Power and Social Struggles through Magic/Witchcraft - Essay Example

? Power and Social Struggles through Magic/Witchcraft Kapferer (2002) quoted Geertz, who described anthropologists as “merchants of the strange,” and the former agreed because “[m]agic, sorcery and witchcraft are at the epistemological centre of anthropology,” and “magic and sorcery fill this bill of trade” of the strange (1-2). Anthropologists, nevertheless, are careful in examining magic and witchcraft, as they aim to depart from exoticism1 and Orientalism (Kapferer, 2001: 2). Shanafelt (2004) asserted that “witchcraft and sorcery are best seen as occupying their own space;” they have their own experiences, conditions, and conceptualisations (329). Kapferer (2002) and Ciekawy (1998) considered the performance of magic in relation to social and political conditions and struggles. This essay answers the research question: What does magic or witchcraft allow people to do and say about their changing politico-economic relations? It explores the question from the side of witches/magicians/sorcerers and those who aim to control or eradicate them, using Ciekawy’s notion of five technologies of power. Magic and witchcraft have been a way of expressing, possessing and maintaining power in colonial and postcolonial times Before this essay proceeds to supporting its main argument, it will define first what magic and witchcraft mean. Magic and witchcraft have numerous, sometimes conflicting, definitions, depending on the epistemological and ontological views of the scholars and the people being interviewed. Since the seminal work of Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937), modern anthropology has continued to explore the ontological, epistemological and methodological issues of examining and describing witchcraft and sorcery (Shanafelt, 2004). Evans-Pritchard argued that Azande magic and witchcraft are different from the European definition of witchcraft. Ciekawy (1998) defined witchcraft in relation to producing harmful magic (122), although good witches or healers are included, who are called aganga (123). As in other cultures, the good healers/witches/sorcerers counter and fight off the curses/magic of the bad. Shanafelt (2004) provided a broader definition that combined magic and miracle into the term “marvel,” where it means that it can “specify any event or effect of extraordinary wonder, thought to be tangibly real, that is claimed to be the result of ultranatural force” (336). This essay embraces a holistic understanding of magic and witchcraft as events or effects that practitioners and believers believe to be real and to come from supernatural forces. People use witchcraft to influence state formation. In “Witchcraft in Statecraft: Five Technologies of Power in Colonial and Postcolonial Coastal Kenya,” Ciekawy (1998) examined the relationship between witchcraft and statecraft in coastal Kenya from the end of the 1950s to the beginning of the 1990s.2 She learned that speakers of the language of Kimijikenda employed the Kimijikenda word utsai when talking about magic. The chiefs and officials of Mijikenda, Mijekenda people who speak English well, and many who see themselves as Christians refer to utsai as witchcraft instead (Ciekawy, 1998: 120). Ciekawy (1998) proposed that there are five basic practices, which she labelled as “witchcraft technologies of power” (120). She believed that they are applicable to state formation processes in other colonial and postcolonial African societies, and that they can be used to describe and analyse the processes of forming new kinds of magic and the occult. The technologies of power are: 1) the implementation of state legal instruments that define rituals as witchcraft and to prosecute “witches,” 2) the policing of witchcraft rituals, 3) colonial, European, and Christian discourse produce ideas and actions of “mystical harm,” which combines with magic/witchcraft discourses, 4) the making of communal moral discourses among the people about the “problem of witchcraft,” and 5) the naming and marginalising of some community members as witches (Ciekawy, 1998: 120). Ciekawy (1998), after interviewing people who practice and believe in utsai, define it as “a discourse on harmful magic that is created and operates within social and political settings that are largely under the control of Mijikenda who use them,” and that they are “without primary influence from state agents or the sponsorship of state institutions” (121). She noted that the development of utsai coincided with the entry of Christianity and the implementation of colonial state power and their legal institutions and apparatuses. Ciekawy (1998) argued that the discourse of utsai signifies inequality and exploitation, as one person desires control over another’s financial, social and/or emotional status (123). On the one hand, the analysis seems to verge on the personal, such as when disagreements occur between two people, which lead one to use utsai against the other. On the other hand, the collectivist implications of magic cannot be overlooked, as marginalised groups use magic to assert their social and cultural identities and powers. This paper expounds each of these technologies of power, where the first pertains to the state imposition of state legal apparatuses that define and persecute witches. In “Witch-Hunting and Political Legitimacy: Continuity and Change in Green Valley, Lebowa, 1930-91,” Niehaus (1993) studied the involvement of Lebowan3 Chiefs and other political leaders in the execution of witches during the 1980s. Findings showed that the income, gender and age of those who were executed indicated their social marginalisation. The accused were believed to be immoral too.4 Niehaus (1993) concluded that the state uses its apparatuses to persecute witches so that they can be legitimised as authorities of morality and social conduct. For those non-state actors who accuse others of being witches, they have various motives, including envy, greed and moral impositions (Niehaus, 1993: 527). Persecution has become an empowering process for state and non-state power brokers and disempowering to those already marginalised, or those who are judged as departing from social norms and values. As for the Kenyans whom Ciekawy (1998) studied, the Mijikenda use the term mutsai (pl. atsai) to pertain to the ritual specialist who performs utsai magic and his/her customers (Ciekawy, 1998: 124). Ciekawy (1998) described that colonial and postcolonial Kenyan states have been interested in controlling religious discourse for their social and political purposes. They concentrated on the restrictions and influence on rituals and its practitioners (Ciekawy, 1998: 126). Aganga perform many of the rituals that resolve or understand problems that supernatural forces produce, and they use utsai to further preserve the health of people, clans and communities (Ciekawy, 1998: 126). These rituals are composed of a system of healing called uganga wa kuvoyera, which locates information about missing property, theft and the identity of a mutsai (Ciekawy, 1998: 126). Since these rituals can be influential social and political resources, people in power, such as politicians, administrators, religious leaders and commoners,5 struggle with one another to control its ideas and practices (Ciekawy, 1998: 126). Ciekawy (1998) narrated that since the 1920s, administrative people used legal ways to assist them in controlling uganga and utsai discourse, especially when one of the powerful oppositions, the Giriama War of 1914, was begun by a medicine woman from the Giriama people, called Mektalili (126).6 Laws are then made to control utsai. The Witchcraft Act (Cap. 67) of Kenya, enacted in 1925, served as one of the first laws that sought to control African magic discourse (Ciekawy, 1998: 126). It was amended in 1962, but continued to be applied through the Independent Government of Kenya (Ciekawy, 1998: 126). The existing Witchcraft Act (Cap. 67)7 includes sections that ban chiefs from enabling witchcraft practices and using witchcraft medicine to injure or use it for other magical purposes (Ciekawy, 1998: 126). Witchcraft has become a crime, something that courts handle and continuously circumscribe. The practice of imposing state powers on witchcraft can be rooted from differences in religious ideologies and social/political status too. In “Salem Witchcraft, Factionalism, and Social Change Reconsidered: Were Salem’s Witch-Hunters Modernization’s Failures?” Latner (2008) explored the theory of factionalism in Salem. He praised Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum’s 1974 Salem Possessed, which reinvigorated New England witchcraft discourse. Samuel Parris, Salem Village’s minister during the witch hunting craze, was at the centre of social and economic divisions. Latner (2008) summarized the book, which showed that: “The specific nature of this historical change was nothing less than the inexorable movement toward commerce and capitalism embodied in the increased bustle and prominence of Salem Town” (425). Boyer and Nissenbaum provided an array of evidence to support their belief that factionalism drove the Salem Trials. They studied the biographies of leading participants in the trials, including the rival families, the Porter’s and the Putnam’s. They showed that factionalism8 “preceded and precipitated the events of 1692” (Latner, 2008: 425). Their analysis suggested that the some people wanted to eject Parris, where the pro-Parris faction was more strongly related to membership in the village church and was particularly less wealthy than the anti-Parris opposition (Latner, 2008: 426). In addition, the pro-Parris party lived away from the commercialised Salem Town, in a more westerly route, whereas Parris’s dissidents lived in the village’s eastern section nearby to Salem Town, where they were economically and politically linked (Latner, 2008: 426). Though the pro- and anti-Parris petitions happened sometime after the end of the trials, Boyer and Nissenbaum argued that the arrangement of village factionalism was incessant throughout the witchcraft period, contributing to its eruption and prolongation afterward9 (Latner, 2008: 426). Latner (2008) argued though that the problem with Salem Possessed is that it no longer examined the role of women in the Salem trials. Women might have had more complex roles or connections to the allegations. Events beyond Salem were not included too, such as the relationship between Salem and other towns that were involved in the witchcraft trials.10 Nevertheless, with his own study of the Salem Trials, he realised that those who supported Parris were somewhat poorer than their enemies, but not for all tax years (Latner, 2008: 443). Economic and social differences may explain Salem witch-hunting craze, but not fully in the causative relationship that Boyer and Nissenbaum contended. Latner (2008) asserted for historians and anthropologists to be careful in their analysis and use data to drive their conclusions. This essay continues to the second technology of power, which concerns the use of state legal apparatus to police witches. In the case of Ciekawy’s (1998) study, the policing shaped uganga and utsai discourse. State agents, which are composed of the police, chiefs, subchiefs, and district officers, are empowered to use administrative apparatuses to confine and control Mijikenda religious practice that result to magical harm (Ciekawy, 1998: 128). State agents have the authority to stop, survey, or interfere in Mijikenda religious practices, and their three main policing branches include the application of permits for the Mijikenda to conduct ngoma and assessing religious and community gossip (Ciekawy, 1998: 128). Ciekawy (1998: 128) narrated that during the 1980s and early 1990s in the Southern Division, policing evidently operated to “centralise administrative power.” They decreased the number of influential aganga in any particular area and endorsed the latter to follow chief’s directives, so that they could be allowed to continuously practice their rituals (Ciekawy, 1998: 128). The administration further promoted the enhancement of aganga-chief patronage ties and encouraged the chief's and police's observation of aganga.11 Furthermore, policing became more violent, which were not even practiced before colonial times (Ciekawy, 1998: 128). Chiefs would send the police to the homes of suspected witches to gather physical evidence of their rituals, which could be used in the Division Court, so that the latter could be charged with “possession of charms” (Ciekawy, 1998: 129). The problem is that many medicine used by the aganga is similar to that used for utsai, so it is hard to prove in court that they are only used for healing purposes (Ciekawy, 1998: 129). Defendants rarely win their cases and they are usually convicted of one or more infringements of the Witchcraft Act, which could comprise of a heavy fine or imprisonment from three to six months (Ciekawy, 1998: 129). Furthermore, whether these people are guilty or not, the process of being questioned or subjected to house searches are stigmatising and can result to social ostracism (Ciekawy, 1998: 129). Thus, the repression of religious discourse has been attained through state legal apparatuses. The third technology of power consists of creating dialogues that mixes utsai and witchcraft discourses. Discourses are products of conversations between state rulers and subjects about harmful magic, through the accommodation of state processes and infrastructures (Ciekawy, 1998: 129). This technology indicates that state intervention goes beyond oppression and policing and includes “dialogues of rule” among commoners, elites and state agents (Ciekawy, 1998: 129). Modernisation is argued as a phenomenon that increased witchcraft prevalence in Sub-Saharan Africa. In “Magic and Witchcraft: Implications for Democratization and Poverty-Alleviating Aid in Africa,” Kohnert (1996) analysed witchcraft practices and accusations in Africa. He noted studies12 that showed instances, where modernisation increased the effectiveness and popularity of sorcery/witchcraft in Africa (1348). This can be seen as a “psychosocial reaction to the African Crisis,” where “belief in witchcraft may be a reaction to an increasing ‘conflict-producing potential’ caused by processes of social differentiation in the context of the evolution of a market economy and ‘modernization’ of economy and society” (Kohnert, 1996: 1348). Because of poverty or political disempowerment, people use witchcraft to carve their own social and political powers. As state leaders and power brokers seek to impose their power, nevertheless, they further aim for points of commonality too to sustain their status (Ciekawy, 1998: 129). In the case of Kenya, familiarity between witchcraft and state officials becomes more prominent in postcolonial Kenya, so that witchcraft becomes state controlled. State agents and subjects form locations of “conviviality” through ideology that “inscribe[s] the dominant and the dominated within the same episteme”13 (Ciekawy, 1998: 129). Aside from controlling the permits for ngoma and uganga wa kuvoyera, a chief’s power to regulate religious practice expands his ability to manipulate cultural processes that create utsai suspicion or accusation (Ciekawy, 1998: 129). Chiefs have established fundamental roles in the politics of facilitating accusations of magical harm, choosing from gossips and complaints, which ones he would believe in and pursue (Ciekawy, 1998: 129). Thus, power brokers affect social and political powers through their control of utsai and witchcraft discourses. The fourth technology of power refers to the arbitration and formation of a general moral discourse between state agents and subjects that assists their collaboration for the control of magical harm. These practices include practitioners of mystical harm (Ciekawy, 1998: 130). The discussions between state actors and subjects are present in the activities throughout the 1950s and 1960s, when Kenyan chiefs and district officers considered the suggestions of different aganga to acquire permits for cleansing and protection rituals (Ciekawy, 1998: 130). In the 1950s, some healers called for the opportunity to perform rituals that included utsai cleansing and protection. Administrators responded through making a policy of providing permits to those who were called “acceptable” utsai cleansers and whose practice is made of interconnecting chosen areas, where they can set up cleansing and protective medicines at main crossroads and water holes (Ciekawy, 1998: 130). Utsai control in arbitrations between Mijikenda and administrators were managerial strategies for “legitimation” (Ciekawy, 1998: 130). Political actors are also pressured to show some semblance of support for the rural people by allowing open, but state-legitimised, witchcraft practices (Ciekawy, 1998: 130). Throughout the independence age in the late 1950s, a particular arrangement of patron-client relationships arose in relation to utsai control (Ciekawy, 1998: 130). Local politicians tried to attract voters by helping them get ritual permits. Some counsellors and other politicians started using the right of Mijikenda to practice traditions as part of their platforms (Ciekawy, 1998: 130). When independence is attained in 1966, district and provincial administrators participated in these discourses. They did not want to “legalize” uganga wa kuvoyera for all Mijikenda, but they negotiated with some of the politicians to promote one muganga named Kajiwe as the highest witchfinder14 (Ciekawy, 1998: 130). Through the management of uganga wa kuvoyera, state agents in Southern Division transformed into moral authorities. State agents developed new apparatuses for the discovery of mystical harm and its agents that can emerge to be more “expedient” than other ways that were previously repressed by state agents. Through these actions, they now have a bigger role in witchcraft containment (Ciekawy, 1998: 130). State agents are proud of their actions; where they have prevented the actions of practitioners, whom they asserted, as dreading being caught through governmental investigative methods (Ciekawy, 1998: 130). Though the colonial administration appeared to have surrendered to Mijikenda demands for utsai control, the solutions were incorporated into bureaucratic routines (Ciekawy, 1998: 130). These became opportunities for administrators to integrate with the rural people about religious affairs, so that they become elements of “Mijikenda daily life and encouraged Mijikenda to develop patron-client relations with chiefs” (Ciekawy, 1998: 130). When they give some of their power, they do so to reinforce their own social, cultural and political powers in the long run. The political finds ways to be part of the communal once more. The fifth technology of power is the “othering” of the witches.15 The widespread practices of finding and charging utsai practitioners allow the state to rename them as witches, a negative label that strips them of their social legitimacy (Ciekawy, 1998: 132). State actors and some common people work together in categorising witches, turning them into enemies of morality and legality (Ciekawy, 1998: 132). In other words, the state processes and delegitimises witches. This practice formulates new identities, where those who categorise witches change the latter’s positions, as well as their own social positions (Ciekawy, 1998: 133). These state agents and common people assert their social transformation through “cleaning up” society from bodily harm (Ciekawy, 1998: 133). Ciekawy (1998) asserted the rise of one-way accusations and local state actors are able to exert their influence on the marginalised groups, whose powers through their magic, give them a sense of strong and unique, potentially political and social, identity. For some anthropologists, witches and sorcerers allow them to tap political and social powers that can help them deal with their poverty. In “‘The Divels Speciall Instruments': Women and Witchcraft Before the 'Great Witch-Hunt,’” Jones and Zell (2005) examined the feminisation of witchcraft during the sixteenth and seventh centuries. During this time, witchcraft was used to include both “white” and “black” magic. They noted: Women’s vulnerability to accusations of witchcraft is often linked to their susceptibility to poverty in the economic conditions of the later sixteenth century. They are assumed to have been the most dependent members of the community and so more likely than men to ask for charity. (Jones and Zell, 2005: 45). The idea is that witchcraft is about healing too, such as the use of herbs and plants for medicinal purposes. For some Europeans, they interpreted these beliefs and practices as witchcraft because they were not aware of the medicinal benefits of various plants. Furthermore, some women needed protection, including spiritual and physical protection,16 which they attained through their rituals and curses. In the fifteenth century, women were seen as morally and intellectually weak to men, and so they were more prone to demonic temptation. Though “witchcraft” was asserted as a practice for both men and women in the Canterbury records, only women are called “witches” (Jones and Zell, 2005: 50). They were women who were so spiritually weak that the devils preferred them over others, according to their dissidents. To understand the question of gender in witchcraft, Jones and Zell (2005) studied the records of the church courts of the Canterbury diocese between the earliest prosecution for witchcraft in 1396 and the enactment of the Elizabethan witchcraft statute in 1563. They learned that the feminisation of witches occurred in fifteenth-century Europe,17 together with the transfer of the “devil-worshipping stereotype from heresy trials to witch trials, and the evolution in learned theory of what Brian Levack terms ‘the cumulative concept of witchcraft,’” included having black power and having sex with the devils (Jones and Zell, 2005: 48). Jones and Zell (2005) showed that will argue that, while in the later Middle Ages, withcraft became a gender-neutral practice, it became labelled as black magic and attributed to women most of the time, well before the witch-hunting craze started. Thus, black magic became a gendered lens that dehumanised women who, according to community and state power brokers and rulers, deviated from moral and social norms. What does magic or witchcraft allow people to do and say about their changing politico-economic relations? It allowed witches and sorcerers to have economic, religious, physical, social, cultural and political powers. Through magic, they also continued traditional identities and imposed their opposition to European cultural homogenisation and colonial and postcolonial discourses of power. Women, who have been historically connected to witchcraft, has been examined and argued to use witchcraft as a source of social and political power. So-called witches use words to defend themselves and to assert their individuality. Others are believed to use witchcraft as means for tapping local medicinal practices. These studies indicate that witchcraft is situated in a space of struggle for power in its varied forms. Magic is controlled to acquire and strengthen power during modernisation and colonialism times. Hence, magic allows people to be powerful beyond the mystical sense, where they can gain legitimacy and influence in the social and political spheres of their lives. Bibliography Brantley, C. (1979) ‘An Historical Perspective of the Giriama and Witchcraft Control,’ Africa, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 112-33. Ciekawy, D. (1992) Witchcraft Eradication as Political Process in Kilifi District, Kenya, 1955-1988, Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University. _________. (1998) ‘Witchcraft in Statecraft: Five Technologies of Power in Colonial and Postcolonial Coastal Kenya,’ African Studies Review, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 119-141. _________. (1997) ‘Policing Religious Practice in Contemporary Coastal Kenya,’ Political and Legal Anthropology Review, vol. 20, no. 1, pp.62-72. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. (1937) Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jones, K. and Zell, M. (2005) ‘The Divels Speciall Instruments': Women and Witchcraft before the 'Great Witch-Hunt,’’ Social History, vol. 30, no. 1, pp.45-63. Kapferer, B. (2002) ‘Outside All Reason: Magic, Sorcery and Epistemology in Anthropology,’ Social Analysis, vol. 46, no.3, pp.1-30. Kohnert, D. (1996) ‘Magic and Witchcraft: Implications for Democratization and Poverty-Alleviating Aid in Africa,’ World Development, vol. 24, no. 8, pp. 1347-p1355. Latner, R. (2008) ‘Salem Witchcraft, Factionalism, and Social Change Reconsidered: Were Salem’s Witch-Hunters Modernization’s Failures?’ William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 423-448. Mbembe, A. (1992) ‘Provisional Notes on the Postcolony,’ Africa, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 3-37. Niehaus, I.A. (1993) ‘Witch-Hunting and Political Legitimacy: Continuity and Change in Green Valley, Lebowa, 1930-91,’ Africa (Edinburgh University Press), vol. 63, no. 4, pp. 498-530. Shanafelt, R. (2004) ‘Magic, Miracle, and Marvels in Anthropology,’ Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, vol. 69, no. 3, pp. 317-340. Read More