Description
Book SynopsisA fascinating study of witchcraft in contemporary South Africa
Trade Review'Profound and often painful insights into the transformations that have taken place in South Africa' -- Times Literary Supplement
'Demonstrates that the recent changes in witchcraft beliefs and persecutions are closely related to those conditions which have exacerbated the misery and poverty of rural Africans in this region' -- Anthrops - International review of anthropology and linguistics.
'An important contribution to the study of contemporary witchcraft in South America.' -- Anthropology in Action
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Notes on terminology
1. Introduction: Exploring Witchcraft, Power and Politics
2. Society, Cosmology and the Making of Witchcraft: Continuity and Change in the History of Green
Valley, 1864-1995
3. Witches of the Lowveld and Their Familiars: Conceptions of Duality, Power and Desire
4. Witchcraft and Whites: Further Notes on the Symbolic Constitution of Occult Power
5. Witches, Cognates, Affines and Neighbours: The Distribution of Witchcraft Accusations, 1960-1995
6. ‘A Witch Has No Horn’: Social Tensions in the Subjective Reality of Witchcraft
7. Witch-Hunting and Political Legitimacy: Chiefs, Comrades and the Elimination of Evil, 1930-1990
8. The ANC's Dilemma: The Symbolic Politics of Four Witch-Hunts in the 1990s
9. Conclusions: Witchcraft and the Postcolonial State
Appendices
Notes
References
Index
