Evans Pritchard Quotes

Anyone can produce a new fact; the thing is to produce a new idea.

Memory, Evans-Pritchard reasoned, was an indirect expression of power. The Arenos faced structural amnesia about something else and linked it to a different source of power: the Louisiana Chemical Association, the Society of the Plastics Industry, the Vinyl Institute, Shell Oil, PPG Industries, and their leaders in government. Spokesmen for this source of power drew the popular imagination to the exciting economic fugure. The Arenos felt that their silent bayou, their buried kin, their dead trees were forgotten.

Harold adds an important idea to that of Evans-Pritchard. "The state always seems to come down on the little guy," he notes. "Take this bayou. If your motorboat leaks a little gas into the water, the warden'll write you up. But if companies leak thousands of gallons of it and kill all the life here? The state lets them go. If you shoot an endangered brown pelican, they'll put you in jail. But if a company kills the brown pelican by poisoning the fish he eats? They let it go. I think they overregulate the bottom because it's harder to regulate the top.

In fact, communism is the foundation of all human sociability. It is what makes society possible. There is always an assumption that anyone who is not an enemy can be expected to act on the principle of “from each according to their abilities,” at least to an extent: for example, if one needs to figure out how to get somewhere and the other knows the way. We so take this for granted, in fact, that the exceptions are themselves revealing. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, an anthropologist who in the 1920s carried out research among the Nuer, Nilotic pastoralists in southern Sudan, reports his discomfiture when he realized that someone had intentionally given him wrong directions: On one occasion I asked the way to a certain place and was deliberately deceived. I returned in chagrin to camp and asked the people why they had told me the wrong way. One of them replied, “You are a foreigner, why should we tell you the right way? Even if a Nuer who was a stranger asked us the way we would say to him, ‘You continue straight along that path,’ but we would not tell him that the path forked. Why should we tell him? But you are now a member of our camp and you are kind to our children, so we will tell you the right way in future.”12

Today’s children, unfortunately in my opinion, have little, if any, interest in times past and submerse themselves in the never ending advancements of technology. Long gone are the days of hanging around dark street corners having harmless fun and re-kindling stories from folklore and tradition to keep heritage alive. Computers games and mobile technology have filled the void. Age old stories are becoming lost to the new generations and the story of the poltergeist was just a distant memory for the ageing and diminishing local inhabitants who witnessed first-hand just what the Pritchard family witnessed. The Black Monk it seemed had taken his last bow, gracefully, to the curtain call. The audience of believers was gone and there was no reason for the manifestation to continue.

Let us be clear on one matter: the theories that were proposed in the nineteenth century for the most part were intended to be “scholarly,” and, unfortunately, that term implied that they were intended to rule out a supernatural origin of religion. As Evans-Pritchard says: We should, I think, realize what was the intention of many of these scholars if we are to understand their theoretical constructions. They sought, and found, in primitive religions a weapon, which could, they thought, be used with deadly effect against Christianity. If primitive religion could be explained away as an intellectual aberration, as a mirage induced by emotional stress, or by its social function, it was implied that the higher religions could be discredited and disposed of in the same way.1

That every Nuer considers himself as good as his neighbor is evident in their every movement. They strut about like lords of the earth, which, indeed, they consider themselves to be. There is no master and no servant in their society, but only equals who regard themselves as Gods noblest creation...even the suspicion of an order riles a man and he either does not carry it out or he carries it out in a casual and dilatory manner that is more insulting than a refusal.

In his classic account of the life of the Nuer of the Sudan, British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1940:103) noted that the Nuer have no expression equivalent to “time” in our language, and they cannot, therefore, as we can, speak of time as though it were something actual, which passes, can be wasted, can be saved, and so forth. I don’t think they ever experience the same feeling of fighting against time because their points of reference are mainly the activities themselves, which are generally of a leisurely character. Events follow a logical order, but they are not controlled by an abstract system, there being no autonomous points of reference to which activities have to conform with precision. Nuer are fortunate.

Evans-Pritchard’s confession reveals the way the power advantage of the subject whose definition of a situation prevails in the larger social context (in this case the majority of the Azande) shapes the environment and behavioral constraints that impact the subject who, although does not define the situation the same way, has to behave according to the former subject’s definition in order to obtain the needed resources (in this case Evans-Pritchard, who is interested in gaining knowledge of the social organization of the Azande). For Evans-Pritchard, while living among the Azande, the actual world is as if there were magical forces around, true oracles and evil witches, as his whole daily life is structured around those nonexistent entities.

One could slash private debt by 100pc of GDP, boost growth, stabilise prices, and dethrone bankers all at the same time. It could be done cleanly and painlessly, by legislative command, far more quickly than anybody imagined. The conjuring trick is to replace our system of private bank-created money -- roughly 97pc of the money supply -- with state-created money. Specifically, it means an assault on "fractional reserve banking". If lenders are forced to put up 100pc reserve backing for deposits, they lose the exorbitant privilege of creating money out of thin air. The nation regains sovereign control over the money supply. There are no more banks runs, and fewer boom-bust credit cycles. So there is a magic wand after all.

The facts do not explain themselves or only partly explain themselves. They can only be explained fully ifone takes witchcraft into consideration.

We shall give a false account of Zande philosophy if we say that they believe witchcraft to be the sole cause of phenomena.

But he knows besides why these two events occurred at a precisely similar moment in time and space.

Witchcraft explains the coincidence of these two happenings.

I hope I am not expected to point out that the Zande cannot analyse his doctrines as I have done for him.

But it is possible to extract the principles oftheir thought from dozens of situations in which witchcraft is called upon to explain happeningsand from dozens ofother situations in which failure is attributed to some other cause.

Zande belief in witchcraft in no way contradicts empirical knowledge of cause and effect.

They are foreshortening the chain of events, and in a particular social situation are selecting the cause that is socially relevant and neglecting the rest.

Since Azande recognize plurality ofcauses, and it is the social situation that indicates the relevant one, we can understand why the doctrine of witchcraft is not used to explain every failure and misfortune. It sometimes happens that the social situation demands a common-sense, and not a mystical, judgement of cause.

the Zande sees no difficulty in explaining what appears to us to be most illogical behaviour.

Hence we see that witchcraft has its own legic, its own rules of thought, and that these do not exclude natural causation.

We ought rather to ask whether primitive peoples perceive any difference between the happenings which we, the observers of their culture, class as n"atural and the happenings which we class as mystical.

The Zande notion of witchcraft is incompatible with our ways of thought.

The Zande actualizes these beliefs rather than intellectualizes them, and their tenets are expressed in socially 32 Witchcraft controlled behaviour rather than in doctrines. Hence the difficulty of discussing the subject of witchcraft with Azande, for their ideas are imprisoned in action and cannot be cited to explain and justify action.

There is no elaborate and consistent representation ofwitchcraft that will account in detail for its workings,

In truth Azande experience feelings about witchcraft rather than ideas, for their intellectual concepts of it are weakand they know better what to do when attacked by it than how to explain it. Their response is action and not analysis

The Zande actualizes these beliefs rather than intellectualizes them, and their tenets are expressed in socially

In such circumstances a Zande laments his misfortune and blames witchcraft in general, but is unlikely to take steps to identify any particular witch since the man will either deny his responsibility or will say that he is not conscious of having caused anyone an injury, and that ifhehas done so unwittingly he is. sorry, and in either case the sufferer will be no better off.

Nine times out of ten he does nothing. He is a philosopher and knows that in life the ill must be taken with the good.

WE must now view witchcraft in a more objective manner, for it is a mode of behaviour as well as a mode of thought.

We must remember that they must avoid an open quarrel with the witch, since this will only aggravate him and perhaps cause him to kill his victim outright,

While Kamanga was slowly being initiated by one ·practitioner,

The other practitioners understand his motives, but witch-doctors never contradict one another at a public seance; they present a united front to the uninitiated.)

We have to remember, moreover, that the audience is not observing simply a rhythmic performance, but also a ritual enactment of magic.

Since accusations of witchcraft arise from personal enmities it will at once be seen why certain people are left outofconsideration

A witch attacks a man when motivated by hatred, envy, jealousy, and greed. Usually if he has no enmity towards a man he will not attack him.

There is no fixed attitude towards witches

his misfortunes must be accounted for

.People are most likely to quarrel with those with whom, they come into closest contact when the contact is not softened by sentiments of kinship or is not buffered by distinctions of age, sex, and class.

the notion is a function of situations of misfortune, and, secondly, that it is a function of personal relations.

The notion of witchcraft is not only a function of misfortune and of personal relations but also comprises moral judgement.

about what cannot normally be tested

manner in which witches carry out their exploits is a mystery to Azande,

Nevertheless, it did no harm to blow water. He said that it was not only polite to do so when requested but also showed an absence of ill-feeling which ought to characterize all good citizens. It is better for an innocent man to comply with good grace.

for even ifhe is certain ofhis innocence he will perform this simple ceremony, since it is the proper thing for a gentleman to do;

it is not only laid down by custom that he must blowout water, but the phrases in which he is expected to express his regret are more or less stereotyped, and even the earnest and apologetic tone of voice in which he utters them is determined by tradition ..

These suggestions would not be made in public.

In fact, communism is the foundation of all human sociability. It is what makes society possible. There is always an assumption that anyone who is not an enemy can be expected to act on the principle of “from each according to their abilities,” at least to an extent: for example, if one needs to figure out how to get somewhere and the other knows the way. We so take this for granted, in fact, that the exceptions are themselves revealing. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, an anthropologist who in the 1920s carried out research among the Nuer, Nilotic pastoralists in southern Sudan, reports his discomfiture when he realized that someone had intentionally given him wrong directions: On one occasion I asked the way to a certain place and was deliberately deceived. I returned in chagrin to camp and asked the people why they had told me the wrong way. One of them replied, “You are a foreigner, why should we tell you the right way? Even if a Nuer who was a stranger asked us the way we would say to him, ‘You continue straight along that path,’ but we would not tell him that the path forked. Why should we tell him? But you are now a member of our camp and you are kind to our children, so we will tell you the right way in future.”12 The Nuer are constantly engaged in feuds; any stranger might well turn out to be an enemy there to scout out a good place for an ambush, and it would be unwise to give such a person useful information.

I T may have occurred to many readers that there is an analogy between the Zande concept of witchcraft and our own concept I,of luck.

Since-Azande believe that witches may at any time bring sickness and.death upon them they are anxious to establish and maintain contact with these evil powers and by counteracting them control their own destiny.

The Zande acts in a like manner, but since in his beliefs the chief cause of any misfortune is witchcraft, he concentrates his attention upon this factor of supreme importance. They and we use rational means for controlling the conditions that produce misfortune, but we conceive of these conditions differently from them.

But when a misfortune is in process of failing upon a man, as in sickness, or is anticipated, our responses are .different to theirs. We make every effort to rid ourselves of, or elude, a misfortune by our knowledge of the objective conditions which cause it.

they have no evidence upon which to base a theory of action, they fall back upon the transcendental notion of soul.

The poison oracle does not err' is every Zande's credo,

lack of precision in identification of witchcraft

no one is interested in the question whether a man is a witch or not.

To a Zande this appears an entirely theoretical question and one about which he has not informed himself.

On the other hand, the corporation has an esoteric life from which the uninitiated are excluded,

The witch-doctor also gets his listeners into a suitable frame ofmind for receiving his revelations by lavish use ofprofessional dogmatism.

Princes, however jealous of each other they may be, always maintain class solidarity in opposition to their subjects and do not allow commoners to bring contempt upon any of their relatives.

At the beginning he selects to some extent the names of those persons about whom the witchdoctor is to dance, and at the end he supplies in part an interpretation of the witch-doctor's utterances from his own peculiar social circumstances and mental content. I think also that as a witch-doctor brings out his revelations bit by bit, at first, almost as suggestions, even inquiries, he watches carefully his interlocutor to observewhether his answer is in accordance with the questioner'S own suspicions. He becomes more definite when he is assured on this point.

Awitch-doctor very seldom accuses a member of the aristocracy of witchcraft,just as a commoner does not consult oracles about them.

A witch-doctor divines successfully because he says what his listener wishes him to say,

The witchdoctorand his client consciously select between them a number of persons likely to have caused sickness or loss.

dynamic meaning of witchcraft,

in Zandeland all misfortunes are due to witchcraft,

Not everyone who displays these unpleasant traits is necessarily regarded as a witch, but it is these sentiments and modes of behaviour which make people suspicious of witchcraft, so that Azande know that those who display them have the desire to bewitch, even ifthey do not possess the power to do so.

A man who threatens others with misfortune is certain to be suspected of witchcraft should the misfortunes' befall them.

they are averse from consulting oracles about influential persons

For all loss is'deemed by Azande to be due to witches.

I, too, used to react to misfortunes in the idiom of witchcraft, and it was often an effort to check this lapse into unreason.

witchcraft is misfortune

Misfortune and witchcraft are much the same to a Zande, for it is only in situations of misfortune or.ofanticipation of it that the notion of witchcraft is evoked.

procedure of oracle consultations

presentation of fowls' wings

being the socially prescribed channel of response to misfortune, and notions of ~itchcraft-activitygiving the requisite ideological background to make the response logical and coherent.

The whole point of the procedure is to put the witch in a good temper by being polite to him.

as far as convenient,

By this maxim they refer to the action of a witch when he blows from his mouth a spray ofwater on the fowl's wing which has been placed at his feet by the messenger ofa deputy. When the witch blows water on the wing he 'cools' his witchcraft. By performing this simple rite he ensures that the sick man will recover and also that he will himself escape vengeance.

Nevertheless, Azande hold very decidedly that the mere action of blowingwater is valueless in itself if the witch does not sincerely hope for the recovery of the sick man.

We saw earlier how witchcraft is a participant in all misfortunes.

their interest in witchcraft is aroused only in specific cases of misfortune and persists only while themisfortune lasts.

witchcraft is something they react to and against in misfortune, this being the main meaning it has for them.

Hence a Zande accused of witchcraft is astonished. He has not conceived of witchcraft from this angle. T9 him it has always been a reaction against others in his own misfortunes, so that it is difficult for him to apprehend the notion when he himselfis its objective in the misfortunes ofother people.

To Azande the question of guilt does not present itself as it would to us.

So far as he knows he has never visited the home of the. sick man whom he is said to have injured, and he is forced to conclude that either there must have been an error or that he has acted unconsciously. But he believes his own case to be exceptional and that others are responsible for their actions.

the fact that this belief contradicts his usual ideas does not trouble him.

inconsistent

witch-doctors .are aware of one pieceof reality which is unknown to the rest of their society

I have heard even witch-doctors themselves admit that not all members of their corporation are reliable and honest, but only those who have received proper medicines from persons qualified to initiate them.

Witch-doctors are said to be very carefullest anyone should find out what plants they dig up for magical use. They remove their stalks and leaves and hide them in the bush some way from~here they have dug them up lest anyone should follow in their tracks and learn their medicines.

Unless the medicines are bought with adequate fees there is a danger that they will lose their potency for the recipient during the transference, since their owner is dissatisfied and bears the purchaser ill-will. Also,

we may ask why common sense does not triumph over superstition.

Also, witch-doctors are part of the oracle-system.

The web is not an external structure in which he is enclosed. It is the texture of his thought and he cannot think that his thought is wrong.

All their beliefs hang together, and were a Zande to give up faith in witch-doctorhood he would have to surrender equally his belief in witchcraft and oracles.

Hence it is not necessary for one Zande to explain to another his waywardness, for everybody understands the motives of his conduct.