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Good evening. This is Radio
Free Beszel. I am
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Alphonse. Tonight: the
meaning of witchcraft.
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Edward Evans-Pritchard was
a British anthropologist
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who in the late 1920s and
early 1930s went to
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South Sudan and lived among
the Azande people.
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And his work on their
ideas of witchcraft
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has been extraordinarily
influential.
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What the Azande believed
was that witchcraft
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was all around. When they
experienced everyday
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misfortunes, they blamed
witchcraft.
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Evans-Pritchard gives
an example of a boy
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who goes for a walk in the
woods. Now he knows he
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has to be careful not to
hurt his foot on stumps,
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but on this particular day
he makes a mistake.
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He hits his foot on a stump
and it gashes him,
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and within a couple of days
it becomes infected.
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And that's when he and everybody
else knows that
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he must have been bewitched.
To hurt one's foot
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on a stump as normal, but
for it to be infected
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is bad luck. And that kind
of bad luck can only be
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caused by witches. Another
example that he gives
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is about a grain storehouse.
Now this grain
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storehouse is raised up on
the ground on stilts,
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and those stilts can be
eaten over time by
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termites. It's an ordinary
occurrence eventually
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for grain store houses
to collapse if
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the legs have been
eaten by termites.
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It's also normal for men
in the heat of the
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day to sit under the storehouse
for shade.
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But on this particular occasion
when the storehouse collapses
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killing some of the
people underneath,
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that's an extraordinary
coincidence.
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It must be a result of
witchcraft. Everybody
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knows it. That's how
the azande thought.
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But they didn't respond
the way Christians,
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Europeans, Puritan New
Englanders did by trying
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to find witches and burn
them or kill them.
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They didn't see witches
as spawn of Satan.
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They actually saw witchcraft
as something that was
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inherited. Boys inherited
it from their fathers;
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girls inherited it from
their mothers. And it
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could actually be detected
physically after death.
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If someone was suspected
of being a witch an
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autopsy by an expert could
determine the truth
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by examining the intestines
and looking
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for specific kinds
of black marks.
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They could confirm whether
someone was
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a witch, or confirm
that they weren't.
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So of course virtually
anybody could be a
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witch. Communities were
full of witches.
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Anybody living among the
Azande knew that some
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of their friends or neighbors
or even people
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in their family might be
witches. So if your
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community is partly witches
you can't afford
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to just eliminate them. You
can't afford to go to
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war against them. You have
to find a way to get
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along. And that's what the
Azande would do. They
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didn't go hunting for witches
for no reason - no
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they only went trying to
find if they were being
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bewitched, if they had a
particular problem, if
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it was clear that they were
the victim of a witch.
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Then they would go, usually
to the poison oracle.
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The poison oracle would
entail getting
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a chicken and then naming
suspects. And
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the suspects would be
friends, neighbours,
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maybe sister wives -
people who might be
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jealous or envious or
have some kind of
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dislike for the person
who is the victim.
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And then the chicken would
be given poison,
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and depending on whether
the chicken died
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you would know whether that
person was actually a witch.
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Now the next step was
not for the victim
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to go and confront the
witch face to face
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that was too risky the
witch might actually
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use his power to do something
bad to the victim
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and the community
couldn't afford
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that kind of confrontation.
confrontation.
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So instead an intermediary
was sent. The
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intermediary would take
a wing from the
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chicken and he'd place it
in front of the door
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of the accused witch. And
then he would call out
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the witch and tell him
that the poison oracle
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had identified him as bewitching
the victim,
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and he would ask him to stop.
Imagine if you're in
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that situation. You believe
in witchcraft. There's
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evidence of it - after all
when people die, we
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can find out physically whether
they were witches.
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And other witches have been
found before. People
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are bewitched all the time.
It's an ordinary
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part of life. Mut when you
are accused, you're
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shocked. You never thought
you were a witch.
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But maybe you are. Maybe
you inherited that
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witchcraft capability,
and although you don't
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know about it, although
you don't get together
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with the other witches
in the dark of night
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in order to bewitch people,
maybe you actually
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thought bad thoughts about
the victim. And your
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capacity for witchcraft meant
that the person was
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actually hurt. That could
be it. And if you say
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I'm not a witch, you know
nobody will believe
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you, because the poison
oracle never lies.
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So instead what you
say is, I didn't
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intend to do anything
bad to the victim,
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and I'm certainly not going
to think anything bad
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about them now. And then
there's a ritual that
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you would do to indicate
that as a witch you're
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going to stop. You would
take water into your
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mouth and you'd blow it over
the chicken wing. And
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then the issue was resolved.
Everybody's happy.
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The victim has an explanation
for what happened
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to him. He knows why he
got hurt. And the witch
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has discharged his part
of the problem as well.
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The case is closed the community
continues on.
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Witchcraft here is performing
a very important
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function. It's providing
a social explanation
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when things go wrong. When
something bad happens
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to you, when bad things
happen to good people,
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it's not very satisfying to
say it's just bad luck
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and there's no reason. Human
beings want a reason.
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We feel cut adrift if
there's no reason. In
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fact, the idea of there
being no reason is the
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foundation of H. P. Lovecraft's
horror fiction.
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The idea of cosmic horror
is that there are no
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gods. The universe simply
does not care about
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humanity. And Lovecraft
and many of his readers
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found that terrifying. Well,
the Azande have a
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solution. There are witches.
They live among us.
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They cause our misfortunes.
And we have a remedy.
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We have a way for dealing
with that problem that
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does not disrupt the community.
Evans-Pritchard
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said that in his time
among the Azande,
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living as much as he could
like them, he found
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that the material everyday
evidence of witchcraft
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was so overwhelming that
he started to believe
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it himself. He had difficulty
reminding himself
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that in fact there
are no witches,
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that witchcraft
is not real.
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Now i know a lot of modern
people would say, oh
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no, that's just myth and
superstition. But I want
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to just give one other little
piece of evidence
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that the Azande were not
irrational at all.
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For when they wanted to be
absolutely sure about
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what the poison oracle
was saying they would
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do it twice. But the key
is, they expected the
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result with the second chicken
to be the opposite
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of the first. That's a very
clever way of double
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checking to make sure that
the mechanism really is
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working as an oracle and
it's not simply that the
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poison is too powerful and
would kill any chicken,
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for example. These people
were thoughtful, they
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were intelligent, they had
evidence around them
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all the time that witchcraft
happened. And it
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solved a social and
psychological problem. How
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are we so different? Rene
Girard in fact, in
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his work on the scapegoat,
is partly inspired
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by Evans-Pritchard's work
on the Azande. Girard
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describes how the scapegoat
ritual addresses
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a similar problem. The
scapegoat provides a
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social explanation for
why bad things happen,
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and it provides a ritual
for solving it. Although
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obviously it's a much more
violent and destructive
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ritual than the Azande
tradition of killing
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a chicken and then asking
somebody to stop.
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Given all of this, should
we think that we are
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immune? After all, we have
the same need for
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closure when something
really bad happens.
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Not to say simply that
it's just random,
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but to have a rational
social explanation.
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When we talk about conspiracy
theories that's
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what we're talking about.
But who's to say that
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our society in general
does not accept things
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similar to conspiracy theories
in order to give
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social explanations for
bad things happening?
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This episode actually leads
into a discussion of
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that in the next episode.
In effect, this is the
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third in a series of four
episodes talking about
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race and racism in America.
The first episode
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talked about the invention
of white privilege.
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The second gave a critique
of the sociological
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idea of social construction
to try to show how
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social constructions are
actually anchored in
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real practices and interactions
and relationships
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- and witchcraft among the
Azande is exactly that.
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Witchcraft isn't real in
the sense that human
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beings can bewitch other
people, but it is real
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in the sense that it's actually
a phenomenon in
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a society that changes the
relationships among
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people, that dictates that
one participate in
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certain rituals, that solves
certain problems for
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the society, for individuals,
for the community.
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In that sense witchcraft
actually is real.
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It really is socially
constructed in the
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way I talked about in
the previous episode.
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And next episode I'm going
to take that and talk
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specifically about race.
This isn't my idea:
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this connection was drawn
by a couple of
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Afro-American scholars, Barbara
and Karen fields,
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sisters, who wrote a book
called Racecraft
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and that's going to be
my topic next time.
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This is Alphonse for Radio
Free Beszel. www.beszel.ca.
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Good night.
