MIDTERM 2 Flashcards
Gbangbane
Kuranko witch hunters who were also called witches
Doctrine of Effluvia
Said that witches afflicted others by venomous and malignant particles when a dog ate a cake made from her urine.
Martin Luther
Proposed changing elements in the church. If you had a lot of sin you could put money towards the church to alleviate the sin.
What were the theories for why the witch hunts happened?
Syphilis - people wanted to believe the witch hunts happened because of mass-insanity.
Social change - inflation, poverty, more competition for goods. Cost of goods increasing, harder to afford goods, more poverty. Accusations were a convenient way to deal with competition for goods.
Attacks on certain groups - Single women became a growing demographic and became a target because they stuck out.
Both the protestants and Catholics blamed each other for the witch hunts.
Nations would align with one church, enforce basic tenets in citizens. Those who rebelled were targeted as witches.
Witch hunt = women hunt
- motivated by misogyny
- witches weren’t engaging in witchcraft, only requirement for accusation was being female
- this was to maintain control over society
- women seen as weaker, more sexual
- underlying hatred of women
Witch hunt = attacks on healers and midwives
- men didn’t like that women were respected authorities
- trained doctors wanted to replace midwives, used witch trials to eliminate competition
- midwives knew about contraception and elites wanted to increase population, so this was problematic.
Witch hunts = paganism hunts
- witchcraft is a misidentification of ancient pagan practices that some were still doing
- witch hunts used to discredit and wipe them out
- little evidence for what these people were actually doing
What is the theory for why the witch hunts happened favoured by most scholars
Social change theory
Generalizations of witchcraft in Africa AIDS example
AIDS - witchcraft can explain the “why me” of getting AIDS
- AIDS functions similar to witchcraft in many societies
- delayed symptoms = coughing, diarrhea, weight loss etc traditionally interpreted as symptoms of witchcraft
- one’s life is being eaten away by invisible forces
- witchcraft often seen as targeting children and fertility and AIDS is primarily passed through sexual contact
Kuranko Stereotype of witch vs ideal person
IDEAL - morgoye (personhood), generous, friendly, open, honest, devoted to family, male
WITCH - no personhood, greedy, resentful, predatory, attacks family, works with coven, female
Witchcraft in the Kuranko vs Early Modern Europe
- European witches not accused of eating organs
- Kuranko never accused of saying prayers backwards
- malformed, resentful bush people who lived outside of civilization (similar to pagans)
- lifeforce leaves their body while sleeping, witch has no control over this
- even though their life-force leaves their body, they are still responsible for the crimes they commit
- conviction of witchcraft usually led to nothing lol - only caused minor problems. This is contrast to Europe where it was punishable by death.
- othering - witches quintessential “other” in Europe and Africa
Stereotype of witchcraft in the Kuranko
- men can be accused
- can include deliberate actions like poisons and medicines, not just involuntary power
- can include anything with extraordinary power
- looks to confessions as another source of information about witchcraft
- those who confess are on their deathbed and/or killed
- illness is used as a means for confession to witchcraft because it gives meaning and agency to a women’s illness
- by confession she can die with agency, because she is going to die anyways so being killed isn’t a bad thing
Can Jackson’s analysis be applied to early modern Europe?
Were European women who confessed to witchcraft reclaiming autonomy in a hopeless situation?
- maybe?? witches in Europe who confessed were already being arrested and tortured. Only a matter of time before they died. Some witches may have confessed in order to speed up the process and avoid more torture or incarceration. People are scared of torture so they’d rather die, but we don’t have any evidence for these ideas.
Is it fair to compare African and European witchcraft?
- possible condescension in comparing the two. Sometimes a derogatory attitude/colonialist or racist ideologies that people don’t always pay attention to.
Are the terms used in Africa really translatable to witchcraft?
- same type of magic in European context?
- scholars object to translating terms into English, something must be understood in it’s own terms. Forms of magic differ from each other and cannot translate directly to other cultural groups. Jackson disagrees and still uses witchcraft and magic even though he knows different cultures use these things differently.
I think it is a convenient term to lump things together that we do not understand. Magic is a term used to “other” anything that is different and is a scholarly wastebasket of a term, just like Smith says.
Mobility theory for witchcraft - cross cultural model
- James L Brain
- particular social groupings more likely to have witchcraft
- hunter gatherer societies very rarely have witchcraft because men and women are seen as equal
- those tribes that do have witchcraft tend to have an attachment to property and identify witches coming from another tribe
- no big deal, they just leave the area.
- societies with little/no mobility and high attachment to property are more likely to have witchcraft beliefs
- when property is threatened, reactions against witches stronger
- early modern europe and kuranko fit this model
- witches usually assumed to be women because in these societies, property is inherited through the males. Women have no claim to property. Underlying fear that women want the property and will use means to get it.
Brain - level of mobility can predict whether a society will have witch beliefs
Occult
beyond the range of ordinary knowledge, mysterious, hidden, secret
