Download or read book Witchcraft in Modern African Societies written by Stephan Schuster and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2012-03-02 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject History - Africa, grade: 1, University of Hannover, language: English, abstract: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Problem der Hexerei in modernen Afrikanischen Gesellschaften, auch in Bezug auf die Immunschwäche AIDS.
Download or read book The Power of the Occult in Modern Africa written by James Kiernan and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2006 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The occult is a framework of ideas and related practices that is drawn upon as a common resource to provide an understanding of how an apparently random world 'really' works. Based mainly on experiential research in a range of African societies, the essays in this volume examine the relevance of the occult to a variety of social concepts and contexts. These studies stress three features of the occult in modern Africa: 1) as an explanatory and tactical device, it is resilient; 2) it is malleable, with a capacity to absorb and assimilate new elements; 3) it is flexible and adaptable to emerging situations and novel circumstances. Of interest to specialists in the fields of religion, social science and African studies, this book will benefit the general reader interested in the occult and its relevance to modernity and globalisation.
Download or read book Encounters with Witchcraft written by Norman N. Miller and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encounters with Witchcraft is a personal story of a young man's fascination with African witchcraft discovered first in a trek across East Africa and the Congo. The story unfolds over four decades during the author's long residence in and many trips to Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. As a field researcher he learns from villagers what it is like to live with witches, and how witches are seen through African eyes. His teachers are healers, cult leaders, witch-hunters and self-proclaimed "witches" as well as policemen, politicians and judges. A key figure is Mohammadi Lupanda, a frail village woman whose only child has died years before. In her dreams, however, she believes the little girl is not dead, but only lost in the fields. Mohammadi is discovered wandering at night, wailing and calling out for the child. Her neighbors are terror-stricken and she is quickly brought to a village trial and banished as a witch. The author is able to watch and listen to the proceedings and later investigate the deeper story. He discovers mysteries about Mohammadi that are only solved when he returns to the village three decades later. Today, witch-hunting and witchcraft-related crimes are found in more than seventy developing countries. Epidemics of violence against alleged witches, mainly women, but including elders of both genders, and even children is on the increase in some parts of the world. Witchcraft beliefs may lie behind vigilante murders, political assassinations, revenge killings and commercial murders for human body parts. Through African voices the author addresses key questions. Do witchcraft powers exist? Why does witchcraft persist? What are its historic roots? Why is witchcraft-based violence so often found within families? Does witchcraft serve as a hidden legal and political system, a mafia-like under-government? The author holds up a mirror for us to think about religious beliefs in our own experience that rely heavily on myth and superstition.
Download or read book Witches written by J. Akinyele Omoyajowo and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book African Magic written by Heidi Holland and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Africa's traditional beliefs - including ancestor worship, divination and witchcraft - continue to dominate its spiritual influences. Readers in search of a better understanding of the continent will be enriched by this book's timely exploration of sub-Saharan Africa's natural philosophy. The author's meticulous research reveals that, whereas technology-driven Western societies prefer to rely largely on logical explanations, many Africans continue to obey their intuition - trusting in images, dreams and divination to rationalise misfortune and illness. African Magic explains why so many Africans understand the relationship between people and unfortunate events not through the Western concept of chance in the case of accidents, or germ theory in the case of illness, but through belief in witchcraft. The book records a collection of true stories which illustrate this traditional belief system. Included are the famous Malawian diviner whose prophecies were considered so accurate that people flocked from neighbouring countries to consult him; a group of Western-trained Mozambican psychologists who successfully refined cross-cultural therapy by working with traditional healers to combat post-traumatic stress syndrome among child soldiers; Ghanaian and Zimbabwean 'witches' living in a nightmare world where popular belief becomes their reality; and a Zambian archbishop whose attempt to embrace traditional African beliefs provoked serious conflict within his Christian church.
Download or read book Witches written by J. Akinyele Omoyajowo and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Witches written by Joseph Akinyele Ọmọyajowo and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Perspectives on African Witchcraft written by Mariano Pavanello and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume draws on a range of ethnographic and historical material to provide insight into witchcraft in sub-Saharan Africa. The chapters explore a variety of cultural contexts, with contributions focusing on Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ghana, Mali, Ethiopia and Eritrean diaspora. The book considers the concept of witchcraft itself, the interrelations with religion and medicine, and the theoretical frameworks employed to explain the nature of modern African witchcraft representations.
Download or read book Witches written by Joseph Akinyele Omoyajowo and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Witchcraft Witches and Violence in Ghana written by Mensah Adinkrah and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witchcraft violence is a feature of many contemporary African societies. In Ghana, belief in witchcraft and the malignant activities of putative witches is prevalent. Purported witches are blamed for all manner of adversities including inexplicable illnesses and untimely deaths. As in other historical periods and other societies, in contemporary Ghana, alleged witches are typically female, elderly, poor, and marginalized. Childhood socialization in homes and schools, exposure to mass media, and other institutional mechanisms ensure that witchcraft beliefs are transmitted across generations and entrenched over time. This book provides a detailed account of Ghanaian witchcraft beliefs and practices and their role in fueling violent attacks on alleged witches by aggrieved individuals and vigilante groups.
Download or read book Magical Interpretations Material Realities written by Henrietta L. Moore and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Magical Interpretations, Material Realities brings together many of today's best scholars of contemporary Africa. The theme of "witchcraft" has long been associated with exoticizing portraits of a "traditional" Africa, but this volume takes the question of occult as a point of entry into the moral politics of some very modern African realities.' - James Ferguson, University of California, USA 'These essays bear eloquent testimony to the ongoing presence and power of the occult imaginary, and of the intimate connection between global capitalism and local cosmology, in postcolonial Africa. A major contribution to scholarship that aims to rework the divide between modernity and tradition.' - Charles Piot, Duke University, USA This volume sets out recent thinking on witchcraft in Africa, paying particular attention to variations in meanings and practices. It examines the way different people in different contexts are making sense of what 'witchcraft' is and what it might mean. Using recent ethnographic materials from across the continent, the volume explores how witchcraft articulates with particular modern settings for example: the State in Cameroon; Pentecostalism in Malawi; the university system in Nigeria and the IMF in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. The editors provide a timely overview and reconsideration of long-standing anthropological debates about 'African witchcraft', while simultaneously raising broader concerns about the theories of the western social sciences.
Download or read book Witches written by J. A. Omoyajowo and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pentecostalism and Witchcraft written by Knut Rio and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-29 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book presents fresh ethnographic work from the regions of Africa and Melanesia—where the popularity of charismatic Christianity can be linked to a revival and transformation of witchcraft. The volume demonstrates how the Holy Spirit has become an adversary to the reconfirmed presence of witches, demons, and sorcerers as manifestations of evil. We learn how this is articulated in spiritual warfare, in crusades, and in healing or witch-killing raids. The contributors highlight what happens to phenomena that people address as locally specific witchcraft or sorcery when re-molded within the universalist Pentecostal demonology, vocabulary, and confrontational methodology.
Download or read book Studies in Witchcraft Magic War and Peace in Africa written by Beatrice Nicolini and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays offers opportunities towards a better understanding of African societies and their historical role in numerous political and military conflicts, and also within peace-building processes. This book broadens the focus from invocations of the supernatural in military and political mobilizations to rituals of healing in post-conflict societies.
Download or read book Debating Witchcraft in Africa The Magritte Effect written by Péclard, Didier and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the circularity of the witchcraft complex in Africa, given its performative potential, isn’t the flood of anthropological publications on the topic counter-productive insofar as it feeds what it pretends to analyse, and even stigmatize? Wouldn’t the social scientists be well advised not to emulate the media and the Evangelical preachers and to avoid bestowing on Africa the dubious privilege of being no more than a shadow theatre devoid of substance on the stage of which everything – power, work, production, economy, the family – would actually be played in the occult? In this publication, eight scholars – namely: Jean-Pierre Warnier, Didier Péclard, Julien Bonhomme, Patrice Yengo, Jane Guyer, Joseph Tonda, Francis Nyamnjoh and Peter Geschiere – engage in a lively and contradictory debate on witchcraft/sorcery in Africa in a controversial historical context.
Download or read book African Religions written by Jacob K. Olupona and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.
Download or read book Witchcraft Power and Politics written by Isak Niehaus and published by Pluto Press. This book was released on 2001-05-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an extraordinary contemporary account of witchcraft and witch-hunting in the modern world. A powerful ethnographic study of witch-hunting in 1980s South Africa – a period of rapid social change – this book demonstrates the extent to which witchcraft must be seen, not as a residue of ‘traditional’ culture but as part of a complex social drama which is deeply embedded in contemporary political and economic processes. Isak Niehaus provides the context for this fascinating study of witchcraft practices. He shows how witchcraft was politicised against the backdrop of the apartheid state, the liberation struggle and the establishment of the first post-apartheid regime, which all affected conceptions of witchcraft. Niehaus demonstrates how the ANC and other political groups used witchcraft beliefs to further their own agenda. He explores the increasingly conservative role of the chiefs and the Christian church. In the process, he reveals the fraught nature of intergenerational and gender relations. The result is a truly insightful and theoretically engaged account of a much-studied but frequently misunderstood practice.
