Azande

spent with the Azande tribe and what he learned about them and their interpretations of magic and witchcraft. Evans-Pritchard describes that the Zande have a philosophy that can easily be described by the following metaphor: witchcraft is the umbaga (or second spear) meaning that the Azande people use witchcraft to complement their understanding of reality (The Notion of Witchcraft 25). The author then offers a point of contrast by speaking about the “we” of Western society and how we differ from the Azande people. In Structural Anthropology, Claude Levi-Strauss provides multiple different ethnographic vignettes that attempt…

E. Evans-Pritchard explores the concept of witchcraft among the Azande people in his work Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. In this case study, we can see the emic perspective of witchcraft as a form of causation for unexplained or unfortunate events. For the Azande, the use of witchcraft accounts for the reasoning behind personal injury, property damage, and normal hardships that Western society would view as accidental. However, Evans-Pritchard explains that we cannot use our…

An Azande male asks a negotiator to discuss an offer with the prospective bride’s father. “Unless the suitor was deemed undesirable immediately, her father would discuss the matter first with his brothers and sisters, and next with the woman in question.” (Culture Sketches Chapter 1) In the case of The Azande, the female in question may choose to refuse the offer of marriage, thereby leaving her options open for a more advantageous financial offer or a suitor of her…

Magic among the Azande, E. E. Pritchard writes about the Azande and their involvement with witchcraft, oracles, and magic. Pritchard studies the Azande closely and finds out there way of living and their values. Pritchard writes how Azande view witchcraft as something organic and hereditary. Pritchard describes how Azande believe that witchcraft causes unfortunate events, and also brings misfortune to some Zande. Pritchard goes more into detail by writing if those witches that caused the…

They would instead be anticipating it; every day might I add, but it’s considered an annoyance. The Azande have their own idea or philosophy that helps with answering the questions of “Why exactly were these specific people, at this specific place, at this specific time hit by misfortune?’ While we may not have an actual answer for this except for that it was all coincidence, they at least explain these coincidences. When Evans-Prichard was speaking to Azande about the workings of witchcraft. In…

In “Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events”, E.E. Evans- Pritchard considers the importance of witchcraft as a rational thought for the Azande society in Sudan, Africa. The conceptions of natural or a supernatural did not exist because the concept explains why misfortune has occurred that is culturally relevant. Pritchard distinguished the difference between ‘witchcraft’ and ‘sorcery’ procedures because ‘sorcery’ had the ability to cause death or catastrophes, involved the use of spells to…

English anthropologist, began his first fieldwork study among the Azande, a people from the upper Nile area in Sudan, Africa. As a colonial anthropologist, Evans-Pritchard arrived among the Azande with certain assumptions of what he would find based on the biased social climate in England and the common belief that the peoples in places like Sudan were savages. What he found in Zandeland was a foreign, but fairly open people from who he learned much from. Evans-Pritchard was particularly…

ideology of marriage. In communities where fertility is vital during marriage, it will also be the greatest agent for divorce. As I review the cultures of Malawi and Ecuador, I will focus on how divorce is viewed in their communities along with their source, in contrast with the American culture. Malawi is a southeast African country inhabited by the Azande people. Among the Azande,…

treatment worms wrapped around a stick (p.212).The guinea worm mainly comes during harvest season…so a lot of people believed that someone had sent them this worm as a curse to keep them from their fields” (p.208). “The villager thought that it was the chemical treatment that woke up the worm… so that is why they threatened the program members” (P.208). The author linked her evidence with the histories of these belief through an E.E. Evens-Pritchard’s classic 1937 monograph called Witchcraft,…

ourselves. This article has much relevance in the current world of thought since Geertz constantly references anthropologist such as Evans-Pritchard, yet at the same time with the help of Husserl and Schutz, Geertz is able to analyze common sense with a modern approach establishing that it can be a part of “the conceptual foundations of "everyday" experience…” (Geertz 9) Geertz’s use of Evans-Pritchard’s anthropological piece on the Azande witchcraft, allows Geertz to demonstrate the this…