culture traditions | antropologi.info

Book review: Witchcraft in South Africa

Published on August 5, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, books, culture traditions, religion cosmology

Gary Kynoch, H-Net reviews Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy by Adam Ashforth

Many Northern academics, along with their African counterparts, are reluctant to engage with the concept of witchcraft for fear of appearing to label Africans as primitive. However, like it or not, notions of magic and witchcraft often play a prominent role in politics, armed conflict, perceptions of health and sickness, and all manner of social relationships. Instead of ignoring this basic reality, we need to acknowledge and investigate these dynamics.

Adam Ashforth embraces this challenge with his declaration that “no one can understand life in Africa without understanding witchcraft and the related aspects of insecurity”. Beyond simply describing the purchase that witchcraft has on life in Soweto, Ashforth sets out to examine the relationship between witchcraft beliefs and democracy in South Africa. >> continue

Gary Kynoch, H-Net reviews Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy by Adam Ashforth

Many Northern academics, along with their African counterparts, are reluctant to engage with the concept of witchcraft for fear of appearing to label Africans as primitive. However, like it or…

Thailand: Local wisdom protects hometown from the onslaught of globalisation

Published on June 27, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, culture traditions, ecology nature, globalisation

Bangkok Post

“We fishermen have knowledge about the Mekong based on our time-tested experiences,” said Oon Thammawong, 57, of Ban Had Bai in Chiang Rai’s Chiang Khong district. “But policy-makers dismiss us as simple folk so that they can dismiss our voices and impose their policies, which only benefit businessmen but destroy our way of life.”

Over the past five years, in the wake of the building of dams and the blasting of rapids in China, the condition of the Mekong as it flows through Chiang Khong has drastically deteriorated. Like other communities, the Bangkok-oriented education and political systems have robbed the locals of their historical roots and pride in their culture.

Local pride swelled, however, when a group of residents took on the role of researchers to profile Chiang Khong’s ethnographic history and document changes in their hometown. “Reconnecting with one’s past and understanding what has shaped one’s present is always an empowering process,” explained veteran anthropologist Srisakara Vallibhotama, director of the project, which is supported by the Thailand Research Fund. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
Local taboos could save the seas

Bangkok Post

"We fishermen have knowledge about the Mekong based on our time-tested experiences," said Oon Thammawong, 57, of Ban Had Bai in Chiang Rai's Chiang Khong district. "But policy-makers dismiss us as simple folk so that they can dismiss our…

Book review: Ritual praxis in modern Japan

Published on June 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, books, culture traditions, religion cosmology

The Japan Times Online

Anthropologist Satsuki Kawano in her study of various ritual practices in the city of Kamakura wishes to see religious rites as being both culturally constructed and socially generated. Kawano prefers to demonstrate that partaking in religious rituals does not necessarily involve “belief” in its ordinary sense. Rather “ritual life is not so much about individual faith as it is about securing the well-being of families and communities.” >> continue

The Japan Times Online

Rituals – mechanisms for both creating solidarity and for increasing conflict

Published on June 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, Asia, culture traditions, politics, religion cosmology, Us and Them

Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research

Dutch-sponsored researcher Farsijana Adeney-Risakotta analysed the dynamics of the conflict between Muslims and Christians in the Molucca Islands. The anthropologist proposes that rituals play an important role in this. Ritual was found to unite and mobilise people in a confrontation with real or supposed outsiders, but it also helped them to reach an agreement after the confrontation. >> continue

Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research

Seeing Africa as exceptional underestimates common experience of globalisation

Published on June 13, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, culture traditions, Us and Them

Anthropologist Christopher Davis, The Guardian

Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa has left me bewildered. As an anthropologist interested in “traditional” medicine, I was delighted to see its report’s attempt to take an Africa-centred point of view. Reading a sentence stating that “history shows African cultures to have been tremendously adaptive, absorbing a wide range of outside influences” is a relief to those of us who have tried for years to make this point.

But I was frustrated by what seems to be our incapacity to escape our own mental traditions – the casts of mind that always seem to come into play when we imagine Africa. Nowhere were these more in evidence than in the report’s discussion of the role of religion in African social life. The risk is of the return of the 19th-century idea of “primitive mentality”: the idea that “they” are less rational than “we” are. >> continue

>> see comments by Kerim Friedman /Savage Minds

Anthropologist Christopher Davis, The Guardian

Tony Blair's Commission for Africa has left me bewildered. As an anthropologist interested in "traditional" medicine, I was delighted to see its report's attempt to take an Africa-centred point of view. Reading a sentence stating that…