ABSTRACT
Decades ago the British social anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard (1902–1973) studied witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande. He pointed out how the Azande explained unfortunate events by witchcraft, how they consulted oracles for identifying the culprit, and how they applied magic in defence of spiritual attacks. Evans-Pritchard left no doubt that he regarded the entire system as unreasonable: ‘Witches, as the Azande conceive them, clearly cannot exist’ (1976, 18). How did Evans-Pritchard know that witches cannot exist? How did he know that the reasons they gave are mystical and therefore invalid? Was Evans-Pritchard right or wrong in depicting Zande witchcraft as unreasonable? Agreement or disagreement with his interpretation depends on how Zande witchcraft is understood in Western terms. Evans-Pritchard was well aware of the complexities of this task. Is there anything similar to traditional witchcraft in contemporary Western culture? In a lecture on the BBC in the winter of 1950 he told listeners, that: ‘I think that I gained some understanding of communist Russia by studying witchcraft among the Azande’ (1951, 129). For Evans-Pritchard, witchcraft among the Azande was analogous to notions of conspiracy commonly found in twentieth-century European political history If this instance of ‘cultural translation’ is correct, then Evans-Pritchard has a strong argument for labelling witchcraft among the Azande as unreasonable. How could an enlightened scholar fight against conspiracy theories in Europe if he would regard witchcraft in Africa as reasonable?
