ABSTRACT
This chapter contributes to the debates on the role of anthropological expertise in legal practice from the point of view of a lawyer and an anthropologist by focusing on how judges approach fear of witchcraft beliefs and practices in asylum decisions. It does so in two ways: first, by exploring a common range of issues in witchcraft-related violence claims from various jurisdictions, with particular attention to the use (or lack thereof) of anthropological expertise; and second, by making an argument for spaces of knowledge exchange between judges and anthropologists outside the actual decision-making situations of specific cases that are characterized by adversarial relations. To this end we provide insights from our experience of working together in the framework of a judicial training workshop that exemplifies the sort of ‘para-site’ as discussed in the introduction to this volume. 1
