Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T12:41:48.112Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Witchcraft and selfcraft

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2009

Terence M. S. Evens
Terence M. S. Evens
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill).

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This essay explores the status of moral accounting in relation to contingent misfortune. It does so by comparing the oracular procedures of the Azande of Center Africa to a modern pseudo-psychotherapeutic interaction. Though the first is in principle mystical and the second rational, both forms of inquiry are shown to display a certain indifference to contradiction. The reason for this indifference rests with the consideration that both focus on practical rather than theoretical questions. Nevertheless, in the pseudo-psychotherapcutic interaction the presumption of theory qua theory makes a difference. That presumption comports a principle of epistemological certainty, removing the ground from moral accounting while privileging naturalistic explanation. In this light, contrary to received anthropological opinion, it is the selfcraft of much psychotherapy rather than the witchcraft of the Azande that must count as a closed system.

Cet essai explore la justification morale des malheurs contingents, en comparant et opposant les procds oraculaires des Zand d'Afrique centrale l'interaction moderne pseudopsychothrapeutique. Bien que la premire soit en principe mystique et la seconde rationnelle, les deux formes dmontrent une certaine indiffrence la contradiction. La raison de cette indiffrence consiste considrer que toutes deux se concentrent sur des questions plus pratiques que thoriques. Nanmoins, dans l'interaction pseudo-psychothrapeutique, la supposition d'une thorie en tant que thorie fait la diffrence. Cette prsomption comporte un principe de certitude pistmologique, qui s'carte de la justification morale pour privilgier l'explication naturaliste. Ainsi, au contraire de l'opinion anthropologique reue, c'est le selfcraft de la psychothrapie plus que la sorcellerie des Zand qui doit tre considre comme un systme clos .

Diese Untersuchung analysiert die moralische Rechtfertigung zuflliger Unglcke, wobei die Orakelriten der Zande in Ostafrika der modernen pseudo-psychotherapeutischen Interaktion gegenbergestellt werden. Obwohl die ersten mystisch sind, und die zweite rational, zeigen sich beide Methoden dem Widerspruch gegenber gleichgltig. Diese Gleichgltigkeit ergibt sich aus der Tatsache, da sich beide eher auf praktische Fragen, als auf theoretische konzentrieren. Die pseudo-psychotherapeutische Interaktion erkennt allerdings die Theorie als solche an und unterscheidet sich damit deutlich. Diese Annahme schliet das Prinzip der epistemologischen Sicherheit ein, die sich von der moralischen Rechtfertigung distanziert, urn eine naturalistische Erklrung vorzuzichen. Im Gegensatz zur anerkannten anthropologischcn Meinung, erscheint die Selfcraft der Psychotherapie und nicht die Hexereien der Zandes als geschlossenes System.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 1996 , pp. 23 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1996

References

REFERENCES

Akiga, 1939, Akiga's Story (East, Rupert, trans. & annot.) (London: Oxford Univ. Press, for the International Institute of African Languages & Cultures).Google Scholar
Bloch, M., 1992, Prey into Hunter: the Politics of Religious Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press).Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P., 1990, The Logic of Practice (trans) (Stanford: Univ. Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruzina, R., 1978, Heidegger on the Metaphor and Philosophy, in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy (Murray, Michael, ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Clifford, James, 1982, Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World (Berkeley: University of California Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crapanzano, V., 1979, Preface. Do Kamo (trans.), Maurice Leenhardt (Chicago: University Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 1977, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (trans.) (New York: Viking Press).Google Scholar
Derrida, J., 1978, Force and Signification, in Writing and Difference (trans.) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Derrida, J., 1982, White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy, in Margins of Philosophy (trans.) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Douglas, M., 1980, Edward Evans-Pritchard (Penguin Books).Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E.E., 1937, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford: The Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E.E., 1965, Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford: The Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Evens, T.M.S., 1983, Mind, Logic and the Efficacy of the Nuer Incest Prohibition, Man (N.S.) 18, 111–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evens, T.M.S., 1989, The Nuer Incest Prohibition and the Nature of Kinship: Alterlogical Reckoning, Cultural Anthropology 4 (4), 323–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evens, T.M.S., 1993, Rationality, Hierarchy and Practice: Contradiction as Choice, Social Anthropology 1 (1B), 101–118.Google Scholar
Evens, T.M.S., 1995. Two Kinds of Rationality: Kibbutz Democracy and Generational Conflict (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).Google Scholar
Evens, T.M.S., n.d., Anti-Dualism or Anthropology as Ethics. Unpb. ms.Google Scholar
Feyerabend, P.K., 1975, Popper's Objective Knowledge, Inquiry 17, 475ff.Google Scholar
Foucault, M., 1965, Madness and Civilization (trans.) (New York: Pantheon).Google Scholar
Geertz, C., 1983, Slide Show: Evans-Pritchard's African Transparencies, Raritan 3 (2), 62–80.Google Scholar
Giddens, A., 1991, Modernity and Self-Identity (Stanford: Stanford University Press).Google Scholar
Gillies, E., 1976, Introduction. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (abridged), E. Evans-Pritchard (Oxford: The Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Ginzburg, Carlo, 1991, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath (trans.) (New York: Penguin Books).Google Scholar
Gluckman, M., 1965, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).Google Scholar
Hollis, M. & Lukes, S. (eds), 1982, Rationality and Relativism (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press).Google Scholar
Horton, R., 1970, African Traditional Thought and Western Science, in Rationality, Wilson, B. (ed.) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).Google Scholar
Horton, R., 1982, Tradition and Modernity Revisited, in Rationality and Relativism, Hollis, M. and Lukes, S. (eds) (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press).Google Scholar
Kuper, A., 1983, Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School (revised) (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Lacan, J., 1978, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (trans.) (New York: Norton).Google Scholar
Leenhardt, M., 1979, Do Kamo (trans.) (Chicago: Univ. Press).Google Scholar
Levinas, É., 1969, Totality and Infinity (trans.) (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press).Google Scholar
Levinas, É., 1991, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (trans.) (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers).Google Scholar
Lloyd, G.E.R., 1990, Demystifying Mentalities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGowan, J., 1991, Postmodernism and its Critics (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McHugh, P., 1968, Defining the Situation (Indianapolis & New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc).Google Scholar
Nandy, A., 1989, The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games (New Delhi: Penguin Books).Google Scholar
Obeyesekere, O., 1992, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Popper, K., 1965, Conjectures and Refutations (2nd edn) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd).Google Scholar
Popper, K., 1968, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (rev. edn) (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd).Google Scholar
Popper, K., 1972, Objective Knowledge (Oxford: The Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Read, K.E., 1955, Morality and the Concept of the Person among the Gahuku-Gama, Oceania 25 (4): 233–82.Google Scholar
Read, K.E., 1965, The High Valley (New York: Columbia University Press).Google Scholar
Sartre, J-P., 1956, Being and Nothingness (trans.) (New York: Philosophical Library).Google Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, N., 1992, Death without Weeping (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D., 1985, On Anthropological Knowledge (Paris and Cambridge: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Surin, K., 1993, Transform the World, Change Life: Michael Taussig's Poetics of Destruction and Revelation, The South Atlantic Quarterly 92 (2).Google Scholar
Tambiah, S.J., 1990, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press).Google Scholar
Taussig, M., 1987, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man (Chicago: Univ. Press).Google Scholar
Taylor, C., 1989, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press).Google Scholar
Taylor, C., 1991, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Wilson, B. (ed.), 1970, Rationality (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).Google Scholar
Zeitlyn, D., 1990, Professor Garfinkel Visits the Soothsayers: Ethnomethodology and Mambila Divination, Man (N.S.) 25, 654–66.Google Scholar