Witch Camps and Witchcraft Discourse in Africa
Regular price
€87.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Matthew Gmalifo Mabefam
African studies
African witchcraft discourse
Africana Studies
anthropology
Author_Matthew Gmalifo Mabefam
Category=JBSL
Category=JHMC
Category=JP
communities of refuge
critiquing development
Culture Studies
decolonizing development practice
development practice
development studies
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Gender Studies
Human Geography
Political Science
Sociology
witchcraft and development
Product details
- ISBN 9781666918496
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 160 x 239mm
- Publication Date: 03 Oct 2023
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Witch Camps and Witchcraft Discourse in Africa: Critiquing Development Practices explores how local development interventions related to witchcraft in Africa intersect and conflict with globally accepted development practices. This book argues that development practitioners need to pay attention to what concepts like “witchcraft” and “occult” mean to local people, and provides a nuanced account of how different development actors conceptualize and approach development in Africa through communities of refuge. Matthew Mabefam invites development practitioners to be open to culturally sensitive solutions to social inequalities, rather than dismissing them and acting in ways that may further aggravate the challenges faced by individuals accused of witchcraft. The foundational knowledge for the book is derived from ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in Gnani in Northern Ghana—a rural community that provides refuge for people who have been banished from their communities—and is deeply informed by the author’s experiences of growing up and working within refuge communities in Ghana. This book contributes to the decolonization of development epistemes, knowledge, and practices, and contributes to a better understanding of the limits of the neo-liberal paradigm of socio-economic development that has dominated the direction of development policy.
Matthew Gmalifo Mabefam is a lecturer in anthropology and development studies in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.
