Citation

Sasaki S. Jpn. Rev. Cult. Anthropol. 2006; 7: 3-26.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

Throughout Africa, societies are found in which the practice of witchcraft confessions is observed. This paper provides ethnographic descriptions of witchcraft confessions among the Ejagham and other Cross River societies of the Cameroon-Nigeria border, which offer a key to reconsidering the interrelationship among witchcraft, morality and attitude of people toward witchcraft in Africa, and investigates the process that leads people to such confessions. The comparative typological classification of African witchcraft and societies proposed by Mary DOUGLAS will be revisited. This paper also reconsiders the issue of witchcraft and social equalization, thereby pointing out in more general terms certain risks and violence that are derived from strict beliefs about 'justice' related to 'morality'. Through these descriptions and analyses, I would like to suggest one approach which enables us to translate and interpret African witchcraft as something common to all human societies in present-day world, while reevaluating certain advantages of social functionalistic interpretations which have been routinely criticized by some recent anthropological discourses.