Reading: Evans-Pritchard, "Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events"
Luhrmann, Persuasions of the Witch's Craft, chap. 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 21

1. What, according to Evans-Pritchard, can witchcraft explain for the Azande? What can't it explain?

2. Evans-Pritchard is considered a functionalist anthropologist. What about his analysis of Azande witchcraft seems functionalist?

3. What does Luhrmann mean by "interpretive drift"? How does it link interpretation, experience, and rationalization? Do you find her explanation convincing? Why or why not?

4. What ethnographic methods does Luhrmann use? What kinds of relationships does she have with her informants?

5. To conduct her research, Luhrmann needed to acquire access to certain "secret" groups and practices. How does she balance her need to describe these secrets and analyze them with her ethical responsibility to protect her informants' identities and her personal responsibility to them as friends? What does this suggest to you about the ethical issues involved in fieldwork? How would you conduct a similar ethnography?

6. Luhrmann asserts that her description of interpretive drift, as well as the assertion that belief is fuzzy and not coherent, applies not just to witches in England, but to many different societies, such as Trobriand islanders or Amazonian Indians. What assumptions about individual psychology, behavior, and the relationship between individuals and their societies underlie this assertion?

 

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