Ethnographic Sorcery

Harry G. West

University of Chicago Press, Sep 15, 2008 - Social Science - 128 pages

According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery—for many of them, West’s efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In Ethnographic Sorcery, West explores the fascinating issues provoked by this equation.

A key theme of West’s research into sorcery is that one sorcerer’s claims can be challenged or reversed by other sorcerers. After West’s attempt to construct a metaphorical interpretation of Muedan assertions that the lions prowling their villages are fabricated by sorcerers is disputed by his Muedan research collaborators, West realized that ethnography and sorcery indeed have much in common. Rather than abandoning ethnography, West draws inspiration from this connection, arguing that anthropologists, along with the people they study, can scarcely avoid interpreting the world they inhabit, and that we are all, inescapably, ethnographic sorcerers.

Contents

• Misunderstanding: 1
• In Search of the ForwardLooking Peasant: 6
• This Must Be Studied Scientifically: 12
• Belief as Metaphor: 19
• The Problem May Lie There: 26
• Whose Metaphors?: 35
• Powers of Perspective and Persuasion: 39
• Making Meaning Making the World: 45
• Masked and Dangerous: 49
• Articulated Visions: 55
• Bridging Domains: 61
• Working with Indeterminacy: 65
• Doctors Kalamatatu: 71
• Ethnographic Sorcery: 77
• Circular Arguments: 86
• Notes: 95
• References: 111
• Index: 129

About the author

Harry G. West is lecturer in social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and the author of Kupilikula: Governance and the Invisible Realm in Mueda, Mozambique, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Ethnographic Sorcery
• Author: Harry G. West
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2008
• ISBN: 0226894126, 9780226894126
• Length: 128 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social; Social Science / Anthropology / General; Social Science / General