ABSTRACT

'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.

chapter 1|27 pages

Magical Interpretations and Material Realities

An Introduction 1

chapter 3|21 pages

Cannibal Transformations

Colonialism and Commodification in the Sierra Leone Hinterland

chapter 4|26 pages

Vulture Men, Campus Cultists and Teenaged Witches

Modern Magics in Nigerian Popular Media

chapter 5|21 pages

Witchcraft and Scepticism by Proxy

Pentecostalism and Laughter in Urban Malawi

chapter 6|18 pages

Black Market, Free Market

Anti-Witchcraft Shrines and Fetishes among the Akan 1

chapter 7|24 pages

Betrayal or Affirmation?

Transformations in Witchcraft Technologies of Power, Danger and Agency among the Tuareg of Niger 1

chapter 8|24 pages

Save our Skins

Structural Adjustment, Morality and the Occult in Tanzania

chapter 9|22 pages

Witchcraft in the New South Africa

From Colonial Superstition to Postcolonial Reality? 1

chapter 10|20 pages

On Living in a World with Witches

Everyday Epistemology and Spiritual Insecurity in a Modern African City (Soweto)

chapter 11|21 pages

Witchcraft, Development and Paranoia in Cameroon

Interactions between Popular, Academic and State Discourse