Rereading Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande, fifty-five years later

Abstract

Rereading Evans-Prichard’s classic fifty-five years later turned out to be a confusing experience. On the one hand, it confirmed the admiration I always had for the author’s clarity and the quality of his ethnography. On the other, there seemed to be a surprising contrast between his image of witchcraft and oracles working as an “explanatory system” that brought order in Zande society versus the emphasis on uncertainty and disorder in recent witchcraft studies. Evans-Pritchard’s views of the working of occult aggression fitted in with a major concern of anthropology of his time: showing, against Western prejudice, that other cultures had their own coherence and value. More recent studies rather concentrate on the resilience of these local ideas, and the ease with which they graft themselves onto modern changes.