ABSTRACT
Edward Evans-Pritchard's overarching argument in Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande is that the Azande religious belief system is central to establishing and maintaining moral order in the Zandeland region of Southern Sudan. He wished to identify what and whose purposes it served—a functionalist approach that informed the various themes he identified in Witchcraft; this argument itself had important implications for the anthropology of "primitive" peoples. Evans-Pritchard often used the vocabulary of "savages" in his other work, even when he was refuting claims made by others about their nature of mind. He frequently writes as if he considers himself a removed observer, and any reflective consideration of what he might not have noticed or been able to access as a white male Westerner does not appear in the main body of the text. His methodological style—the systematic approach to gathering and analyzing information he employed—preserves the impression of Witchcraft as an authoritative social scientific work.
