Witchcraft Beliefs, Social Relations, and Development

Boris Gershman

No 2021-01, Working Papers from American University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Beliefs in witchcraft, or the ability of certain people to intentionally cause harm via supernatural means, have been documented across societies all over the world. Extensive ethnographic research on this phenomenon over the past century explored the many roles of witchcraft beliefs in communities highlighting both their social functions and detrimental consequences. Yet, empirical evidence based on systematic statistical analyses or experiments has been lacking until very recently. This chapter reviews the nascent literature on witchcraft beliefs in economics and other quantitative social sciences and summarizes the main directions and results of this research to date. The major themes discussed in the chapter include social relations, economic development, and institutions in their connection to witchcraft beliefs.

Keywords: Culture; Development; Institutions; Religion; Social capital; Witchcraft (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 O10 O31 O43 O57 Z10 Z12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-gro, nep-his and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.17606/QJ3E-6334 First version, 2021

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:amu:wpaper:2021-01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from American University, Department of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Meal ().