Chapter 9: The Discourse of �Ritual Murder� (original) (raw)

Abstract

In re-engaging the classic theme of sorcery and witchcraft in African anthropology, it is asserted that something new is happening in terms of the manifestation and magnitude of the phenomena that are commonly included in these notions. 1 Geschiere, for one, claims that 'nearly everywhere on the continent the state and politics seem to be true breeding grounds for modern transformations of witchcraft and sorcery' (1999: 6). And Jean and John Comaroff (1999) speak of escalations of what they label 'occult economies' in postapartheid South Africa, escalations they also trace in other parts of the world, including the West and the post-communist East. Although the intensity and public character of what seems to be going on in various parts of Africa apparently resemble the witch-hunting that took place during the colonial era, it has been argued that 'witchcraft' in post-colonial times is situated in a new kind of context that transforms it into something else. The Comaroffs, for example, maintain that '[i]n its late twentieth-century guise … witchcraft is a finely calibrated gauge of the impact of global culture and economic forces in local relations' (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993: xxviii-xxix). And Geschiere (1999: 214) enquires 'why there is such a strong tendency in many parts of post-colonial Africa to interpret modern processes of change in terms of "witchcraft"'. He argues that 'the paradoxical combination between, on the one hand, "globalization" with its connotations of open-endedness and unboundedness, and, on the other, "identity" seems to require definition and clarification that can help us to understand why "witchcraft" or related moral concerns play such a prominent part in people's perception of modernity' (ibid.: 216). These statements are thought-provoking when addressing such a case as the present one: the heightening concern amongst people in Botswana about what is conceived as 'ritual murder'. Generalising notions of 'globalisation' and 'modernity' raise, however, a number of theoretical difficulties, amongst others because of their lack of analytical distinction. Case studies help to overcome some of these difficulties, as they speak more specifically about these notions

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