Enchanted Urbanisms

Migration, witchcraft, cults, and the remaking of authority in rough African peri-urban frontiers

Bibliographic Data

ID5862633
AuthorsJohannes Bhanye (0000-0001-9658-7755, South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume50
Issue1
Pages77-119
Publication date2025-10-24
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDialectical Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0304-4092 • E-ISSN: 1573-0786
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10624-025-09798-4
OpenAlexW4415493671
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited28

How do marginalised migrants secure land and recognition when formal titles, party patronage, and kin-based claims are out of reach? Based on two-year ethnographic fieldwork in the Lydiate rough neighbourhood this paper reveals that ritual cults and witchcraft, sometimes operate as novel forms of authority in facilitating access and security over land. The study introduces the concept of "Enchanted Urbanisms" to describe how spirituality and the unseen actively organize political authority in informal urban spaces. The findings reveal that the Nyau cult functions as territorial governance through ritual, fear, and spectacle, while witchcraft operates as an individualized "social fence" that regulates intra-migrant land disputes. These practices produce spiritual citizenship, that is, locally legible forms of recognition and quasi-tenure that partially substitute for absent or hostile formal systems, while coexisting in tension with Pentecostal networks that also offer alternative pathways to legitimacy and protection. The paper reframes peri-urban frontiers as sacralised spaces where modernity is negotiated through material-spiritual alignments, urging migration and urban studies to account for enchanted forms of authority alongside other conventional forms of authority when theorizing authority, survival, and belonging in urban Africa

Corporate governance · Cult · Ethnography · Legitimacy · Modernity · Politics · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Urban and Rural Development Challenges

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