Witchcraft Suppression Practices and Movements

Public Politics and the Logic of Purification

Bibliographic Data

ID2108100
AuthorsM Green (0000-0002-9800-2738, University of Manchester, corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume39
Issue2
Pages319-345
Publication date1997-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417500020648
OpenAlexW2157629015
LanguageEN
Citations received23
References cited35

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

Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Expression (computer science · Interpretation (philosophy · Modernity · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law

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