Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande

By E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Eva Gillies,

Book cover of Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande

Book description

This acknowledged masterpiece has been abridged to make it more accessible to students. In her introduction, Eva Gillies presents the case for the relevance of the book to modern anthropologists.

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1 author picked Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

In translucent prose, Evans-Pritchard shows how the belief in witchcraft and oracles held together with the world-view of the Azande people of the former Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. They reinforced each other, so that if a prophecy failed to identify a witch, it was attributed to a fault in the performance of a ritual, and the power of ritual was reinforced rather than undermined. The Azande were empiricists and discussed the evidence of witchcraft in rational exchanges with Evans-Pritchard. He recreates their dialogue convincingly, often giving them the upper hand. When they asked him to explain why a granary collapsed on a


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