1. African Witchcraft

2. Bowie argues that Witchcraft is a view of the world, common in much of sub-Saharan Africa, in which moral behaviour, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty, fertility and death are commonly interpreted via the lens of witchcraft. At its simplest this is the belief that individuals can use psychic, occult powers for good or evil, often accompanied by the manipulation of natural forces. Defining Witchcraft:

3. Witchcraft as a Cosmology: ways of understanding the world (1) One of its most fundamental ideas is that of a life force, essence or energy within people. (2) This life force can be captured or harmed by others whose own life force is more powerful, malevolent or in some way out of control. (3) This harm is effected at the psychic level, but will be reflected in the biological and material state of the victim. (4) It is prudent to protect oneself from psychic attack, but if overcome a specialist is usually called upon to counteract the affects of psychic aggression. (5) Another fundamental notion is that of limited good. There is only a certain finite amount of health, wealth and happiness to go around. If someone is particularly successful, fertile and fortunate in life there is an assumption that they have profited at someone else's expense.

4. Terminology Using terms like 'witchcraft' or 'sorcery' implies similarity where it may not exist, and conjure up specific images in the West related to an historical usage in which witchcraft was interpreted in (anti) Christian terms, and in which popular images, from the handbooks of the sixteenth and century inquisitors to the Blair Witch Project and Harry Potter, abound. The term 'witchcraft' and designation 'witch' are used, for instance, in at least four very distinct ways. Although there are common threads it is important to distinguish between them.

5. (1) In medieval and early modern Europe the older village practices of cursing and blessing, healing and manipulating people and objects, sometime referred to as malefice, became inextricably linked with Christian theology. (2) Church reformers identified witches or sorcerers as adversaries of Christianity and agents of Satan, projecting onto those identified an inversion of all that was considered holy and civilised. (3) African witchcraft and sorcery is closer to older European notions of malefice and the evil eye than it is to this Christianised 'shadow' version of its own image (that continues to haunt the popular European imagination and to manifest itself in anti-witchcraft scares). (4) In recent years we have seen the growth of Western 'neo-pagan' forms of witchcraft.  These may be consciously experimental, drawing eclectically on many traditions and creating new ones, as with Wicca and some other forms of the Craft, or they may claim continuity with a hidden tradition that is said to have survived years of persecution through secrecy and oral transmission, primarily within families

6. Witchcraft in Africa Nigerian writer E. B. Idowu argues: The observer from elsewhere outside African culture may hold whatever theory appeals to him most on the subject. To Africans of every category, witchcraft is an urgent reality. African concepts about witchcraft consist in the belief that the spirits of living human beings can be sent out of the body, mind or estate; It is generally believed that the guild of witches have their regular meetings and ceremonies in forests or in open places in the middle of the night. The meeting is the meeting of 'souls', 'spirits', of the witches. Their main purpose is to wreak havoc on other human beings; and the operation is the operation of spirits upon spirits, that is, it is the ethereal bodies of the victims that are attacked, extracted, and devoured; and this is what is meant when it is said that witches have sucked the entire blood of the victim. Thus, in the case of witches or their victims, spirits meet spirits, spirits operate upon spirits, while the actual human bodies lie 'asleep' in their homes (1978:175-6).

7. Evans-Pritchard and The Azande The most influential work on African witchcraft remains Edward Evans-Pritchard's 1937 classic, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Although it was only one of several books that Evans- Pritchard wrote about the Azande it is undoubtedly the most widely read. Oxford University Press produced an abridged paperback version in 1976, and extracts from the book have been widely anthologised. The Azande, when Evans-Pritchard studied them in the 1920s and 1930s, numbered about half a million. They are still mainly agriculturists, living in the southern Sudan and eastern Congo. In some societies witchcraft is hidden or denied, but not among the Azande. As Evans-Pritchard records:

8. I had no difficulty in discovering what Azande think about witchcraft, nor in observing what they do to combat it. These ideas and actions are on the surface of their life and are accessible to anyone who lives for a few weeks in their homesteads. Every Zande is an authority on witchcraft. There is no need to consult specialists. There is not even need to question Azande about it, for information flows freely from recurrent situations in their social life, and one has only to watch and listen. Mangu, witchcraft, was one of the first words I heard in Zandeland, and I heard it uttered day by day throughout the months (1976:1).

9. Witchcraft and Sorcery The Azande distinguish between witches and sorcerers, although this is by no means the case everywhere in Africa. For the Azande the distinction can be summarised as follows (1976: 227-8): Witchcraft - a psychic power inherited from a parent of the same sex. Witchcraft substance can be detected in the body by autopsy after a person has died. Witchcraft may be used to harm others either consciously or unconsciously by sending out or activating witchcraft substance. The Azande refer to witchcraft as mangu and a witch as boro (ira) mangu. Sorcery - bad or illicit magic involving the conscious use of medicines in order to harm others. Sorcery is a skill that can be learnt, rather than a disposition that is inherited. The Azande terms used to describe sorcery are gbegbere (gbigbita) ngua or kitikiti ngua. A sorcerer is ira gbegbere (kitikiti) ngua.

10. The word ngua is used for magic more generally, with the Azande distinguishing between good and bad magic. It is, however, witchcraft that most concerns the Azande. It is not an infrequent and frightening event, but part of everyday life. Hunting, fishing and agriculture, the domestic life of the homestead and communal life of the village and court are all arenas for the activity of witches. Almost anything that happens may be referred to in terms of witchcraft. If blight seizes the ground-nut crop it is witchcraft; if the bush is vainly scoured for game it is witchcraft; if women laboriously bale water out of a pool and are rewarded by but a few small fish it is witchcraft; if termites do not rise when their swarming is due and a cold useless night is spent in waiting for their flight it is witchcraft; if a wife is sulky and unresponsive to her husband it is witchcraft; if a prince is cold and distant with his subject it is witchcraft; if a magical rite fails to achieve its purpose it is witchcraft; if, in fact, any failure or misfortune falls upon anyone at any time and in relation to any of the manifold activities of his life it may be due to witchcraft unless there is strong evidence, and subsequent oracular confirmation, that sorcery or some other evil agent has been at work, or unless they are clearly to be attributed to incompetence, breach of a taboo, or failure to observe a moral rule (1976:18).

11. An explanation for unfortunate events The Azande and many other African peoples, however, can draw on a much more comprehensive hermeneutical system that also gives people the possibility to do something about it (Bowie 2000) As Evans-Pritchard put it, witchcraft explains unfortunate events. Control is re-established in an otherwise uncertain world. Evans-Pritchard is at pains to point out that the Azande are not ignorant of cause and effect. They are simply 'foreshortening the chain of events and in a particular social situation are selecting the cause that is socially relevant and neglecting the rest' (1976:25). Thus if a man is killed by a spear in a skirmish with enemies the physiological cause of death is not socially relevant as there is nothing that can be done to bring the man back to life. What can be done is to identify the witch who guided that particular spear to that particular man and to punish him (or her). 'Hence if a man is killed by an elephant Azande say that the elephant is the first spear and that witchcraft is the second spear and that together they killed the man' (1976:26).

12. Causation Evans-Pritchard shows how explanations of witchcraft provide the 'missing link' in a chain of causation. There may be a straightforward 'natural' explanation for events, but these do not account for the element of synchronicity or chance that leads natural events and people to collide in time and space. Azande thought is presented as logical and rational (if mistaken according to Western scientific precepts). It is not that the Azande have no knowledge of natural causation and live in a mystical world, but that their philosophy fills the gaps in such a theory, so that the whole of life, and death, are imbued with meaning.

13. The Oracles Evans-Pritchard managed to enter into Zande thinking, adopting the use of oracles in order to arrange his daily life (essential if he was to be effective in carrying out his fieldwork) while always seeking to relate Zande notions to his own. His style has sometimes been read as patronising - he describes his arguments with the Azande over questions of logic, and is not prepared simply to accept and record their beliefs (as a proponent of the phenomenological method of the study of religion might try to do). Evans-Pritchard is fully engaged in his fieldwork experience and manages to present Zande ideas in a way that shows why they make perfect sense to those raised within that culture. Indeed, his arguments with the Azande can be seen as a sign of respect. He treated them as rational human beings who were perfectly capable of coming up with convincing explanations for their beliefs and actions, and he was interested to discover what these might be.

14. Evans-Pritchard’s approach Evans-Pritchard's account of Zande witchcraft is framed in terms of structural-functional explanations. He shows how accusations follow lines of tension, which in turn relate to Azande social institutions. Thus, although a prince may be suspected of witchcraft, he will never actually be accused by a commoner. A woman must ask her husband, or more occasionally a male relative, to consult oracles on her behalf. Not surprisingly therefore, Evans-Pritchard never came across a case in which a woman accused her husband of witchcraft. Men, on the other hand, frequently put the names of their wives before the oracles as suspected witches. In bringing tensions into the open and dealing with them publicly, Evans-Pritchard saw witchcraft as an institution as a kind of safety valve, facilitating the smooth functioning of society and supporting the status quo.

15. Theories of Witchcraft Lucy Mair (1969:199) argues that theories of witchcaft help us understand theories about ‘accusations’. From a functionalist approach, theories of witchcraft are means of  ‘facilitating adjustment to society’ (Navaho witchcraft in Kluckhon)  offering ‘explanatory devices’  ‘regulate and adjust behaviour’  Are ways of ‘affirming solidarity by dramatically defining what is bad’. Although this is the starting point of Evans-Pritchard, his structural functionalist goes further in saying that ‘providing for an explanation’ does not explain ‘accident’ or people’s understandings of causation. Wilson, argues that witchcraft can not be discussed apart from religion, and in particular, the effects of other religions (i.e Christianity). Mair argues that from a functionalist perspective it is also possible to argue that witchcraft allow people ‘to break relationships that have become intolerable but one can not fully reject’.

16. For Liendhard and Nadel, witchcraft accusations are associated with hostility and conflict in society (kinship competition). Gluckham, on the other hand, argues that it reflects conflict on the organisation of ‘lineages’ and differences between ‘chiefs’ and ‘commoners’ in their competitive access to power. Different types of theoretical explanations seem to merge: ‘patterns’ emerge. These patterns of accusations are explained by ‘tensions’ – witchcraft theories become an explanation for ‘relieving tensions’ being ‘cathartic’. Mary Douglas goes against this argument when she says that one does not have to ‘believe’ in witchcraft, and it is not possible to argue for kinship patterns and patterns of ‘tension’. For her, witchcraft may or may not be the dominant explanation for misfortune, what is significant is that there is an element of ‘contesting authority’ in witchcraft accusations. Witchcraft deals with both, the subversive, the authority. Accusations are exchanged between person whose relative status is not rigidly defined ‘in the cracks and crevices of the social system’, ‘tensions between men (political tensions) are dealt with as if they were only tensions between women (kinship).

17. Mair: witchcraft are accusations of a dispute of a different kind: they are not challenges of judicial character. ‘The disputes could not of themselves give rise to legal action because they are not about matters of jural rights’(218) Bowie, in her case in contemporary Bangwa, argues that other interpretations are possible: witchcraft allows for individuals to exercise agency in finding new ways of adjusting to social change; and to harness witch power ‘for the good of the people’. “Witchcraft remains an important idiom in which people express who and what they are, and explain the mechanisms of a market economy and their role within it”.

18. Watching Benge: the rules of causation at play

19. Interpreting the Benge (Poison oracle) Robert Lyton (1997:195) argues that Evans-Pritchard assumed that the word benge (poison) was a kind of ‘lethal chemical’. When trying to investigate what ‘poison’ does and does not, he is asking a question that makes no sense. The Azande replied to Evans- Pritchard ‘you don’t understand such matters’. Lyton argues that using Ahern’s linguistic rules, one could compare the oracle to a game (Wittgenstein). Think of the rules of tennis (tennis defines an ettiquete: wearing white clothes, nor arguing with the umpire). ‘If an alien anthropologist appeared at Wimbeldon and asked the players, ‘why don’t you hit tow balls over the net? One of them would sure to get past your opponent’ the players would reply ‘Don’t be silly, that wouldn’t be tennis’. (ibid 198). Evans-Pritchard, could only determine that the Azande reasoned logically within the limits of their culture, but failed to perceived how ‘il.logical’ their reasonings would be from the outside. However, Lyton argues, cultural meanings should not be reduced to how these are seen by an ‘external world’.

20. Symbolic Boundaries: the Politics of Identity The body and society Maintenance of Identity Dominant/non-dominant identities Worries about the body’s physical boundaries reflect tensions over social boundaries Ritual Purity Mary Douglas: the physical body can act as a symbol of group identity (Bowie 2000:73)

21. The Traveller Gypsies A threatened group, ethnically distinct. Outside threats of integration and exclusion. A vulnerable group. An example where the boundaries of the physical body (clothing, mochadi contamination, inner-cleanliness) including that of animals (clean and impure animals) speaks for their effort in maintaining a distinct identity The Inner-Outer body distinction is the ‘symbolic boundary’ that separate Gypsy from non-Gypsy (Gorgio) The self is constituted of a relation between the types of ‘contact’ that the body has with ‘outside’ forces. And the types of beliefs and activities that define the ‘inner’ self.

22. Symbols and Boundaries Bowie argues: ‘Symbols can be potent and acquire particular meanings when they are supported by political, economic, and social relationships. They serve a purpose and are not merely an end in themselves’. By remaining at the margins (not fully excluded), Gypsies require a symbolic system that 1) Reinforces the sense of boundaries (separation) between groups 2) Reinforces the sense of ‘identity’ (group and self) (self and history) (continuity and change) 3) Helps to contest dominant ideologies. One of the effects of this process is the transformation of (Gypsy) identity from a ‘fluid’ process into a ‘clear cut’ one (one of distinction between groups).