Through the Scrying Glass: Defining Witchcraft in Academic Study

Numerous authors have noted cyclical interest in the subject of witchcraft in Africa with a “revitalized” rise emerging in the 1990s that has been sustained by innovative research and continued popular interest in news media and activism (Ciekawy & Geschiere 1998: 1). Closing in on a century of research, it is difficult to determine whether our understanding of witchcraft has deepened since the canonical work of Evans-Pritchard among the Zande in 1937. The following review summarizes twenty works on witchcraft that have been published in English in the past twenty some years and demonstrates how our understanding of witchcraft has broadened to incorporate new expressions and experiences. At the same time, this article considers whether increasing conceptual complexity is drawing us closer to a clear definition of what witchcraft is, as a concept or phenomenon, or providing greater certainty as to whether it even exists in the ways that we study it.