Basu, H. & Sax, W. (Eds.), Law of Possession: Ritual, Healing, and the Secular State (pp. 55-81). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015
In large parts of Africa and elsewhere in the world, local conceptions of witchcraft and allegedl... more In large parts of Africa and elsewhere in the world, local conceptions of witchcraft and allegedly related criminal activities represent an enduring challenge to state jurisdiction. On-going discussions on the inclusion or disregard of witchcraft legislation in the sphere of national law lead to a wider question of not only the state’s position towards local cosmologies but also the location of such cosmologies within globalized discourses regarding modernity. This article outlines the central relevance of spirits within governmental and non-governmental approaches to resolving public debates around witchcraft in legal, social, and medical terms. Within an essentially pluralistic system of law, the interaction between state law and allegedly ‘traditional’, local procedures of maintaining justice will also be in the focus of investigation, thus illuminating the troubled relationship between spirit agency, ritual healing, and jurisdiction. In conclusion, I argue that current African debates on how to deal with witchcraft accusations on a national level echo the dichotomy between classical modernization theory and the notion of multiple modernities – with witchcraft legislation being increasingly recognized as a feature of the latter. On the ground, the inconsistencies between the two tiers of local legislation – national versus customary – are used by certain law officials (in this case, a local judge) against law-makers (i.e. the state) in order to push for a de facto culpability of the materially invisible, thereby marking issues of witchcraft as a focal point in redefining the modern African state.
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Due to the specific histories of their colonial and post-independence experience, African societies offer a particularly broad array of insights into social processes of juxtaposition, opposition, even outright competition between different postulated authorities. The contributions to the present volume explore the variety of ways in which authority is contested in Southern and Eastern Africa, investigating localized discourses on which institution, what kind of knowledge, or whose expertise is accepted as authoritative, thus highlighting the specificities and pluralities in ‘modern’ societies. This edited volume engages with larger theoretical questions regarding power and authority in the context of (post)colonial states, (neo)traditional authority, claiming space, conflict and (in)justice, and contestations of knowledge. It offers in-depth critical analyses of ethnographic data that put contemporary African phenomena on equal footing with current controversies in North America, Europe, and other global settings.
Based on long-term ethnographic field research carried out in southern Malawi between 2009 and 2020, this chapter zooms in on the complex interconnections between material wealth, cosmological context, and discourses on morality through a postmodern, post-secular lens. It proposes that any apriori conception of economic activity as inherently rational in a market-economic sense – be it in Africa or elsewhere – runs the risk of falling victim to a modernist and, therefore, ideological fallacy of its own making. Accordingly, this chapter aims at challenging (post)colonial narratives of economy as beyond the realm of cosmological systems of knowledge – an effort that, at the same time, proposes reconsidering the place of anthropological knowledge within local, international, and transnational processes of economic transformation.
This chapter investigates different types of authority in Malawi through a post-Weberian lens, challenging normative assumptions of a socio-political universe entrenched in a framework of absolute cosmic binaries of good versus evil. In critical application of Weber’s tripartite definition of authority (Herrschaft), it demonstrates the crucial analytical limitations of concepts such as charisma in conceptualizing the moral ambiguities associated with power and authority in Malawi. Based on ethnographic data, the chapter invites for a multi-faceted and, indeed, a-moral interpretation of Malawian concepts of power (mphamvu) that, in response to its deeply cosmological local conception, extends beyond oversimplified etic dichotomies of normative benevolent power and reprehensible oppression.
With the numerous and obvious challenges – be they social, political, or more epistemological in nature – it entails, this perspective serves as the logical launchpad for taking a fresh, ethnographically informed, and theoretically inclined look at authority. For anthropologists, the juxtaposition, opposition, even outright competition between different postulated authorities is decidedly familiar territory that, at the same time, still warrants further in-depth analysis for these territories to be located on the global roadmaps of larger theoretical discussions.
All these classificatory models give telling evidence not only of the simultaneous coexistence of different concepts of the person in a given society but also of the considerable relevance of such concepts within the therapeutic process.Focusing on recent transformations in local discourses on mental health, this paper seeks to demonstrate the necessity to distinguish between two levels of analysis, namely that of the concept of the person on the one hand—and, underneath it, that of alternative systems of values. In so doing, it concludes that the relevance of religion as a vast body of ideas through which mental disorder may be addressed has proven remarkably resilient to global processes of modernization.
Conceptualizations of mental health and illness, or normality versus abnormality, are complicated in a number of ways. They are bedeviled by historical processes of medicalization and the diversification of the psychiatric field into biological, phenomenological, psychoanalytic and cultural approaches—to name just the most common and broad orientations. They are laden by the longue durée of psychiatric institutions that were established under colonial rule in Asia, Africa and other colonized parts of the world and by the contemporary global flows of psychiatric knowledge merging with the neurosciences. Conceptualizations of mental health are inflected by the specificity and diversity of cultural constructions of body and mind and by the normative moral standards of behavior embedded in the social, political and economic situations that frame the lives of selves and collectivities. And, lastly, they are strained by the emergent topicality of the relationship between religion and psychiatry.
While the relationships between the religious and the political spheres figure importantly, issues pertaining to psychiatry are rarely addressed in these debates. The proliferation of a medical sphere of psychiatry distinct from religion and religious healing, however, was of central significance in forming notions of the “normal”, “modern” individual or self and in developing instruments for measuring and controlling its behavior.
Der vorliegende Beitrag greift dieses Spannungsverhältnis auf und widmet sich dabei zunächst der Fragestellung, wie die therapeutische Kompetenz der Psychiatrie im sozialen Kontext einer spezifischen Region des südlichen Afrika im Vergleich zu lokalen Medizinkonzepten gesellschaftlich wahrgenommen wird. Im Anschluss daran wird bestimmt, welche Rolle hierbei die spezifische konzeptuelle Verbindung zwischen Heilertum und psychischer Erkrankung in diesem Teil Afrikas einnimmt. Die abschließende Diskussion verweist auf die soziokulturelle Dimension der Kommunikation zwischen lokalen und globalen Konzepten von psychischer Gesundheit sowie auf die Chancen einer Einbeziehung kosmologischer Ressourcen in die transkulturelle psychiatrische Praxis.
Insbesondere in Hinblick auf die Behandlung psychischer Gesundheitsbeschwerden ist das Vertrauen der lokalen Bevölkerung in das staatliche Medizinsystem begrenzt. Das Gros der betroffenen Personen wendet sich zur Primärversorgung alternativen Gesundheitsanbietern zu, wobei so genannte traditionelle Heiler (asing'anga) ebenso eine Rolle spielen wie andere kosmologische Heilungsmodelle, die von christlichen oder muslimischen Gemeinden angeboten werden. Die Ursachen für die offensichtlich geringe Wirkmacht psychiatrischer Erklärungs- und Therapiekonzepte in Malawi sind hierbei zwar zum Teil infrastruktureller Natur - gleichzeitig aber greifen Analysen zu kurz, die den Umstand nur anhand der lokalen Verfügbarkeit und Erreichbarkeit von psychiatrischen Diensten zu erklären versuchen. Vielmehr spielen darüber hinaus insbesondere kulturelle Faktoren eine entscheidende Rolle bei der lokalen Bewertung therapeutischer Effizienz und rücken dadurch in den Fokus transkultureller Betrachtung.
The specific background of the context of mental disorder and magic, though, leads to more general considerations on the cultural perception of legitimate and illegitimate use of magic and power likewise, which proves to be more sophisticated than the apparent dichotomy of 'good' (matsenga) and 'evil' magic (ufiti) might suggest. This article means to make a contribution to the common ground of the anthropological fields of medicine and religion by investigating the relevance of magic practices on cultural explanations of mental disorder in Southern Malawi. After providing a brief overview on this connection, it endeavours to give a deeper insight into a specific set of magic beliefs, offering reflections on their general impact on society in Southern Malawi.
Due to the specific histories of their colonial and post-independence experience, African societies offer a particularly broad array of insights into social processes of juxtaposition, opposition, even outright competition between different postulated authorities. The contributions to the present volume explore the variety of ways in which authority is contested in Southern and Eastern Africa, investigating localized discourses on which institution, what kind of knowledge, or whose expertise is accepted as authoritative, thus highlighting the specificities and pluralities in ‘modern’ societies. This edited volume engages with larger theoretical questions regarding power and authority in the context of (post)colonial states, (neo)traditional authority, claiming space, conflict and (in)justice, and contestations of knowledge. It offers in-depth critical analyses of ethnographic data that put contemporary African phenomena on equal footing with current controversies in North America, Europe, and other global settings.
Based on long-term ethnographic field research carried out in southern Malawi between 2009 and 2020, this chapter zooms in on the complex interconnections between material wealth, cosmological context, and discourses on morality through a postmodern, post-secular lens. It proposes that any apriori conception of economic activity as inherently rational in a market-economic sense – be it in Africa or elsewhere – runs the risk of falling victim to a modernist and, therefore, ideological fallacy of its own making. Accordingly, this chapter aims at challenging (post)colonial narratives of economy as beyond the realm of cosmological systems of knowledge – an effort that, at the same time, proposes reconsidering the place of anthropological knowledge within local, international, and transnational processes of economic transformation.
This chapter investigates different types of authority in Malawi through a post-Weberian lens, challenging normative assumptions of a socio-political universe entrenched in a framework of absolute cosmic binaries of good versus evil. In critical application of Weber’s tripartite definition of authority (Herrschaft), it demonstrates the crucial analytical limitations of concepts such as charisma in conceptualizing the moral ambiguities associated with power and authority in Malawi. Based on ethnographic data, the chapter invites for a multi-faceted and, indeed, a-moral interpretation of Malawian concepts of power (mphamvu) that, in response to its deeply cosmological local conception, extends beyond oversimplified etic dichotomies of normative benevolent power and reprehensible oppression.
With the numerous and obvious challenges – be they social, political, or more epistemological in nature – it entails, this perspective serves as the logical launchpad for taking a fresh, ethnographically informed, and theoretically inclined look at authority. For anthropologists, the juxtaposition, opposition, even outright competition between different postulated authorities is decidedly familiar territory that, at the same time, still warrants further in-depth analysis for these territories to be located on the global roadmaps of larger theoretical discussions.
All these classificatory models give telling evidence not only of the simultaneous coexistence of different concepts of the person in a given society but also of the considerable relevance of such concepts within the therapeutic process.Focusing on recent transformations in local discourses on mental health, this paper seeks to demonstrate the necessity to distinguish between two levels of analysis, namely that of the concept of the person on the one hand—and, underneath it, that of alternative systems of values. In so doing, it concludes that the relevance of religion as a vast body of ideas through which mental disorder may be addressed has proven remarkably resilient to global processes of modernization.
Conceptualizations of mental health and illness, or normality versus abnormality, are complicated in a number of ways. They are bedeviled by historical processes of medicalization and the diversification of the psychiatric field into biological, phenomenological, psychoanalytic and cultural approaches—to name just the most common and broad orientations. They are laden by the longue durée of psychiatric institutions that were established under colonial rule in Asia, Africa and other colonized parts of the world and by the contemporary global flows of psychiatric knowledge merging with the neurosciences. Conceptualizations of mental health are inflected by the specificity and diversity of cultural constructions of body and mind and by the normative moral standards of behavior embedded in the social, political and economic situations that frame the lives of selves and collectivities. And, lastly, they are strained by the emergent topicality of the relationship between religion and psychiatry.
While the relationships between the religious and the political spheres figure importantly, issues pertaining to psychiatry are rarely addressed in these debates. The proliferation of a medical sphere of psychiatry distinct from religion and religious healing, however, was of central significance in forming notions of the “normal”, “modern” individual or self and in developing instruments for measuring and controlling its behavior.
Der vorliegende Beitrag greift dieses Spannungsverhältnis auf und widmet sich dabei zunächst der Fragestellung, wie die therapeutische Kompetenz der Psychiatrie im sozialen Kontext einer spezifischen Region des südlichen Afrika im Vergleich zu lokalen Medizinkonzepten gesellschaftlich wahrgenommen wird. Im Anschluss daran wird bestimmt, welche Rolle hierbei die spezifische konzeptuelle Verbindung zwischen Heilertum und psychischer Erkrankung in diesem Teil Afrikas einnimmt. Die abschließende Diskussion verweist auf die soziokulturelle Dimension der Kommunikation zwischen lokalen und globalen Konzepten von psychischer Gesundheit sowie auf die Chancen einer Einbeziehung kosmologischer Ressourcen in die transkulturelle psychiatrische Praxis.
Insbesondere in Hinblick auf die Behandlung psychischer Gesundheitsbeschwerden ist das Vertrauen der lokalen Bevölkerung in das staatliche Medizinsystem begrenzt. Das Gros der betroffenen Personen wendet sich zur Primärversorgung alternativen Gesundheitsanbietern zu, wobei so genannte traditionelle Heiler (asing'anga) ebenso eine Rolle spielen wie andere kosmologische Heilungsmodelle, die von christlichen oder muslimischen Gemeinden angeboten werden. Die Ursachen für die offensichtlich geringe Wirkmacht psychiatrischer Erklärungs- und Therapiekonzepte in Malawi sind hierbei zwar zum Teil infrastruktureller Natur - gleichzeitig aber greifen Analysen zu kurz, die den Umstand nur anhand der lokalen Verfügbarkeit und Erreichbarkeit von psychiatrischen Diensten zu erklären versuchen. Vielmehr spielen darüber hinaus insbesondere kulturelle Faktoren eine entscheidende Rolle bei der lokalen Bewertung therapeutischer Effizienz und rücken dadurch in den Fokus transkultureller Betrachtung.
The specific background of the context of mental disorder and magic, though, leads to more general considerations on the cultural perception of legitimate and illegitimate use of magic and power likewise, which proves to be more sophisticated than the apparent dichotomy of 'good' (matsenga) and 'evil' magic (ufiti) might suggest. This article means to make a contribution to the common ground of the anthropological fields of medicine and religion by investigating the relevance of magic practices on cultural explanations of mental disorder in Southern Malawi. After providing a brief overview on this connection, it endeavours to give a deeper insight into a specific set of magic beliefs, offering reflections on their general impact on society in Southern Malawi.