A01=Harry G. West
africa
anthropological
argument
Author_Harry G. West
authority
Category=JHM
Category=QRRN
Category=QRYX2
ceremonies
connections
context
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnographical
ethnography
government
indeterminacy
inspiration
magic
magical
magicians
making meaning
metaphor
misunderstanding
mueda plateau
northern mozambique
perspective
politics
research
rites
social anthropology
sorcerers
sorcery
understanding
visions
witchcraft
Product details
- ISBN 9780226893983
- Weight: 198g
- Dimensions: 14 x 22mm
- Publication Date: 01 May 2007
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery - for many of them, West's efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In "Ethnographic Sorcery", West explores the fascinating issues provoked by this equation. A key theme of West's research into sorcery is that one sorcerer's claims can be challenged or reversed by other sorcerers. After West's attempt to construct a metaphorical interpretation of Muedan assertions that the lions prowling their villages are fabricated by sorcerers is disputed by his Muedan research collaborators, West realizes that ethnography and sorcery indeed have much in common. Rather than abandoning ethnography, West draws inspiration from this connection, arguing that anthropologists, along with the people they study, can scarcely avoid interpreting the world they inhabit, and that we are all, inescapably, ethnographic sorcerers.
Harry G. West is lecturer in social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and the author of Kupilikula: Governance and the Invisible Realm in Mozambique, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
