The Worlds Knowledge of Witchcraft - Essay Example

The British Colonial Rule and Evans’ Witchcraft Ethnography Background The British empire started its spread in the 1600s by initially helping private companies set up trading posts in foreign lands. Between then and the 20th century the British empire had reached around the world, such that it was said, “the sun never sets on the British empire.” With many countries in the African continent becoming part of this empire, Negro slavery began. The British traders started it by exchanging African slaves for West Indies rum and sugar, American lumber and furs, and British manufactured goods. All this British colonial expansion started in the 16th century at the close of what was known as the Middle Ages in Europe when witchcraft inspired fear among people there. Most of the world’s knowledge of witchcraft during that period and beyond in fact came down from Western Europe, where it was believed that many people practiced witchcraft, something considered evil and frightening. Scholars believe that witchcraft in Europe was part of a very ancient religion that existed long before Christianity. Thousands of witch trials were held there at which people were accused of witchcraft. These witch trials were later replicated in massive proportions in Salem, Massachussets in the US, another former British colony, where suspected witches were hanged and burned at the stake. So it must have been nothing new for the British to come upon the practice of witchcraft in many African territories that they colonized. Much like their forbears in the Middle Ages, their reaction to witchcraft in Africa was one of fear followed by a desire to persecute and eliminate the source of that fear. This is exactly what the British tried to do in Azande, a territory that straddles the boundaries of Sudan, Zaire and the Central African Republic. Under the 1899 Anglo-French Convention, the French who competed and fought with the British in Africa ceded the Azande to the British. Forthwith, the British established a military outpost there which military occupation gave way to civil administration in 1920. The Azandes lived in the watershed area between the Nile and Congo rivers to which they were resettled from the wilderness by the British after the first World War. They never returned to the jungles. When the British gave Azande some independence, it set up a civil service system manned by career people generally from the upper classes in England. A British colonial governor and a legislative council ruled the territory alongside the native chieftains. One of the first steps taken under this rule was to stop the slave trade and further foreign expeditions into Azande. While running the affairs of state in Azande the British were often frustrated by the natives’ widespread belief in witchcraft which they perceived to be an impediment to their goal to “civilize” the territory and raise its standards of living. . Regulating Witchcraft Witches are of course believed capable of causing and curing sickness, aside from other powers such as bringing rain or making people fall in love. The British rulers in Azande must have found an opportunity to demonstrate to the natives the irrationality of witchcraft when an epidemic called “sleeping sickness” hit the place. In response, the colonial government sponsored public health measures that involved quarantines, isolation of infected persons, population resettlement, etc. These scientific methods in time brought the disease under control. The Azandes who are sometimes called Zandes were also placed under a program called Zande Scheme, a pilot project intended to raise tribal living standards. In addition to establishing manufacturing enterprises, the project also engaged in the promotion of a “healthy market.” It was observed that because of witchcraft beliefs the natives prepare and sell food products in a generally unsanitary way. This was the scene that British anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard saw when he came to Azande – the British colonizers trying to supplant the “illogical and irrational” beliefs in witchcraft with a more “logical” form of behavior. Evans quickly realized that the same attitude, which is based on preconceived ideas, reflected in most studies of non-Western belief systems. Since witchcraft belief is irrational, so this thinking went, the natives must be encouraged to do away with that belief. Evans’ earlier ethnographies presented seemingly alien norms in Africa in an accurate and coherent manner to those who do not belong to these indigenous societies. The Evans Approach From his field study in Azande, Evans disagreed with the argument that the natives exhibit primitive “pre-logical” mentality. He believed that anthropologists should consider the local people’s views and not rely entirely on presupposed ideas about that society. In short, they should understand people’s behavior and thoughts in their own context which is based on their local reality. Evans argued that anthropology should be modeled on humanities, especially history, rather than on science that searches for universal laws. Witchcraft belief in Azande society, Evans found, fulfills the function that science does in modern society which is to explain any previously unexplainable phenomena. The difference is that the former is concerned with the social explanation, the later with natural concerns. Just as science cannot explain everything, Azande witchcraft cannot also explain the violation of laws or moral imperatives that have taken place. In Azande, the natives attribute misfortunes to witchcraft. They believe it is witchcraft when, say, a building collapses and people who happen to be under it are injured. They know the building’s foundations were undermined and the people caught in its collapse were there to escape the glare of the sun. But since they need an explanation that would connect these two events, they look at witchcraft. This witchcraft explanation, Evans observed, is rational according to the natives’ way of reasoning. His approach thus requires an anthropologist to step into local people’s shoes. In the process, Evans established the distinction between witchcraft and sorcery as a basic theme in British social anthropological studies of magical systems. Robin Horton agreed that before Evans, anthropologists have failed to understand African traditional thought because: 1) many have been unfamiliar with the theoretical thinking of their own culture, thus depriving them of a vital key to understanding such thought: and 2) even those familiar with theoretical thinking in their own culture have failed to recognize its African equivalents, simply because they have been blinded by a difference in idiom. The gist of Evans’ approach is that all societies are capable of organizing its own world in a meaningful way, and the only difference lies in the way this is achieved. For this reason, Evans’ ethnography “Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azandes” has become an important reference material in discussions of anthropological values, rationality and relativism of native beliefs such as witchcraft. It contends that every form of primitive religion has its own logic and rationality, and is a logical form of behavior to deal with social problems. Despite this belief in witchcraft, sorcery and oracles Evans noted that the Azandes “adapt themselves without undue difficulties to new conditions of life and are always ready to copy the behavior of those they regarded as superiors in culture and to borrow new modes of dress, new weapons and utensils, new words and even new ideas and habits.” References: Edward Evans-Pritchard. ‘Withcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande.” (Abridged edition) Robin Horton (1967). “African Traditional Thought and Western Science.” Africa XXXVII (1) Peter Winch (1964) “Understanding a Primitive Society.” B. Wilson ed. Rationality. Read More