ABSTRACT
In an interesting book published in 2007 under the title of Ethnographic Sorcery, social anthropologist Harry G. West confronts us with a scene from his fieldwork experience in the Mueda plateau of northern Mozambique which induces, for any modern reader, a sense of perplexity. In ‘return’ for the help he had received from the Mozambican Cultural Heritage Archives (ARPAC) while conducting his research, Harry West was asked ‘to give something back to the institution’ (West 2007: 1) by giving a series of presentations that would address the work done by ARPAC’s half-dozen researchers and thus be of interest to them in their continuing professional work. In reviewing their work, West noted that while these researchers ‘had far more ethnographic fieldwork experience than I, none had much formal training in anthropological theory or methodology’. The latter became evident in the fact that while they ‘filled their reports with detailed ethnographic data, they hesitated … to analyze or interpret what their informants told them’ (West 2007: 1-2, emphasis added).
