DOCSLIB.ORG

Adventist Responses to Witchcraft

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Adventist Responses to Witchcraft et al.: Adventist Responses to Witchcraft Published by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 2017 1 Journal of Adventistet al.: MissionAdventist Studies,Responses Vol.to Witchcraft 13 [2017], No. 1, Art. 18 The views and opinions expressed in these articles are solely those of the original authors and do not necessarily represent those of Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary. All authors assume full responsibility for the accuracy of all facts and quotations. JAMS Journal of Adventist Mission Studies Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 2017 ISSN: 1553-9881 Editor: Bruce L. Bauer Associate Editors: Cristian Dumitrescu, Wagner Kuhn, Lester Merklin Managing Editor: Andrew Tompkins Regional Editors: Kleber Gonçalves, Stefan Höschele, Sung Ik Kim, Barry Oliver, Kelvin Onongha, Olaotse Gabasiane Editorial address: JAMS, Dept. of World Mission, Berrien Springs, MI 49104-1565 Website address: www.jamsjournal.com Phone: 269.471.6505 Fax: 269.471.6202 Editorial e-mail: [email protected] Cover and Layout: Amy Rhodes Cover Photos: ©Istockphoto/VeraPetruk, @D’July/Shutterstock.com JAMS is a peer reviewed journal, published in May and November by the International Fellowship of Adventist Mission Studies, Berrien Springs, MI 49104-1500 Copyright © 2005-2016 International Fellowship of Adventist Mission Studies https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/jams/vol13/iss1/18Published by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 2017 21 i Journalet of Adventistal.: Adventist Mission Responses Studies, Vol. 13to [2017],Witchcraft No. 1, Art. 18 CONTENTS Editorial v Cultural Foundations for Fear of Witchcraft in Africa 1 Bruce L. Bauer What Attracts People to Occult and Witchcraft Practices? 14 Pardon Mwansa Relationship between Social and Economic Status and Witchcraft in Africa 23 Christopher R. Mwashinga Witchcraft Accusations: Destroying Family, Community, and Church 33 Boubakar Sanou African Pentecostalism and Its Relationship to Witchcraft Beliefs and Accusations: Biblical Responses to a Pernicious Problem Confronting the Adventist Church in Africa 45 Kelvin Onongha How Curses Impact People and Biblical Responses 55 Passmore Hachalinga Overview and Response to Passmore Hachalinga’s Paper 64 Zebron Ncube The Threat of Pluralism, Postmodernism, and Dual Allegiance to the Development of Biblical Spirituality in Africa 66 Sampson Nwaomah The Cosmology of Witchcraft in the African Context: Implications for Mission and Theology 83 Samuel Lumwe Needed: A New Metric to Assess Adventist Mission 98 Bruce L. Bauer Publishedhttp://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/jams/vol13/iss1/18 by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 2017 32 ii Journal of Adventistet al.: MissionAdventist Studies,Responses Vol.to Witchcraft 13 [2017], No. 1, Art. 18 Global Mission Issues Committee of April 5, 2016 Recommendations 108 Mission within Societies: Revisiting the People Groups Methodology 112 Benjamin M. Bonilla López Missions in Our Backyard: Evangelism Among Newly Arrived Hispanics to the United States 126 Carlos G. Martin The Childless Missionary Woman: A Plea for Understanding 137 Madelyn Mandell BOOK REVIEW—The State of Missiology Today: Global Innovations in Christian Witness 141 BOOK REVIEW— The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business 144 https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/jams/vol13/iss1/18Published by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 2017 43 iii Journalet of Adventistal.: Adventist Mission Responses Studies, Vol. 13to [2017],Witchcraft No. 1, Art. 18 Publishedhttp://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/jams/vol13/iss1/18 by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 2017 54 iv Journal of Adventistet al.: MissionAdventist Studies,Responses Vol.to Witchcraft 13 [2017], No. 1, Art. 18 Copyright 2014© Editorial The Fourth Adventist Mission in Africa Conference was held in the seminary chapel at Andrews University from October 13-15, 2016 with the theme “Biblical Responses to Witchcraft in Africa.” The overall aim of the conference was to engage Adventist leaders in a serious discussion concerning the causes, fear of, and biblical responses to witchcraft with the goal to reduce fear and dual allegiance among Adventist members in Africa. Many of the articles in this issue of the Journal of Adventist Mission Studies were presented at that conference. Recently in an African country a local Seventh-day Adventist church dropped 300 people from membership because of their involvement in a witch-cleansing ceremony. Pardon Mwansa’s article also highlights addi- tional case studies of Adventists who continue to allow the fear of witch- craft to warp their futures and rob them of hope. He also mentioned the sad case where several successful Adventist businessmen were found to carry charms and amulets for protection from evil spiritual forces. These stories highlight again that the discipleship process used in bringing peo- ple into the Adventist Church has been incomplete at best and many times has sought for quick evangelistic results instead of grounding people firmly in the protection and hope of Jesus Christ. Two articles deal with people groups. Bruce Bauer’s article titled, “Needed: A New Metric to Assess Adventist Mission” was first presented at the Global Mission Issues Committee on April 6, 2016 in Silver Spring, Maryland. That committee subsequently voted to begin using people groups as the metric of choice to better gauge the success or failure of Adventist mission. The official action in this regard is also incorporated in this issue. Benjamin Lopez’s article titled, “Mission within Societies: Re- visiting the People Group Methodology” stresses the importance of doing mission with a focus on people groups. One additional bit of information you can help others learn about is that the Journal of Adventist Mission Studies is now available on-line in full text with no password or subscription needed. It can be accessed at http:// digitalcommons.andrews.edu/jams/ Bruce L. Bauer, editor https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/jams/vol13/iss1/18Published by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 2017 65 v Journalet of Adventistal.: Adventist Mission Responses Studies, Vol. 13to [2017],Witchcraft No. 1, Art. 18 Publishedhttp://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/jams/vol13/iss1/18 by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 2017 76 Journal of Adventistet al.: MissionAdventist Studies,Responses Vol.to Witchcraft 13 [2017], No. 1, Art. 18 1 BRUCE L. BAUER Cultural Foundations for Fear of Witchcraft in Africa Introduction In recent years hundreds of people have lost their lives after being accused of being a witch. In Limpopo Province in South Africa alone more than 600 people were killed between 1996 and 2001 after being accused of being involved in witchcraft (ter Haar 2007:4). This is not just a South Africa problem since throughout sub-Sahara Africa (see Akrong 2007; Bongmba 2007; Okon 2012) lynchings, exile, and ostracism are typical responses aimed at those accused of witchcraft activity. Such violent responses are indicative of the fear witchcraft imposes on much of the population of Africa. This article seeks to answer questions concerning the cultural founda- tions that produce so much fear that people are willing to lynch and ex- ile family members and other accused witches, fear that allows otherwise committed Christians to carry protective devices obtained from diviners and other religious practitioners, and fear that causes so much disorien- tation and disequilibrium among African Traditional Religionists, Chris- tians, and Muslims alike. Definitions Before getting into the paper it is important to define several terms that will be used throughout. Witchcraft: Witchcraft is not an easy term to define, for it has both negative and at least neutral connotations. “Witchcraft is often associated with supernatural activities that are believed to bring about negative or evil consequences for individuals and families. There is an equally strong view about witchcraft that defines it in terms of a benign supernatural power” (Akrong 2007:53). Asare Opoku also defines witchcraft as “the https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/jams/vol13/iss1/18Published by Digital Commons @ Andrews2017, University, vol. 13 2017 no. 1 87 Journalet of Adventistal.: Adventist Mission Responses Studies, Vol. 13to [2017],Witchcraft No. 1, Art. 18 2 exercise or employment of esoteric power for a definite purpose, good or evil” (in Dovlo 2007:67). Positive Mystical Power: Power used “for curative, productive or pre- ventive purposes,” and is the reason why some “Africans wear, carry or keep charms, amulets, and other objects on their bodies, in their fields or homesteads. Medicine men or diviners are the manufacturers, dealers, and distributors of these articles of medicine and power” (Nyabwari and Kagema 2014:10). Negative Mystical Power: Power that “can eat away the health and souls of their victims, attack people, cause misfortune and make life uncomfort- able. Practitioners of these mystical powers are witches, wizards, sorcer- ers, evil magicians, or people with an evil eye, employing their power for antisocial and harmful acidities” (10). Sorcerer/sorceress: “A man [or woman] with magic powers, who is helped by evil spirits. A Sorcerer or sorceress uses evil spirits to cause ailments or misfortune to those targeted for attack” (Manala 2004:1496). Cultural Foundation Concerning Witchcraft in Africa There are a number of cultural assumptions concerning witchcraft that impact most African people and therefore are factors that contribute to the fear of witchcraft. Tragically these cultural
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Is Friday the 13Th an Unlucky Day?
    Is Friday the 13th an unlucky day? Posted by Jacqui Atkielski On 05/13/2016 HOLLYWOOD, MD-- Some will call today the unluckiest day of the year. If you’re a believer, try to not step on sidewalk cracks, walk under ladders, break mirrors or encounter any black cats. Fear of Friday the 13th, or paraskevidekatriaphobia, has spawned a horror movies franchise and a tradition of widespread paranoia when it comes up on the calendar. If a month starts on a Sunday, you’ll have a Friday the 13th in that month. Folklore historians say it’s difficult to determine how the taboo came to be. Many believe that it originates from the Last Supper, and the 13 guests that sat at the table on the day before the Friday on which Jesus was crucified, according to Time. What began as a Christian interpretation leads some modern Americans to avoid staying at hotel rooms with the number 13, venturing above the 13th floor of a building, and won’t sit in the 13th row of an airplane. beware of venturing up to the 13th floor of any building or try not to sit in the 13th row in airplanes. There is historic proof that people may have feared Friday the 13th, according to another Time article. On a Friday the 13th in 1307, thousands of Knights Templar were arrested on orders from King Philip IV of France because of suspicions that their secret initiation rituals made them enemies of the faith. After years of torture, they were burned at the stake.
    [Show full text]
  • The Dread Taboo, Human Sacrifice, and Pearl Harbor
    The Dread Taboo, Human Sacrifice, and Pearl Harbor RDKHennan The word taboo, or tabu, is well known to everyone, but it is especially interesting that it is one of but two or possibly three words from the Polynesian language to have been adopted by the English-speaking world. While the original meaning of the taboo was "Sacred" or "Set apart," usage has given it a decidedly secular meaning, and it has become a part of everyday speech all over the world. In the Hawaiian lan­ guage the word is "kapu," and in Honolulu we often see a sign on a newly planted lawn or in a park that reads, not, "Keep off the Grass," but, "Kapu." And to understand the history and character of the Hawaiian people, and be able to interpret many things in our modern life in these islands, one must have some knowledge of the story of the taboo in Hawaii. ANTOINETTE WITHINGTON, "The Dread Taboo," in Hawaiian Tapestry Captain Cook's arrival in the Hawaiian Islands signaled more than just the arrival of western geographical and scientific order; it was the arrival of British social and political order, of British law and order as well. From Cook onward, westerners coming to the islands used their own social­ civil codes as a basis to judge, interpret, describe, and almost uniformly condemn Hawaiian social and civil codes. With this condemnation, west­ erners justified the imposition of their own order on the Hawaiians, lead­ ing to a justification of colonialism and the loss of land and power for the indigenous peoples.
    [Show full text]
  • Death Drive in Outer Space
    TIME AND TABOO: DEATH DRIVE IN OUTER SPACE Isabel Millar Heptapods and their discontents Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory is often wrongly accused by those who do not care to take it seriously, of being a ‘humanism’ and therefore not capable of addressing the new conceptual challenges that the post-human, post-apocalyptic, post-Anthropocenic1 era may present us with. The persistent mischaracterization of psychoanalysis as somehow reducing grand theoretical, political and philosophical concerns into petty psychological questions of personal experience has meant that often the radical conceptual possibilities of psychoanalysis in both theory and praxis are missed. Having said that, the opportunities to put psychoanalysis to work outside its usual scope, even by those sympathetic to the psychoanalytic edifice, are often overlooked in favour of seemingly more well-suited theoretical frameworks2. This we see in the case of neuroscientific collaborations with AI companies for example under the auspices of Nick Bostrom’s Future of Humanity Institute, Elon Musk’s Neuralink, and the Blue Brain project among others. The challenge then is to push psychoanalysis beyond its comfortable realms and outside of the usual concerns with either the clinical subject or cultural critique of media objects and ask rather how may psychoanalysis become a tool with which we ask new theoretical questions that space travel and different modes of thought (including artificial and non-human) and their concomitant challenges presents the human subject with? Given its shared ability to engage the unconscious and allow us to experience (as dreams so often do) forms of time and space altering logic, often the way to approach these questions is through cinema.
    [Show full text]
  • Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Contest Winners
    The Gathering by Ana Reisens Adult Category, First Place In the movie we sleep fearlessly on open planes because we cannot imagine any danger more tragic than those that have already passed. For weeks we have been arriving over the earth’s broken skin, over mountains and rivers, shaking the aching flagpoles from our shoulders. Now all the priests and imams and rabbis and shamans are gathered beside the others, teachers, brothers and kings and they’re sharing recipes and cooking sweet stories over fires. Suddenly we hear a voice calling from the sky or within – or is it a radio? – and it sings of quilts and white lilies as if wool and petals were engines. It’s a lullaby, a prayer we all understand, familiar like the scent of a lover’s skin. And as we listen we remember our grandmothers’ hands, the knitted strength of staying, how silence rises like warmth from a woven blanket. And slowly the lines begin to disappear from our skin and our memories spin until we’ve forgotten the I of our own histories and everyone is holy, everyone is laughing, weeping, singing, It’s over, come over, come in. And this is it, the story, an allegory, our movie – the ending and a beginning. The producer doesn’t want to take the risk. No one will watch it, he says, but we say, Just wait. All the while a familiar song plays on the radio and somewhere in a desert far away a soldier in a tank stops as if he’s forgotten the way.
    [Show full text]
  • Euell Porter
    Euell Porter Material prepared by Maurice Alfred Biographical Sketch of Euell Porter 1910-1998 Edwin Euell Porter was born October 10, 1910 near Franklin, Texas and died September 23, 1998, in Waco Texas. He was the last of six children born to George W. and Alma Parker Porter. His parents worked a small farm outside of Franklin in Robertson County. George W. came from Missouri and was a second generation Irish immigrant. Euell’s mother was of Cajun descent with hair as “black as coal.” His twin sisters, Addis Mae and Gladys Faye, and his brothers, Richard Bland, Samuel Lewis, and George Felton, took care of their little brother almost from his birth. When Porter was about six, his mother became bedridden with influenza and he remembered his mother saying “bring that baby here and let him stand by the bed and sing for me.” Though his mother was ill, the Porter’s sang and made music each night, with his sister Addis or his brother Sam playing the piano, and the rest of the family singing. His mother’s illness became progressively worse, and she died when he was eight. After her death, the family moved to a farm near Pettaway, Texas. Their new house and farm were much larger, with one room set aside for music. In the music room there was a pump organ and a five pedal upright piano. The family continued its tradition of singing, with his sister Addis Mae playing the organ and brother Samuel Lewis playing the piano. In the early 1920’s, Porter attended a singing school in Boone Prairie and it was there he learned to read shaped notes.
    [Show full text]
  • Works Like a Charm: the Occult Resistance of Nineteenth-Century American Literature
    WORKS LIKE A CHARM: THE OCCULT RESISTANCE OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE by Noelle Victoria Dubay A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland August 2020 Abstract Works like a Charm: The Occult Resistance of Nineteenth-Century American Literature finds that the question of whether power could work by occult means—whether magic was real, in other words—was intimately tied, in post-Revolutionary America, to the looming specter of slave revolt. Through an examination of a variety of materials—trial narratives, slave codes, novels and short stories, pamphlets, popular occult ephemera—I argue that U.S. planters and abolitionists alike were animated by reports that spiritual leaders boasting supernatural power headed major rebellions across the Caribbean, most notably in British-ruled Jamaica and French-ruled Saint-Domingue. If, in William Wells Brown’s words, the conjurer or root-doctor of the southern plantation had the power to live as though he was “his own master,” might the same power be capable of toppling slavery’s regimes altogether? This question crossed political lines, as proslavery lawmakers and magistrates as well as antislavery activists sought to describe, manage, and appropriate the threat posed by black conjuration without affirming its claims to supernatural power. Works like a Charm thus situates the U.S. alongside other Atlantic sites of what I call “occult resistance”—a deliberately ambivalent phrase meant to register both the documented use of occult practices to resist slavery and the plantocracy’s resistance to the viability of countervailing powers occulted (i.e., hidden) from their regimes of knowledge—at the same time as it argues that anxiety over African-derived insurrectionary practices was a key factor in the supposed secularization of the West.
    [Show full text]
  • A History of German-Scandinavian Relations
    A History of German – Scandinavian Relations A History of German-Scandinavian Relations By Raimund Wolfert A History of German – Scandinavian Relations Raimund Wolfert 2 A History of German – Scandinavian Relations Table of contents 1. The Rise and Fall of the Hanseatic League.............................................................5 2. The Thirty Years’ War............................................................................................11 3. Prussia en route to becoming a Great Power........................................................15 4. After the Napoleonic Wars.....................................................................................18 5. The German Empire..............................................................................................23 6. The Interwar Period...............................................................................................29 7. The Aftermath of War............................................................................................33 First version 12/2006 2 A History of German – Scandinavian Relations This essay contemplates the history of German-Scandinavian relations from the Hanseatic period through to the present day, focussing upon the Berlin- Brandenburg region and the northeastern part of Germany that lies to the south of the Baltic Sea. A geographic area whose topography has been shaped by the great Scandinavian glacier of the Vistula ice age from 20000 BC to 13 000 BC will thus be reflected upon. According to the linguistic usage of the term
    [Show full text]
  • Teaching the Media with Mouse Woman: Adventures in Imaginative Education
    Teaching the Media with Mouse Woman: Adventures in Imaginative Education by Kymberley Stewart M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2004 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Curriculum Theory & Implementation Program Faculty of Education Kymberley Stewart 2014 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Summer 2014 Approval Name: Kymberley Stewart Degree: Doctor of Philosophy (Education) Title: Teaching the Media with Mouse Woman: Adventures in Imaginative Education Examining Committee: Chair: Allan MacKinnon Associate Professor Mark Fettes Senior Supervisor Associate Professor Kieran Egan Supervisor Professor Michael Ling Supervisor Senior Lecturer Lynn Fels Internal/External Examiner Associate Professor Faculty of Education David Jardine External Examiner Professor Faculty of Education University of Calgary Date Defended: August 20, 2014 ii Partial Copyright Licence iii Ethics Statement iv Abstract Concerns have been expressed for decades over the impact of an increasingly media-saturated environment on young children. Media education, however, occupies a somewhat marginal place in compulsory schooling, and its theorists and practitioners have given relatively little attention to the question of how to teach the media to elementary school children. This question is explored through an auto-ethnography and métissage spanning more than twenty years of media use, media studies, and media education. Three shifts in emphasis are particularly central to the thesis. The first is a shift from a protectionist to a more open, albeit critical stance with respect to children‘s media use. The second is a shift from conceiving of media education in terms of a pre-packaged curriculum towards the co-construction of learning experiences with the students, guided by Egan‘s theory of imaginative education.
    [Show full text]
  • Ellen G. White's Life of Christ: an Episode in the History of Early
    Andrews University Digital Commons @ Andrews University Faculty Publications Church History January 2012 Ellen G. White’s Life of Christ: An Episode in the History of Early Adventist Translation Work Denis Kaiser Andrews University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/church-history-pubs Part of the Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, History of Christianity Commons, and the Missions and World Christianity Commons Recommended Citation Kaiser, Denis, "Ellen G. White’s Life of Christ: An Episode in the History of Early Adventist Translation Work" (2012). Faculty Publications. Paper 26. http://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/church-history-pubs/26 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Church History at Digital Commons @ Andrews University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Andrews University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Spes Christiana 22–23, 2011–12, 131–148 Ellen G. White’s Life of Christ: An Episode in the History of Early Adventist Translation Work Denis Kaiser Abstract In the late 1880s and early 1890s a book on the life of Jesus Christ was published in various foreign languages in Europe and North America. Ellen G. White was given as the author of the book. It generally was known under the English working title The Life of Christ, although an English counterpart to these foreign language editions has never been published. The circum- stance of those editions raises the question of their textual basis, background, and significance. The following article shows that the Life of Christ is an adapted version of Spirit of Prophecy, vols.
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas Song, Class of 1953 Dartmouth College Oral History Program Dartmouth Community and Dartmouth's World June 20, 2013 DONI
    Thomas Song, Class of 1953 Dartmouth College Oral History Program Dartmouth Community and Dartmouth’s World June 20, 2013 DONIN: Alright. So I’m just going to say two lines to mark the date and the time. Now do you pronounce your town Habertown [Haabertown] or Habertown [Habertown]? SONG: Habertown [Haabertown]. DONIN: Okay. So today is June 20th. SONG: June 20th, yeah. DONIN: Two thousand thirteen. Alright. My name is Mary Donin and we’re here in Habertown, Pennsylvania, at the home of Thomas Song. SONG: That’s right. DONIN: Dartmouth Class of 1952. Is that right? SONG: ’53. DONIN: ’53. Sorry. Sorry about that. Okay, Thomas. Well, we’ve been waiting for this opportunity for a long time. SONG: Yeah. DONIN: So I’d like to begin by you telling us about your origins, what you were just telling me about earlier, how you were born in Japan. SONG: I was born in Japan in 1929. It was 19 years after Korea disappeared from the map. Japan invaded Korea basically and forcibly annexed it to a colony. And my parents were born during that period, just before the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905. Both of them were into an old governing class of Korea, Korean aristocracy. And my father and my mother both graduated from Japanese universities. My mother was a doctor, a gynecologist, and my father was an engineer, majored in mechanical engineering, and worked on a super express train between Dairen, Manchuria, and Harbin. At that time it was a very modern train. Thomas Song Interview DONIN: Mm-hmm.
    [Show full text]
  • Magic & Witchcraft in Africa
    A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Kohnert, Dirk Article — Accepted Manuscript (Postprint) Magic and witchcraft: Implications for Democratization and poverty-alleviating aid in Africa World Development Suggested Citation: Kohnert, Dirk (1996) : Magic and witchcraft: Implications for Democratization and poverty-alleviating aid in Africa, World Development, ISSN 0305-750X, Elsevier, Amsterdam, Vol. 24, Iss. 8, pp. 1347-1355, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0305-750X(96)00045-9 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/118614 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu Authors version – published in: World Development, vol. 24, No. 8, 1996, pp. 1347-1355 Magic and Witchcraft Implications for Democratization and Poverty-Alleviating Aid in Africa Dirk Kohnert 1) Abstract The belief in occult forces is still deeply rooted in many African societies, regardless of education, religion, and social class of the people concerned.
    [Show full text]
  • Mental Health Practice and Cultural Change in Mexico by Whitney L
    Excerpt from Transforming Therapy: Mental Health Practice and Cultural Change in Mexico by Whitney L. Duncan (Vanderbilt University Press, 2018) Introduction Storms, Sustos, and Psychiatrists Te rain poured hard, dripping of the branches into puddles. Te night was black save for the lightning, illuminating cloud cover when it struck. Flowers bowed under the weight of water. Rain, clouds, mountains, caves: so vital to stories of Oaxaca. Te Mixtecos, pueblo de la lluvia, ñuu savi, people of the rain.1 In some Mixtec pueblos caves are sites of worship, el culto de la cueva, and have names like yavi kee yuku, Cueva de la Curación, Healing Cave; or we’e dawi, Casa de la Lluvia, Rain House. Te Zapotec, Cloud People, Bene Zaa, are named “owners”—dueños , or xaan—of the hills, water, and land. Te Mixe are likely named for the Nahuatl word for rain, mixtlii. Poj ‘Enee, Tunder Wind, is a Mixe protector god of rain and fer- tility. Where was Poj ‘Enee that night? A Mixe family ran for cover, leaving on the mountainside branches they had gathered for frewood: no matter now. Te cave was dry underfoot, a relief. Te family watched the storm from the mouth of the cave, shivering. Slowly, though, the cave began to collapse; they covered their heads and screamed. Struck by a heavy stone, the mother fell to the ground. I do not know if Antonia, Mauricio, and their other family members carried their mother’s body back to their home during the storm or whether they waited. I do not know what the funeral was like, or whether there was one.
    [Show full text]