Witch Camps And Witchcraft Discourse In Africa PDF Download
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Author | : Matthew Gmalifo Mabefam |
Publisher | : Rowman & Littlefield |
Total Pages | : 209 |
Release | : 2023-09-18 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : 1666918504 |
Download Witch Camps and Witchcraft Discourse in Africa Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
This book explores how local development interventions related to witchcraft in Africa intersect and conflict with globally accepted development practices. It argues for expansion and diversification of development practices and problematizes international development practices that can jeopardize the well-being of the people it seeks to support.
Author | : Karen Palmer |
Publisher | : Simon and Schuster |
Total Pages | : 258 |
Release | : 2010-10-26 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 1439143129 |
Download Spellbound Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
As I attempted to digest stories of spiritual cannibalism, of curses that could cost a student her eyesight or ignite the pages of the books she read, I knew I was not alone in my skepticism. And yet, when I caught sight of the waving arms of an industrious scarecrow, the hair on the back of my neck would stand on end. It was most palpable at night, this creepy feeling, when the moon stayed low to the horizon and the dust kicked up in the breeze, reaching out and pulling back with ghostly fingers. There was something to this place that could be felt but not seen. With these words, Karen Palmer takes us inside one of West Africa’s witch camps, where hundreds of banished women struggle to survive under the watchful eye of a powerful wizard. Palmer arrived at the Gambaga witch camp with an outsider’s sense of outrage, believing it was little more than a dumping ground for difficult women. Soon, however, she encountered stories she could not explain: a woman who confessed she’d attacked a girl given to her as a sacrifice; another one desperately trying to rid herself of the witchcraft she believed helped her kill dozens of people. In Spellbound, Palmer brilliantly recounts the kaleidoscope of experiences that greeted her in the remote witch camps of northern Ghana, where more than 3,000 exiled women and men live in extreme poverty, many sentenced in a ceremony hinging on the death throes of a sacrificed chicken. As she ventured deeper into Ghana’s grasslands, Palmer found herself swinging between belief and disbelief. She was shown books that caught on fire for no reason and met diviners who accurately predicted the future. From the schoolteacher who believed Africa should use the power of its witches to gain wealth and prestige to the social worker who championed the rights of accused witches but also took his wife to a witch doctor, Palmer takes readers deep inside a shadowy layer of rural African society. As the sheen of the exotic wore off, Palmer saw the camp for what it was: a hidden colony of women forced to rely on food scraps from the weekly market. She witnessed the way witchcraft preyed on people’s fears and resentments. Witchcraft could be a comfort in times of distress, a way of explaining a crippling drought or the inexplicable loss of a child. It was a means of predicting the unpredictable and controlling the uncontrollable. But witchcraft was also a tool for social control. In this vivid, startling work of first-person reportage, Palmer sheds light on the plight of women in a rarely seen corner of the world.
Author | : Khaukanani Mavhungu |
Publisher | : African Books Collective |
Total Pages | : 150 |
Release | : 2012-10-10 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 9956728322 |
Download Witchcraft in Post-colonial Africa Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
This is a comparative ethnographic study of witchcraft and associated violence between the kingdoms of Kom and Venda in Cameroon and South Africa respectively. The book shows why despite its prevalence in both societies, witchcraft does not lead to open violence in Kom, while such large-scale violence is commonplace in Venda. It reveals that this difference can be explained by factors such as the variations in local ideas on witches, differences in the role of traditional authorities, and various state interventions on witchcraft matters. The book demonstrates, through a rich collection of detailed cases, that contrary to anthropological theory that views witchcraft as a mechanism for the expression and resolution of social tensions and conflicts, witchcraft may at times become a disturbance of amicable social relations. Witchcraft accusations may occur in a context where strained social relations have not preceded them. The knowledge and experience that people have about witchcraft is sufficient to trigger an accusation and a violent reaction. Different forms of witchcraft account for variations in witchcraft attributions and accusations. This comparison provides a valuable contribution to ongoing witchcraft policy discourse amid widespread citizen anxiety over witchcraft, and the increasing call on the post-colonial state to intervene and protect its citizens against occult aggression.
Author | : Gerrie ter Haar |
Publisher | : Africa Research and Publications |
Total Pages | : 356 |
Release | : 2007 |
Genre | : Witch hunting |
ISBN | : |
Download Imagining Evil Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Author | : Mariano Pavanello |
Publisher | : Routledge |
Total Pages | : 386 |
Release | : 2016-12-08 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 1315439905 |
Download Perspectives on African Witchcraft Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
This volume draws on a range of ethnographic and historical material to provide insight into witchcraft in sub-Saharan Africa. The chapters explore a variety of cultural contexts, with contributions focusing on Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ghana, Mali, Ethiopia and Eritrean diaspora. The book considers the concept of witchcraft itself, the interrelations with religion and medicine, and the theoretical frameworks employed to explain the nature of modern African witchcraft representations.
Author | : Mensah Adinkrah |
Publisher | : Berghahn Books |
Total Pages | : 338 |
Release | : 2015-08-01 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 1782385614 |
Download Witchcraft, Witches, and Violence in Ghana Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Witchcraft violence is a feature of many contemporary African societies. In Ghana, belief in witchcraft and the malignant activities of putative witches is prevalent. Purported witches are blamed for all manner of adversities including inexplicable illnesses and untimely deaths. As in other historical periods and other societies, in contemporary Ghana, alleged witches are typically female, elderly, poor, and marginalized. Childhood socialization in homes and schools, exposure to mass media, and other institutional mechanisms ensure that witchcraft beliefs are transmitted across generations and entrenched over time. This book provides a detailed account of Ghanaian witchcraft beliefs and practices and their role in fueling violent attacks on alleged witches by aggrieved individuals and vigilante groups.
Author | : M Christian Green |
Publisher | : AFRICAN SUN MeDIA |
Total Pages | : 426 |
Release | : 2018-05-16 |
Genre | : Law |
ISBN | : 1928314422 |
Download Religion, Law and Security in Africa Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Security is a key topic of our time. But how do we understand it? Do law and religion take different views of it? In this fifth volume in the Law and Religion in Africa series, radicalisation, terrorism, blasphemy, hate speech, religious freedom and just war theories rub shoulders with issues of witchcraft, female genital mutilation circumcision, child marriage, displaced communities and additional issues besides. This unique collection of topics is both challenging and inspiring, providing illumination in troubled times, and forming a sound foundation for future scholarship.
Author | : John Middleton |
Publisher | : Routledge |
Total Pages | : 315 |
Release | : 2013-11-05 |
Genre | : Reference |
ISBN | : 113655145X |
Download Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Containing ten essays by anthropologists on the beliefs and practices associated with witches and sorcerers in Eastern Africa, the chapters in this book are all based on field research and new information which is studied within its wider social context. First published in 1963.
Author | : Peter Geschiere |
Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
Total Pages | : 322 |
Release | : 2013-08-09 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 022604775X |
Download Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Trust Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
In Dante’s Inferno, the lowest circle of Hell is reserved for traitors, those who betrayed their closest companions. In a wide range of literatures and mythologies such intimate aggression is a source of ultimate terror, and in Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Trust, Peter Geschiere masterfully sketches it as a central ember at the core of human relationships, one brutally revealed in the practice of witchcraft. Examining witchcraft in its variety of forms throughout the globe, he shows how this often misunderstood practice is deeply structured by intimacy and the powers it affords. In doing so, he offers not only a comprehensive look at contemporary witchcraft but also a fresh—if troubling—new way to think about intimacy itself. Geschiere begins in the forests of southeast Cameroon with the Maka, who fear “witchcraft of the house” above all else. Drawing a variety of local conceptions of intimacy into a global arc, he tracks notions of the home and family—and witchcraft’s transgression of them—throughout Africa, Europe, Brazil, and Oceania, showing that witchcraft provides powerful ways of addressing issues that are crucial to social relationships. Indeed, by uncovering the link between intimacy and witchcraft in so many parts of the world, he paints a provocative picture of human sociality that scrutinizes some of the most prevalent views held by contemporary social science. One of the few books to situate witchcraft in a global context, Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Trust is at once a theoretical tour de force and an empirically rich and lucid take on a difficult-to-understand spiritual practice and the private spaces throughout the world it so greatly affects.
Author | : Henrietta L. Moore |
Publisher | : Routledge |
Total Pages | : 265 |
Release | : 2003-09-02 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 1134575572 |
Download Magical Interpretations, Material Realities Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
'Magical Interpretations, Material Realities brings together many of today's best scholars of contemporary Africa. The theme of "witchcraft" has long been associated with exoticizing portraits of a "traditional" Africa, but this volume takes the question of occult as a point of entry into the moral politics of some very modern African realities.' - James Ferguson, University of California, USA 'These essays bear eloquent testimony to the ongoing presence and power of the occult imaginary, and of the intimate connection between global capitalism and local cosmology, in postcolonial Africa. A major contribution to scholarship that aims to rework the divide between modernity and tradition.' - Charles Piot, Duke University, USA 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. 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 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.