Description
Book SynopsisWitch Camps and Witchcraft Discourse in Africa: Critiquing Development Practice explores how local development interventions related to witchcraft in Africa intersect and conflict with globally accepted development practices. This book argues that development practitioners need to pay attention to what concepts like “witchcraft” and “occult” mean to local people, and provides a nuanced account of how different development actors conceptualize and approach development in Africa through communities of refuge. Matthew Mabefam invites development practitioners to be open to culturally sensitive solutions to social inequalities, rather than dismissing them and acting in ways that may further aggravate the challenges faced by individuals accused of witchcraft. The foundational knowledge for the book is derived from ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in Gnani in Northern Ghana—a rural community that provides refuge for people who have been banished from their communities—and is deeply informed by the author’s experiences of growing up and working within refuge communities in Ghana. This book contributes to the decolonization of development epistemes, knowledge, and practices, and contributes to a better understanding of the limits of the neo-liberal paradigm of socio-economic development that has dominated the direction of development policy.
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: ‘Witches Are Falling From The Sky’: Problematising Witchcraft Beliefs and Practices In Africa
Chapter 1: Who is a Witch? Judgement, Facts, Truths and Knowledge
Chapter 2: After Judgment: Experiences of Navigating Life in Communities of Refuge
Chapter 3: Limitless Opportunities for Wealth? Witchcraft/Occult as a Strategy for (In)Equality and Economic (Dis) Empowerment
Chapter 4: Intervening in ‘Witch Camps’: A Contestation and Controversy
Conclusion: Decolonisation of Development Epistemes, Knowledge, and Practices
Glossary
Bibliography
About the Author
