Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T06:17:11.372Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Witchcraft, Shamanism, and Nostalgia. A Review Essay

Review products

The Empty Seashell: Witchcraft and Doubt on an Indonesian Island, by NilsBubandt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), xv + 293 pp.
Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia, by ManduhaiBuyandelger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), xxi + 314 pp.
Sorcellerie et prophétisme en Centrafrique: L'imaginaire de la dépossession en pays banda, by Andrea CerianaMayneri (Paris: Karthala, 2014), 257 pp.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2016

Peter Geschiere
Peter Geschiere*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The study of witchcraft seems to be globalizing in many respects. Not only are witches themselves supposedly globalizing, but the people who try to study them are also adopting a more global outlook. Moreover, witchcraft as a topic is no longer tied to specific areas of the world, but seems to crop up everywhere. For this essay I purposely chose three recent studies, out of a wide array of possible books, which come from very different parts of the world. Reading them comparatively can highlight key trends in this field, and also important differences.

Type
CSSH Discussion
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 242 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Akin, David. 2005. What Is the Problem with Bitter Money? Paper presented at the conference “The Permeation of Monetary Resources into Gift-Exchange Economies,” Goa, India, Dec.Google Scholar
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1992. In My Father's House: What Does It Mean to Be an African Today? London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Ashforth, Adam. 2005. Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bailey, Michael D. 2013. Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies: The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behrend, Heike. 2011. Resurrecting Cannibals: The Catholic Church, Witch-Hunts & the Production of Pagans in Western Uganda. Woodbridge: James Currey.Google Scholar
Behringer, Wolfgang. 2004. Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Bernault, Florence. 2009. De la modernité comme impuissance: Fétichisme et crise du politique en Afrique équatoriale et ailleurs. Cahiers d'Etudes africaines 49, 3: 747–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernault, Florence. n.d. (forthcoming). Power and Fantasy in Colonial Gabon. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
de Boeck, Filip. 2000. Le ‘deuxième monde' et les énfants sorciers’ en République Démocratique du Congo. Politique Africaine 80: 32–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ciekawy, Diane M. 1998. Witchcraft and Statecraft: Five Technologies of Power in Colonial and Postcolonial Coastal Kenya. African Studies Review 41, 3: 119–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ciekawy, Diane M. 2001. Utsai as Ethical Discourse: A Critique of Power from Mi'jikenda in Coastal Kenya. In Bond, G. and Ciekawy, D. M., eds., Witchcraft Dialogues, Anthropological and Philosophical Exchanges. Athens: Ohio University Press, 158–90.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John, eds. 1993. Modernity and Its Malcontents. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Crick, Malcolm. 1979. Anthropologists’ Witchcraft: Symbolically Defined or Analytically Undone? Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 10: 139–46.Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. 1970. Introduction. In Douglas, M., ed., Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations. London: Tavistock, xiii–xxxviii.Google Scholar
Dupré, Georges. 1982. Un ordre et sa destruction. Paris: Orstom.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Fancello, Sandra, ed. 2015. Penser la sorcellerie en Afrique. Paris: Hermann Éditeurs.Google Scholar
Geschiere, Peter. 1997. The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Geschiere, Peter. 2013. Witchcraft, Intimacy and Trust—Africa in Comparison. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geschiere, Peter, Meyer, Birgit, and Pels, Peter, eds. 2008. Readings in Modernity in Africa. Oxford: Currey, and Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Glick Schiller, Nina, and Fouron, Georges Eugene. 2001. Georges Woke Up Laughing: Long Distance Nationalism and the Search for Home. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henry, C. and Tall, E. K.. 2008. La sorcellerie envers et contre tous. Cahiers d'Etudes africaines 189/90: 11–35 (special issue, “Territoires sorciers,” Henry, C. and Tall, E. K., eds.).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kapferer, Bruce. 1997. The Feast of the Sorcerer—Practices of Consciousness and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kounine, Laura. 2013. The Gendering of Witchcraft: Defence Strategies of Men and Women in German Witch Trials. German History 31, 3: 295–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambertz, Peter. 2015. Divisive Matters: Aesthetic Difference and Authority in a Congolose Spiritual Movement ‘from Japan.’ PhD diss., Utrecht/Leipzig.Google Scholar
Lattas, Andrew. 2010. Dreams, Madness, and Fairy Tales in New Britain. Durham: Carolina Academic Press.Google Scholar
Luongo, Katherine. 2011. Witchcraft and Colonial Rule in Kenya, 1900–1955. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, Ruth. 2009. Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mary, André. 2009. Visionnaires et prophètes de l'Afrique contemporaine: Tradition initiatique, culture de la transe et charisme de délivrance. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Mepschen, Paul. n.d. (forthcoming 2016). Everyday Autochthony: Difference, Discontent and the Politics of Home in Amsterdam. PhD diss., University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Meyer, Birgit. 1999. Translating the Devil—Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press for International African Institute.Google Scholar
Meyer, Birgit. 2015. Sensational Movies—Video, Vision and Christianity in Ghana. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Muchembled, Robert. 1978. Culture populaire et cultures des élites. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Niehaus, Isak. 2013. Witchcraft and a Life in the New South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press with the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Palmié, Stephan. 2011. From Enchantment by Science to Socialist Sorcery: The Cuban Republic and the Savage Slot. In Parés, L. N. and Sansi, R., eds., Sorcery in the Black Atlantic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 121–45.Google Scholar
Parés, Luis Nicolau. n.d. Candomblé, Accusations of Sorcery and Struggles for Power. Paper, Federal University Salavador de Bahia.Google Scholar
Parés, Luis Nicolau and Sansi, R., eds. 2011. Sorcery in the Black Atlantic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pedersen, Morten Axel. 2011. Not Quite Shamans—Spirit Worlds and Political Lives in Northern Mongolia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pels, Peter. 1998. The Magic of Africa: Reflections on a Western Commonplace. African Studies Review 41, 3: 193–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piot, Charles. 2010. Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pype, Katrien. 2012. The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama: Religion, Media and Gender in Kinshasa. Oxford: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Rey, Pierre-Philippe. 1971. Colonialisme, néo-colonialisme et transition au capitalisme: exemple de la ‘Comilog’ au Congo-Brazzaville. Paris: F. Maspero.Google Scholar
Robisheaux, Thomas. 2009. The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Siegel, James. 2006. Naming the Witch. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Stroeken, K. 2010. Moral Power: The Magic of Witchcraft. Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Tonda, Joseph. 2002. La guérison divine en Afrique centrale (Congo, Gabon). Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Tonda, Joseph. 2005. Le souverain moderne: Le corps du pouvoir en Afrique centrale (Congo, Gabon). Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Tonda, Joseph. n.d. (in press). Éblouissements. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Van de Port, Mattijs. 2011. Ecstatic Encounters: Bahian Candomblé and the Quest for the Really Real. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West, Harry G. 2005. Kupilikula: Governance and the Invisible Realm in Mozambique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
West, Harry G. 2007. Ethnographic Sorcery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, Neil L. and Wright, Robin, eds. 2004. In Whitehead, N. L. and Wright, R., eds., Darkness and Secrecy: The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zika, Charles. 2007. The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar