africa (with Todd Sanders and Bwire Kaare; Athlone 1999). Her interests include social and feminist theory, the anthropology of east and central Africa and psychoanalysis and anthropology.
Isak Niehaus is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is the author of Witchcraft, Power and Politics: Exploring the Occult in the South African Lowveld (Pluto 2001). He has published widely on witchcraft in South Africa, and is currently writing a book on the intersections of masculinity, sexuality and power.
Francis B. Nyamnjoh is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Botswana. He has researched and written extensively on Cameroon, where he was Head of Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Buea. He has published widely on media and communication issues in Cameroon and Africa; his most recent book is Media and Democratisation in Africa (forthcoming). Nyamnjoh also writes fiction, and his novels include: Mind Searching (1991), The Disillusioned African (1995) and A Nose for Money (forthcoming). He is member of council for the International African Institute in London, and also an editorial board member of
