Anaylzing the Ethnography, Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa written by Adam Ashforth

For my ethnography paper, I analyzed Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America by Sabina Magliocco. This book is part of a series among other ethnography books. Witching Culture is an ethnography about a religious movement in North America. This religious movement is Neo-Paganism and witchcraft, which are basically the same thing. In the book, Magliocco describes how anthropology and folklore are important aspects to the religious movement. She explores the different practices and beliefs of modern Pagans, as well as witches. There were three major themes that stood out to me the most. These themes were the nature of religion, the nature of the religious world, and the types of authority in the book.

The books thesis is based on why a person was accused of being a witch and the relative circumstances thereof. Marital status, sex, community standing, wealth, and relationships with others all play an important part of a person chances of being accused of being a witch.

Prior to the fifteenth century, rural European women were highly revered and respected pillars of rural community life; not only considered mothers and wives, but seen as community leaders, physicians, and sources of strength and wisdom. Women had a special and imperative role in rural life, and even those that lived on the fringes of society were well respected as the village healers and wise women. These old women would possess the wisdom of the ages and pass it on to others. This respect for women quickly deteriorated, however, during the witch hunts. The belief spread that women were morally weaker than men and driven by carnal lust, therefore making them more susceptible to being tempted by the Devil, and thus practicing witchcraft. (Levack p. 126) As people took this belief to heart, it is apparent that society would be affected indefinitely by such intolerance.

To completely understand the history of New England witchcraft you have to understand the role of colonial women. The author of this book, Carol Karlsen, used a lot of Secondary and primary sources to support her thesis. She uses first hand accounts of witch

The witchcraft phenomenon of the Renaissance period was shaped by a wide range of cultural factors; witchcraft was not necessarily subject to a single cohesive idea or concept, and it was often instead a conglomeration of many different societal concerns, concerns which spanned through all spheres of society. Textual evidence from this period provides insight into the way in which witches were conceived, and how witches were dealt with, while visual images present a companion visualisation of the tensions, which influenced created the witch, and the imagery, which came to be associated with witchcraft.

This clip examines why the belief in witchcraft continues in part of Ghana. Women no longer considered useful for childbearing or heavy labor are most likely to be accused in this highly patriarchal society. QUESTIONS: 1. What factors promote the belief in witchcraft?

This article is about witchcraft and its different varieties of practices in different cultures. This article explains how witchcraft exists and plays an essential part in structural and functional aspects of a society. It also sheds the light on the journey of witchcraft from being profane and wicked to acceptable part of a culture.

Witchcraft in the 1400s going on to the 1700s gained massive popularity due to several factors. Some of these factors included hallucinogens contained in the “oyl” women used to anoint themselves, manipulating the hysteria and using it as a form of social control to make people conform to the norms of the society and lastly, using it to explain misfortunes that afflicted the people of the community and the neighboring ones.

The difficulty lay with Evans-Pritchard’s initial ethnocentrism in early observations, as there is little familiar cultural context to pull from with regard to the active role of witchcraft in day-to-day life. Evans-Pritchard also notes, “Witchcraft participates in all misfortunes and is the idiom in which Azande speak about them and in which they explain them.”

Thesis statement: Witchcraft was most prominent in the British Isles during the 15th- 16th centuries. Paragraph explanation: Witchcraft can be found all over Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries, so I decided to narrow the scope and focus on the British Isles as I believe it was most prominent in that location (this obviously being my thesis as many people could argue it was much more prominent in other European countries.) Evidence for this can be found in how many documented executions there were (many in the Isles during these specific time- periods) and the fact that laws were even put into place surrounding witchcraft proving that it was a big ‘problem’/ thing in society (even having a list of ‘witch characteristics’ for people to

The history of witchcraft has been a mystery since the Medieval Times. Regardless, witchcraft has been around since the Paleolithic period (“Witchcraft History.”). “Witchcraft originated with the human civilization

According to William A. Haviland, one of the authors of Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge, states that the older the person is in the tribe the greater the chances of being accused as well as being a model of a bad person or failure also increases the chances of being accused of witchcraft. This example shows the “intergenerational hostility” in an ever changing environment, where the youngsters of the tribe are disrespecting and mistreating the elders of the tribe (Haviland, 2008, pg. 330).

The concept of witchcraft and the belief in its existence has existed since the dawn of human history. It has been present or central at various times, and in many diverse forms, among cultures and religions worldwide, including both "primitive" and "highly advanced" cultures, and continues to have an important role in many cultures today.

I don’t know about you, but for me so far, all of our author’s attempts to get an explanation about what witchcraft is has failed. We know that witchcraft is the cause of misfortunes and personal injury sustained by the Azande people through what they believe to be no fault of their own, but I think we have yet to have any understanding of what causes witchcraft itself. Where does it come from, who causes it, and is it in any way like a sort of karma believed to be punishment for bad deeds like in eastern philosophies? I think we need to take a deeper look into witchcraft and what the Azande people are actually talking about, because from what I’ve gathered so far, the Azande believe that witchcraft is an unexplained phenomena of independent events that in no way should have had any reason to take place simultaneously

Witchcraft has become a phenomenon in the last few years, launching TV shows and movies onto the screens of televisions. It has become an inspirational topic for writers to launch their next book. But as entertaining as witchcraft maybe to us, it is feared by the Ibibio tribe in Nigeria. This paper will focus on the different aspects of the witchcraft of the Ibibio tribe including the tribe’s way of detecting, preventing, and the anti-witch hunt that put the tribe in the spotlight. Also, this paper will touch on the causations of the witchcraft epidemic.