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Journal ArticleDOI

A Shared Intentional Space of Witch-Hunt and Sacrifice

Knut Rio
- 06 Jun 2014 - 
- Vol. 79, Iss: 3, pp 320-341
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TLDR
In this paper, the authors argue that witch-hunts can be seen to share certain aspects with the realm of sacrifice, arguing that witchhunts are the other side of sacrifice in more than one sense.
Abstract: 
In this article, the issue is whether witch-hunts can be seen to share certain aspects with the realm of sacrifice. With resource to recent developments in the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, it is argued that witchcraft is ‘the other side of sacrifice’ in more than one sense: firstly, as the witch is sacrificing its victim and breaking through to the social world from a world beyond and, secondly, as the witch-hunt is a movement with the purpose of sacrificing the accused witch for the healing of the community. The argument hinges on the alignment of the space intended by sacrifice and the space revealed by the appearance of the witch – as both articulating an engagement with ‘the very source of life’ (Hubert & Mauss 1964: 98).

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Book ChapterDOI

Introduction to Pentecostal Witchcraft and Spiritual Politics in Africa and Melanesia

Knut Rio, +2 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparative overview of the situation of Pentecostalism, witchcraft and spiritual politics in Africa and Melanesia is given, starting from the cultural specificity of witchcraft and sorcery.
Book

Mobilities of Return: Pacific Perspectives

John Taylor, +1 more
TL;DR: The notion of mobility of return mobility has emerged as a defining paradigm within the humanities and has been a much more longstanding and persistent concern as discussed by the authors, however, specific questions regarding return mobility have tended to take a back seat within more recent discussions of mobility, transnationalism and migration.
Book ChapterDOI

German Pentecostal Witches and Communists: The Violence of Purity and Sameness

Bjørn Enge Bertelsen
TL;DR: This paper investigated a commonly held view in certain peri-urban areas around Chimoio, Mozambique, that German Pentecostal pastors and missionaries, as well as German communists, have been operating as witches from the 1990s until the present time.
Book ChapterDOI

Demons, Devils, and Witches in Pentecostal Port Vila: On Changing Cosmologies of Evil in Melanesia

Annelin Eriksen, +1 more
TL;DR: In Vanuatu today, especially in urban areas, there is hectic activity aimed at sorting out the problem of sorcery and witchcraft in the new Pentecostal churches, and these churches are designed for exactly the purpose of healing and exorcism.
Journal ArticleDOI

Paradoxes of (In)security and Moral Regeneration in Vanuatu and Beyond

Tom Bratrud
- 05 Jun 2020 - 
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine some paradoxical intersections of fear, security, and morality on Ahamb Island in Vanuatu in the South Pacific and make comparisons between the situation on ahamb and the recent political and cultural crisis in the UK and USA where an increasing number of people perceive their moral order to be under threat.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

Mary Douglas, +2 more
- 01 Jul 1996 - 
TL;DR: In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Emile Durkheim set himself the task of discovering the enduring source of human social identity as discussed by the authors, and investigated what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion - totemism among the Aborigines of Australia.
Book

The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Emile Durkheim
TL;DR: In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Emile Durkheim set himself the task of discovering the enduring source of human social identity as discussed by the authors, and investigated what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion - totemism among the Aborigines of Australia.
Book

Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande

E. E. Evans-Pritchard, +1 more
TL;DR: This acknowledged masterpiece has been abridged to make it more accessible to students as mentioned in this paper, and Gillies presents the case for the relevance of the book to modern anthropologists, in her introduction.
Journal ArticleDOI

Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande

F. C. Bartlett
- 01 Aug 1937 - 
TL;DR: Evans-Pritchard as discussed by the authors showed that many of the Azande notions about witchcraft, and the ways in which the people use them, are not far removed from our own current ideas and practices about medicine and the chances of life.
Book

Violence and the Sacred

René Girard
TL;DR: Girard as discussed by the authors explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth, and argues that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred.