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Ray Abrahams - A Modern Witch Hunt Among The Lango Of Uganda (49.0 Kb)

Cover of Ray Abrahams's Book A Modern Witch Hunt Among The Lango Of UgandaBook downloads: 206
The material presented in this paper was collected in 1967 while I was carrying out research in Labwor, Northern Uganda, It concerns events which took place at that time in the neighbouring area of Lango District, the home region of President Obote. For a variety of reasons, I did not investigate these events in great detail and my information on them is incomplete in a number of important respects. At the time, I was anxious to complete my own work in Labwor and I was also aware that I could easily put this work and indeed ... More >>>Note that, unfortunately, not all my books can be downloaded due to the restrictions of copyright. However, most of the books on this site do not have copyright restrictions. If you find any copyright violation, please contact me at . I am very attentive to the issue of copyright and try to avoid any violations, but on the other hand to help all fans of magic to get access to information.
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Category 1:  Witch Hunts
Category 2:  Wicca and Witchcraft
Category 3: 
Author:      Ray Abrahams
Format:      eBook
The material presented in this paper was collected in 1967 while I was carrying out research in Labwor, Northern Uganda, It concerns events which took place at that time in the neighbouring area of Lango District, the home region of President Obote. For a variety of reasons, I did not investigate these events in great detail and my information on them is incomplete in a number of important respects. At the time, I was anxious to complete my own work in Labwor and I was also aware that I could easily put this work and indeed myself, at serious risk if I began to take too clear and direct an interest in a potentially explosive issue in a District for which I did not have official Uganda Government research clearance. It is moreover quite unlikely that such clearance could have been obtained. In spite of the thinness of my data, I have thought it worthwhile to present it here for two main sets of reasons. Firstly Audrey Richards, to whose memory this volume is dedicated, was herself one of the very first anthropologists to document and analyse an African witch-finding movement (Richards, 1935) and she had additionally a strong and lasting interest in Uganda. Secondly, a1 though the events which I discuss here were the subject of letters to and articles in newspapers, they have never to my knowledge been the subject of an academic publication. Perhaps it is not too much to hope that my, albeit fragmentary, discussion of them here may tempt someone to embark on a more detailed study of them in the future. It is rather ironic in this regard that one of the more recent studies of the Lango (Curley, 1973) explicitly eschews discussion of witchcraft and sorcery on the grounds that they are not of great significance in that area. Curley's fieldwork was completed only a few months before the movement in question broke out, and he had clearly not kept in close touch with subsequent events. (Ray Abrahams)

About Author:

Dr Abrahams is retired from a full-time position in the University Department of Social Anthropology, but continues to teach Churchill undergraduates. He has carried out field research in East Africa, Finland and Estonia. His research interests include vigilantism and other features of relations between local communities and the State, post-Soviet society, witchcraft, family property and personal identity.

Ray Abrahams College positions:

1981 - Director of Studies - Archaeology & Anthropology
1969 - 1999 Teaching Fellow
1975 - 1986 Tutor

Some Ray Abrahams's publications (not readily available online):

"Two East African Entrepreneurs", Cambridge Anthropology, 12, 1, 1-14, 1987.
"Edmund Leach. Some early memories", Cambridge Anthropology, 13, 3, 19-30, 1989-90. (This personal memoir of my first teacher in anthropology was written for the Cambridge Anthropology memorial volume for Edmund Leach. For a recent generous comment on it, see Tambiah. S. Edmund Leach: an Anthropological Life, CUP. 2002, p.57-8.)

"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose?" in Shapiro (ed) On the Generation and Maintenance of the Person, Special Issue No.1 The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 131-46, 1991. (A Finnish version of this paper on aspects of organ transplantation was published in Journal of Social Medicine, Helsinki, 1991. The paper was part of a 70th birthday festschrift for John Barnes.)
"Villagers and the State among the Baloney?", Cambridge Anthropology, 17, 1. (An autobiographical discussion of the development of, and connections between, my research interests 1957-94.)

"The Vigilantes Ride Again",Cambridge Anthropology, 23, 2, 67-8, 2003.(A short comment on the Iraq war looked at as a piece of international vigilantism. I was interested to see in November 2008 that a senior British legal figure had come to a similar conclusion.)

"Isaac Schapera - recollections and thoughts", Cambridge Anthropology, 24, 1, 53-6, 2004. (Since publishing this paper shortly after his death, I have come across an interesting interview given by Schapera to Jean and John Comaroff [Comaroff J. and J., Schapera I. "On the Founding Fathers, Fieldwork and Functionalism: A Conversation with Isaac Schapera", American Ethnologist, 15, 3, 554-65,1986]. There, in sharp contrast to his 1953 paper, and with possibly playful hyperbole, he is quite dismissive of 'comparative anthropology', suggesting it is liable to eliminate "everything but the lowest common denominators - and then you miss everything worthwhile, don't you?" (p.562). It will be clear that I myself prefer to seek a viable middle way between undue abstraction on the one hand and ideographic excess on the other.)

"A Modern Witch-hunt among the Lango of Uganda", Cambridge Anthropology, 10, 1, 32-44, 1985. (This paper was written as a memorial tribute to Audrey Richards, my main Ph.D supervisor and a pioneer analyst of such phenomena. In retrospect, I might sensibly have made more comparative use of its disturbing material on the treatment of suspects than I have done in subsequent publications on vigilantism and witchcraft. A further point of comparative interest is its reference to local fears that increased travel by labour migrants and others facilitates the acquisition of ever more powerful medicines for sorcery.)

"The Name of the Game", Cambridge Anthropology, 11, 2, 15-20, 1987. (A critical commentary on, and co-published with, a paper by Leach on ethnography as fiction.)

"Fortune's Last Theorem", Cambridge Anthropology, 23, 1, 60-2, 2002. (This brief paper, written with Huon Wardle, recalls a little known contribution which the eccentric and enigmatic anthropologist Reo Fortune made to the study of prime numbers. More accurately termed 'Fortune's Conjecture', it came as a considerable surprise to Cambridge number theorists in the 1960s.)

"Vigilantism: further thoughts on comparative study" (forthcoming in a volume edited by Thomas Kirsch and Tilo Grtz on African Vigilantes and Militias, based on papers presented to a workshop of the German Anthropological Association Conference, in Halle, October 2005. The paper explores possibilities for comparison between local forms of vigilante organization and pays particular attention to differences between 'sungusungu' groups in the Nyamwezi/Sukuma area of Tanzania,where the groups first began as a grass roots development, and among the Kuria of the Tanzania/Kenya border area to which they were imported largely through governmental influence. A factor of some importance appears to be differences between indigenous society and culture in the two areas.)