Witchcraft
The Modernity Of Witchcraft
Contemporary scholarly work indicates that the study of witchcraft is as relevant today as it has been in the past. Ideas about witchcraft address new circumstances and are very much a part of people's understanding of how their lives are connected to events and processes both near and far. It is common for witchcraft discourses to relate to the countryside, town, state, and world. Few current studies see witchcraft only as a social construction; it is also understood to be a concept that meaningfully provides people with a representation of the complexity of the order in which they live, including power and inequality, individual and collective interests, and resources and their allocation. Witchcraft addresses issues of globalization and transformations within the state, and continues to explain events and the mechanics of their integration into daily life. It is also important to remember that the constructions of witchcraft can be powerful realities, and have the ability to maintain or transform social relationships.
See also Anthropology; Astrology: Overview; Demonology; Evil; Gender Studies: Anthropology; Heresy and Apostasy; Magic; Miracles; Nature; Superstition; Witchcraft, African Studies of.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arens, W., and Ivan Karp. Creativity of Power: Cosmology and Action in African Societies. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
Bond, George. "Ancestors and Protestants: Religious Coexistence in the Social Field of a Zambian Community." American Ethnologist 14, no. 8 (1986): 55–72.
Boyer, Paul S., and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974.
Caro Baroja, Julio. The World of the Witches. Translated by O. N. V. Glendinning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
Ciekawy, Diane. "Witchcraft and Statecraft: Five Technologies of Power in Colonial and Postcolonial Coastal Kenya." African Studies Review 41, no. 3 (1998): 119–141.
——. "Women's 'Work' and the Construction of Witchcraft Accusation in Coastal Kenya." Women's Studies International Forum 22, no. 2 (1999): 225–235.
Cohn, Norman R. C. Europe's Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Crick, Malcolm. Explorations in Language and Meaning: Towards a Semantic Anthropology. New York: Wiley, 1976.
Demos, John. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon, 1937.
Favret-Saada, Jeanne. Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage. Translated by Catherine Cullen. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Geschiere, Peter. The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997.
Kluckholn, Clyde. Navaho Witchcraft. Boston: Beacon, 1962. Originally published in 1944.
Knauft, Bruce M. Good Company and Violence: Sorcery and Social Action in a Lowland New Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Larner, Christina. Witchcraft and Religion: The Politics of Popular Belief. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984.
Macfarlane, Alan. Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970.
Mair, Lucy P. Witchcraft. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969.
Marwick, Max. Sorcery in Its Social Setting. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1965.
Middleton, John. Lugbara Religion: Ritual and Authority among an East African People. London: Oxford University Press, 1960.
Murphy, Robert F. Mundurucú Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958.
Russell, Jeffrey B. A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics, and Pagans. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980.
Shaw, Rosalind. "Gender and the Structuring of Reality in Temne Divination: An Interactive Study." Africa 53, no. 3 (1985): 286–303.
Trevor-Roper, Hugh R. The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, and Other Essays. New York: Harper and Row, 1969.
Turner, Victor. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967.
Diane Ciekawy
Additional topics
Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Well-being to Jan Łukasiewicz BiographyWitchcraft - The Social And Political History Of Witchcraft In Europe, The Functions Of Witchcraft, Symbolic And Ideological Aspects Of Witchcraft