Alleged Witches Research Articles

Child Fostering and the Question of Child Labour in Northern Ghana's Alleged Witches' Camps

AbstractAmong the Dagbamba of northern Ghana, the customary practice of child fostering is not the sole responsibility of biological parents, but rather a collective responsibility of the extended family and the larger society. This makes child fostering an age‐old, informal socio‐cultural practice and an integral aspect of social life. Even though the intentions behind child fostering are often good, fostering may also be associated with some dangers such as child labour. In recent years, the debate as to whether child fostering amounts to child labour has been extended to northern Ghana's alleged witches' camps; places where elderly women accused of witchcraft are sheltered. Drawing on one‐to‐one interviews with selected children, alleged witches and community elders, and supplemented by personal experiences growing up in Dagbambaland, this article examines child fostering in relation to child labour in these settlements. Using qualitative ethnographic data, our findings show that what is described as child labour in these settlements is a necessary evil for the category of children who live in these settlements.

Exploring the Magnitude, Characteristics and Socio-economic Contexts of Witchcraft-Related Eldercides in Kenya

AbstractMany eldercides in African societies are motivated by witchcraft beliefs. Yet, witchcraft-related eldercide remains an understudied criminological subject. The present study explores the scale, features and socio-cultural and economic contexts of witchcraft-related elder homicide in Kenya. A total of 94 media articles reporting the witchcraft-related killings of 136 older people in Kenya between January 2012 and December 2021 were perused. Key information about the victims and perpetrators and the circumstances surrounding each event/eldercide was collected and critically analysed. The data suggest that approximately 75% of witchcraft-related homicide victims in Kenya are 60 years old and above. Most victims were females (mainly widows) of low socio-economic backgrounds. All the cases occurred in rural communities, and the perpetrators were largely young adult males. Arson, slashing with a machete and clubbing/beating were the dominant methods used to kill alleged witches. Most killings were motivated by the belief that the victims caused misfortunes/calamities by witchcraft. However, witchcraft allegations and concomitant killings were sometimes weaponized to obtain the victims’ property/land. Because witchcraft beliefs are deeply entrenched in the culture and philosophy of the Kenyan people, the use of a multifaceted approach may be the most appropriate way of curtailing the problem.

The Impact of Climate Change on Witch Trials: Myth or Reality? The Example of Royal Prussia in the Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries

The early modern period was also a period of a ‘little ice age’. The sudden fluctuations in climatic conditions that occurred at the time greatly impacted the everyday living conditions of all people of Europe. They also affected, though not to the same degree in all European regions, the perception of the activities of alleged witches.

Depression and Quality of Life of People Accused of Witchcraft and Living in Alleged Witches’ Camps in Northern Ghana

In Northern and Northeast Ghana, women accused of witchcraft are banished from society to live in special locations designated “witches camps.” The processes leading to their banishment, admission, and living in the camps may affect their psychological wellbeing and quality of life. This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of depression and assess the quality of life of 277 alleged witches in four camps located in these two regions in Ghana. A structured questionnaire was developed and administered using the open data collection kit (ODK). The Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8) and the World Health Organisation Quality of Life (WHOQOL) questionnaires were adopted to measure depression and health-related quality of life, respectively. The data were analysed using STATA version 16. The prevalence of depression among the alleged witches was 52.7%. Out of this, 37.2% had moderate depression, 7.2% had moderate or severe depression whilst 2.9% had severe depression. The sociodemographic factors that have a statistically significant association with depression included gender, marital status, being widowed or separated, and not having biological children. Over 97% of alleged witches have a low or extremely low quality of life. In conclusion, the majority of the people accused of witchcraft have a low or extremely low quality of life with high-probable depression.

Cunning Distortions: Folk Christianity and Witchcraft Allegations in Early Mormon History

Cunning Distortions: Folk Christianity and Witchcraft Allegations in Early Mormon History

Church politics, sectarianism, and judicial terror: The Scottish witch-hunt, 1563 - 1736

We examine a tumultuous period in Scottish history beginning from the Reformation in 1560 until a few years after the Revolution of 1688. During this period, the Crown repeatedly provoked political crises by attempting to impose an episcopal structure on the Church of Scotland. Using time series data of witch accusations, we find that the Scottish Presbyterians were substantially more active in persecuting alleged witches during periods when they were excluded from power. Although monopoly churches can be instruments of state-making and social order, our results show that the disciplinary instruments of an established church can be turned against the state. In polities divided by factional religious conflict the suppression of sectarian groups can lead them to impose religious discipline as a counterweight to state formation.

ОТ МОРАЛЬНОЙ ПАНИКИ К СОЦИАЛЬНОМУ ИНСТИТУТУ И ОБРАТНО: ВЕРА В КОЛДОВСТВО В ИСТОРИИ ЧЕЛОВЕЧЕСТВА

In the paper, witchcraft beliefs in the modern world are considered within the framework of the ethological and structural-functional approaches, the concepts of “moral panic” and “the image of a limited good”. The author analyzes the ethological foundations and social functions of witchcraft beliefs and demonstrates that the idea of witchcraft turns out to be a function of social relations, communication needs and creative abilities (one might say, a side effect of those universal human needs and abilities). The article consistently demonstrates how, in the hunter-gatherer and early farming communities, witchcraft beliefs and related practices become an important cognitive tool and mechanism of social regulation, and how, as society grows and becomes more complex, those ideas and practices become a symptom of social distress (when persecution begins and whole groups of demonized fellow-countrymen begin to be persecuted). The author shows that the witchcraft belief, which remaining latent in collective consciousness, are getting stronger in situations of social upheaval and economic crises, and the persecution of alleged witches may resume today. Up-to-day cases from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Russia demonstrate such state of affairs.

7. Christian Pastors and Alleged Witches in Kinshasa, DRC. A Response.

7. Christian Pastors and Alleged Witches in Kinshasa, DRC. A Response.

The Political and Economic Role of Elites in Persecution: Evidence from Witchcraft Trials in Early Modern Scotland

Persecution, as a political and economic phenomenon, can be abetted by the resources of a nation's elite. To demonstrate this, I focus on a case study: witchcraft trials in Early Modern Scotland (1563-1727), a largely agricultural economy. I find that favourable growing temperatures predict more trials. My main empirical specification survives various robustness checks, including accounting for outliers. During this time, witchcraft was a secular crime, and it was incumbent on local elites to commit resources to trying alleged witches. Turning to mechanisms, I find that positive price shocks to export-heavy, taxable goods predict more witch trials, while price shocks to Scotland's main subsistence commodity, oats, do not. This is consistent with the explanation that as elite income increased, more resources were devoted to witchcraft prosecutions; I cite anecdotal evidence that a different judicial proceeding, sexual trials in Aberdeen, experienced a similar trend.

Being Bewitched: A True Tale of Madness, Witchcraft, and Property Development Gone Wrong

Being Bewitched: A True Tale of Madness, Witchcraft, and Property Development Gone Wrong

Customary law and the mediation of witchcraft accusations in Eastern Nicaragua

This article focuses on efforts to overcome the divide between state legality and local practices. It explores a pragmatic effort to deal with witchcraft accusations and occult-related violence in customary courts among the Miskitu people in Eastern Nicaragua, taking into account both indigenous notions of justice and cosmology, and the laws of the state. In this model, a community court (elected by the community inhabitants and supported by a council of elders), watchmen known as ‘voluntary police’ and a ‘judicial facilitator’ play intermediary roles. Witchcraft is understood and addressed in relation to Miskitu cultural perceptions and notions of illness afflictions, and disputes are settled through negotiations involving divination, healing, signing a legally binding ‘peace’ contract, a fine, and giving protection to alleged witches. This decreases tensions and the risk of vigilante justice is reduced. The focus is on settling disputes, conciliation and recreating harmony instead of retribution.

Legislating the witch: a genealogy of juridical thought

Long before the prosecution of individuals for witchcraft was rendered a legal impossibility in the states of modern Europe, the judicial and executive institutions of those states and their precursors were decisive in both legitimating and moderating, facilitating and constraining the detection, trial, and execution of alleged witches. If we are to impute more than unresolved cognitive dissonance to this paradoxical relationship of the apparatus of state to the perceived reality and threat of witchcraft, then the preconditions and contextual factors predicating that relationship bear investigation. This paper identifies genealogical traces of criminological, political, social, and religious thought embedded within several pivotal bodies of early-modern law pertaining to witchcraft, and attempts to infer the cultural, institutional, and textual sources and conditions from which they derive.

Negotiation of Legitimacy of Witch-Finders in Lusaka

AbstractThe article aims at legal and illegal activities of Lusaka´s traditional healers within the system of traditional medicine which is primarily anchored in the constitution of traditional healers´ associations. It primarily focuses on witch-finders, whose social status, professional position and authority is constantly negotiated within the formal and informal sector of traditional medicine. Since the late 1990s, the quest for services of traditional healers specialised in witch-finding has gained popularity, particularly amongst the impoverished Lusaka compound-dwellers. Due to the increasing public violence against those denoted as witches, the activities of witch-finders were officially banned by the Witchcraft Act in 1995 and this profession is not officially recognised by the Constitution of Traditional Health Practitioners Association of Zambia (THAPAZ). In spite of the prohibition, there remain many witch-finders in Lusaka who practise witch-finding secretly, in order not to commit an offence they do not openly denounce the name of an alleged witch. Their authority and credibility is threatened by many “official” as well as “unofficial” competitors in the city and it must be constantly reaffirmed and negotiated by introducing innovations. The ability to keep clients and to gain a good reputation thus depends on the originality of their diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. At the same time witch-finders must counter diverse obstacles and uncertainties resulting from their illegal status within the sector of traditional medicine. The author analyses tactics that Lusaka´s witch-finders have developed and employed to negotiate their social status, credibility and authority visà-vis the competition from the “official” traditional healers.

Curses or Threats? Debating the Power of Witches’ Words in 17th-Century Scottish Courtrooms

17 th -century Scottish court records present a perspective on witchcraft language that is unavailable in Early Modern English trials, namely that of defence lawyers. This paper offers a discursive analysis of speech act functions attributed by trial parties to alleged witches’ utterances in three 17 th -century Scottish witchcraft cases. Culpeper and Semino’s (2000) curse definitions are combined with Jucker and Taavitsainen’s (2000: 74) “pragmatic space” to capture the spectrum of witchcraft speech acts. The examination of metacommunicative expressions suggests that threats were key witchcraft speech acts with different degrees of performativity, ranging from venting anger to effective harm- causing curses. The supernatural dimension of witches’ threats is absent in modern threats.

Pentecostalism, Witchdemonic Accusations, and Symbolic Violence in Ghana

The increasing numerical strength of Ghanaian pentecostalism and the movement’s involvement in filling in the socioeconomic vacuum in society means that the position of the pastor-prophet cannot be a neglected one. Yet, the extent to which human rights violations are involved in the activities of some of these pastor-prophets has raised some concerns. This article will focus on the often violent treatment of alleged witches during exorcism and explore how these challenge human rights development and implementation in Ghana. Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and symbolic violence will be applied to a discussion of human rights and Ghanaian popular deliverance-oriented pentecostal/charismatic ministries. I will argue that pentecostal/charismatic discourse on witchcraft fashions an ideological foundation for symbolic and actual violence against those accused of witchcraft.

Modern Day Witch Hunting in India: Socio-Legal Perspectives

Allegations of witchcraft that result in violence and murder have long been a part of the history of rural India. But hunts in modern times are continuously reported by the UNHCR of the UNO as a massive violation of human rights. In spite of that the modern practice of hunting in India includes violence and beliefs that have led to the torture and murder of alleged witches. Most of the accused are women and children but can also be elderly people or marginalised groups of the community. These victims are often considered burdens to the community, and as a result are often driven out, starved to death, or killed violently, sometimes by their own families in acts of social cleansing. The causes of hunts include poverty, epidemics, social crises and lack of education. The leader of the hunt, often a prominent figure in the community or a witch doctor, may also gain economic benefit by charging for an exorcism or by selling body parts of the murdered. Indian rationalists and women‘s rights activists have pushed for more effective and concrete efforts. Though they have sought stricter laws to punish violence stemming from witchcraft allegations, several groups want to change perceptions toward women and supernatural belief. Because the fact remains that legislation is not a cure for superstition; change in the mindset is the key.

E. Michael Gerli Celestina and the Ends of DesireCelestina and the Ends of Desire. E. Michael Gerli. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. Pp. xiv+258.

<i>E. Michael Gerli</i> Celestina and the Ends of Desire<i>Celestina and the Ends of Desire</i>. E. Michael Gerli. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. Pp. xiv+258.

‘Poison and Enchantment Rule Ruthenia.’ Witchcraft, Superstition, and Ethnicity in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

How shall one understand the evidence adduced before the Kraków court against an alleged witch in 1713: that “she has lived in Ruthenia”? This article unpacks the context and effects of the early modern Polish stereotype of Ruthenian magic. Both superstition and ethnicity could be used as resources for what David Chidester calls “sub-classification,” the categorization of others as less than fully human. Both humanist poetry and ribald satire made use of such sub-classification to construct German Lutheran “heretics” as learned practitioners of literate black magic, in contrast to simple Ruthenians who, in their comic country-bumptiousness, made poor candidates for a thorough-going demonization. The Witch Denounced, a (likely Jesuit) anti-witch-trial polemic of the 17th century, deploys such ethnic stereotype to defend merely superstitious Polish and Ruthenian “witches,” redirecting attention toward the threat of heretical Reform. Thus the accused Kraków witch was both victim and beneficiary of an ethnic slur – a stereotypical image that helped place her under suspicion but classified that suspicion in terms of ignorant superstition not diabolical witchcraft.

Unclean Spirits Unleashed: Flying Bricks, Demonic Possession, and Blackmail in Russia, 1636

The spotty and dilapidated record of single trial of an alleged witch in the outskirts of Galich in 1636 serves as a window through which to view the workings of the highly stratified society, its interactions with local courts and central tsarist authorities, and, most importantly, the beliefs, fears, and interpersonal dynamics that drove low-ranking people to turn to the courts. Particularly valuable are the tangential references to common practices that normally did not reach the courts and therefore eluded the historical record. The case of the landlord Gorikhvostov and the “known witch” Mitroshka Khramoi, with its dramatic canvass of devilish spirits and supernatural havoc, reveals the universal acceptance, at the height of Muscovite witchcraft prosecutions, of healers working with roots and herbs, spells and prayers.

The Nature of Knowledge: Evidence and Evidentiality in the Witness Depositions from the Salem Witch Trials

This article explores evidentiality (or the linguistic marking of source of information), a topic that has received little attention in studies on the history of English. Using witness depositions from the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692–93 as material, the article reveals that a number of linguistic features are used to indicate source of information, especially verb phrases (e.g., see, hear, tell) and prepositional phrases (e.g., to my knowledge, in my sight). It also shows that direct sensory experience and reports are the most common semantic categories of evidentiality in the documents, while inference and assumption are relatively uncommon. I argue that the depositions use evidential marking in different situations to fulfill a variety of pragmatic functions. For example, the witnesses refer to direct experience (seeing) of the affliction by the apparitions of alleged witches to bring greater credibility to allegations that could usually not be substantiated. More generally, the article demonstrates how concepts such as discourse community, setting, and pragmatic concerns, which have not been systematically considered in studies on early English in North America, are crucial factors for our understanding of the use of english in the period.