Magic and witchcraft: Implications for Democratization and poverty-alleviating aid in Africa

Dirk Kohnert

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 1996, vol. 24, issue 8, 1347-1355

Abstract: The belief in occult forces is still deeply rooted in many African societies, regardless of education, religion, and social class of the people concerned. According to many Africans its incidence is even increasing due to social stress and strain caused (among others) by the process of modernization. Most often magic and witchcraft accusations work to the disadvantage of the poor and deprived, but under particular circumstances they become a means of the poor in the struggle against oppression by establishing “cults of counterviolence”. Magic and witchcraft beliefs have increasingly been instrumentalized for political purposes. Apparently they can be used to support any kind of political system, whether despotic or democratic. The belief in occult forces has serious implications for development cooperation. Development projects, which constitute arenas of strategic groups in their struggle for power and control over project resources, are likely to add further social stress to an already endangered precarious balance of power, causing witchcraft accusations to flourish. In addition, witchcraft accusations may serve as indicators of hidden social conflicts which are difficult to detect by other methods.

Keywords: Occult belief systems; Africa; Development aid; poverty alleviation; democratization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N3 N37 N97 O17 O2 O55 Z12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/118614/1/K ... uthors%20version.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Magic and Witchcraft Implications for Democratization and Poverty-Alleviating Aid in Africa (2022)
Working Paper: Magic and Witchcraft: Implications for Democratization and Poverty-Alleviating Aid in Africa (2022)
Journal Article: Magic and witchcraft: Implications for democratization and poverty-alleviating aid in Africa (1996)
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:zbw:espost:118614

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().