Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Trust: Africa in Comparison
✍️ Geschiere, PeterCurrently unavailable
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Peter Geschiere's groundbreaking work redefines our understanding of witchcraft, presenting it not merely as a supernatural phenomenon but as a profound lens into the complexities of human relationships. He masterfully demonstrates how accusations and fears of witchcraft often stem from and highlight deep-seated anxieties surrounding intimacy, betrayal, and the fragile bonds of trust. Beginning with African contexts, particularly the Maka people, Geschiere expands his comparative analysis globally, revealing how diverse cultures grapple with the potential for malevolence within their closest social circles, ultimately offering a startling new perspective on the nature of intimacy itself.
Praise for this book
“Witchcraft--as a theme--always risks carrying a sort of pejorative or even racist undercurrent of meaning: it cannot help but evoke the backward, the irrational, the pre-political. This began to change in the 1990s, owing in large part to the work of Peter Geschiere, whose book The Modernity of Witchcraft showed that concepts of the occult are dynamic and changing instead of static and timeless, and that they bear…”
📝 Description: Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Trust: Africa in Comparison
📑 What's inside
- Prologue
- Issues
- Chapters
- Chapter 1
- Introduction: The Dangers of Home--Ethnographical and Conceptual Explorations
- Witchcraft: The pitfalls of a notion
- Academic discourse and the dangers of a panacea notion
- Witchcraft and the dangers within
- Continuity and new beginnings
- Intimacy and the uncanny
- The struggle over trust
- Chapter 2
- Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Changing Perceptions of Distance: African Examples
- Changing parameters of intimacy and distance
- An urban elite attacked by witchcraft
- Urban witchcraft attacks the village
- Witchcraft brings the village to the city
- Witchcraft, distance, and the post-cold war crisis
- Feymen and their magic money: Beyond kinship?
- "Bushfallers," transcontinental migration, and the stretching of kinship/witchcraft
- Intimacy and new distances
- Chapter 3
- To Trust a Witch
- Trust: Rational, ontological, or historical?
- Trust and doubt: The recourse to the
- nganga (healer)
- Ambiguities of the
- ngangaModern
- nganga and the fear of charlatans
- A new solution: God's work as the basis for ultimate trust
- Everyday ways of coping
- Chapter 4
- Comparative Perspectives I: Witches, Neighbors, and the Closure of "the House" in Europe
- Historians and anthropologists on witchcraft: Rapprochements and distancing
- Witchcraft and state formation: Europe and Africa
- Witchcraft, proximity, and kinship in early modern Europe
- An African reading
- The dangers of intimacy: Neighbors or family?
💎 Expert review
📖 Why choose it
Why this book is worth reading
Readers fascinated by the psychological underpinnings of social bonds will find profound value in Geschiere’s analysis. This book is essential for those interested in how fear operates within close-knit communities, offering a startling perspective on intimacy itself. It appeals to scholars and laypeople alike who seek to understand the brutal mirror of witchcraft as a reflection of our deepest fears regarding trust and betrayal. By expanding from African contexts like the Maka people to a global comparison, the text provides a nuanced lens for viewing human relationships through the prism of anxiety and potential malevolence.
⭐ Reader reviews
Reader rating
Geschiere offers a groundbreaking redefinition of witchcraft, moving it away from mere supernaturalism toward a lens on human complexity. The comparative approach is rigorous and insightful, revealing universal anxieties about intimacy. However, readers seeking traditional occult practices or magical rituals will find this text entirely unsuited to their needs. It is an academic exploration of social dynamics rather than a guide to esoteric practice. Those expecting mystical instruction may feel alienated by the sociological focus on trust and betrayal. It is best suited for those willing to engage with dense theoretical frameworks about the fragile bonds of human connection.
❓ Frequently asked questions
📖 Who should read this
If you're fascinated by the intersection of anthropology, social dynamics, and the hidden currents of human trust, this book is for you. Readers interested in how cultural beliefs shape our deepest relationships and the dark undercurrents of intimacy will find Geschiere's insights profoundly unsettling and illuminating.
🎯 Key themes and symbolism
Witchcraft and Betrayal
This book delves into how witchcraft beliefs across various cultures provide a framework for understanding and articulating the profound fear of betrayal, especially within intimate relationships. It explores how the potential for malevolent action from those closest to us becomes a central, terrifying aspect of human social dynamics.
Global Intimacies Compared
Geschiere doesn't confine his study to a single region; instead, he meticulously draws parallels and contrasts in witchcraft perceptions from Africa to Europe, Brazil, and Oceania. This comparative approach illuminates universal patterns in how societies conceive of trust, suspicion, and the breaking of social bonds.
Redefining Social Trust
By examining the role of witchcraft in diverse societies, the author challenges conventional notions of intimacy. He argues that these beliefs powerfully expose the inherent vulnerabilities and potential for aggression lurking even within our most cherished connections, offering a darker, yet arguably more realistic, view of human interdependence.
📜 Historical context
📚 Glossary
- Witchcraft (Social Context)
- Intimate Aggression
- Comparative Anthropology
📔 Questions to reflect on
- How do your own cultural narratives or personal experiences shape your understanding of trust and betrayal within intimate relationships?
- Consider the concept of 'witchcraft of the house.' What modern anxieties or fears might manifest in a similar way within contemporary social structures?
- If intimacy inherently carries the potential for ultimate aggression, how does this perspective alter your view of forming and maintaining close bonds?
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🏛 Books from this publisher University of Chicago Press
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