African Studies of Witchcraft

Building on anthropological methods for studying the politics of witchcraft, several important works demonstrate relationships between local and global worlds in the construction of witchcraft ideas and practices. Peter Geschiere's The Modernity of Witchcraft shows how the many different fields of everyday experience that shape witchcraft for the Maka in Cameroon are influenced by regional, national, and global forces. In her study of legal and administrative institutions in Kenya, Diane Ciekawy (1998) shows how local religious practice is both constrained and encouraged to develop in ways that further strengthen the power of state institutions. Scholars also acknowledge the challenge of segregating local discourses concerning magical harm from wider regional or national ones, particularly when the English term witchcraft is used in African communities.