ABSTRACT

Perspectivism is a term coined to describe an Amazonian philosophy comparable with cultural relativism, the view that values are best understood within their own cultural context. The term "multiple ontologies" is the idea that there are many ways to experience reality, each equally "real" to the participants. As anthropologists seek to understand the lived experience of ritual and the pragmatic navigation of illness and misfortune, phenomenology has enjoyed a comeback in medical anthropology. The anthropology of knowledge and perception remains vibrant in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Oxford University, an institution associated with Evans-Pritchard, where Elisabeth Hsu works on the epistemology of healing in China. In today's increasingly globalized world, Witchcraft captures an African society before it changed beyond recognition because of a different kind of connection: colonialism. Today it is read as much for its silences-what it does not say-as for what it does.