Witchcraft Event Staging in Rural Tlaxcala

A Study in Inferred Deception

Bibliographic Data

ID2736692
AuthorsJohn M Roberts (0000-0003-3146-7853, corresponding author), Hugo G Nutini
Year1988
Volume27
Issue4
Pages407
Publication date1988-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1828 • E-ISSN: 2160-3510
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3773401
OpenAlexW413953
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited9

Since bloodsucking witches do not actually exist in rural Tlaxcala, Mexico, each of the 47 witchcraft events considered here must have been, to some degree, staged. Each event was centered on the death of a child and the staging of each event, among other things, served to convince others that the child, who most probably died from various natural causes, negligence or infanticide, was indeed the victim of a bloodsucking witch. Although any study of staging should be assigned to the genre developed by Goffman (e.g., 1959, 1969), this specific ethnographic line of inquiry was influenced by the ethnographic realization of some of Goffman's ideas by Gregor (1977). For the most part, though, the stimulus for this research is to be found in the previous work of the authors. The term, staging, refers primarily to putting a play on the stage, but it is easily extended to the explicit staging of scheduled and planned events of a somewhat dramatic nature, such as weddings, funerals, dances, ceremonials, parades, athletic contests, etc. The term can also be used in the description of less impressive or even unscheduled events. While some events require years of planning, others, like the 47 witchcraft events, have an impromptu, on the spot quality that can color the staging process. Staging is ubiquitous for most cultural events and are patterned in ways that include staging rules, practices, and investments. These staging patterns always have an economic aspect since their production entails the expenditure of effort and/or resources, but the time, energy, concentration, forethought, imagination, and creativity used in staging also insure that these patterns are expressive as well. Probably the higher the staging investment, the more distinctive, salient, and memorable the event becomes in the minds of both the actors and the audience. Staging has many facets. In the United States, for example, staging investments for weddings within the same religious denomination in the same town or neighborhood may still range from those required for elaborate church weddings to those needed for simple home weddings. Such differences are commonly related to resource levels, but staging differences also occur when the producers have about the same levels of resources, as was the case with the witchcraft events. This latter variation must be tied to other factors. At a gross level, the conventional ranges of variation among the world's cultures are known ~ it^is unlikely that a new culture lying outside the known ranges of standard ethnographic variables will ever be found. Today

Deception · Event (particle physics) · Genealogy · Geography · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Latin American history and culture · Medicine · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access