Fascinating Guardian article

[juno_domina]

on witches in Ghana- Darakat, you would've already seen this I suppose.

African Witches

I find stuff like this incredible (non-judgemental tone used here). It's very interesting when you look at the economic/social reasons for any form of persecution that occurs, in any country- including our own.

Comments

[joybon]

This is the same thing that happened in medieval Europe

[juno_domina]

Hmmn, sounds like an interesting essay at the very least

[joybon]

Have you looked much at post-modern writings about the politics of identity? Or at least the binary whore/madonna dichotomy? BEcause of that.
They were aquited because they could fit into an acceptable notion of feminine sexuality: virgin (mostly single, would claim that they were raped or promised marriage etc), insane (would usually argue that they had no memory of what happened - it was believed anyway that a women suffered from post partum insanity for TWO YEARS after the birth), emotional, dependent, mothers, etc.

Baby farmers, as they were called, were rational (taking money for the job), single, independent etc. This was not an acceptable type of sexuality.

[juno_domina]

Ha ha ha! Bloody politics of identity- we had many, many units based around it in 2nd and 3rd year! But yes, I agree, that's most likely the 'cause' if you like. It's interesting the way people make these decisions, and then (even more so, I find) the way that women themselves have a tendency to reinforce them in their attitudes towarda other women- Lindy Chamberlain is probably a perfect example, partiuclarly the way womens mags originally responded to her.

[shadowwolfraven]

It's very fascinating to see how other cultures view witchcraft. It is also very tragic. It pains me to see stories like these because it shows that regardless of the trials we have faced here in America for practicing witchcraft, others around the world suffer far more than we can ever imagine.

[juno_domina]

Hi random stranger :)

Certainly responses to withcraft in other countries are quite sad, particularly when you look into traditions and find that, originally there was quite a strong wise woman/man tradition. Fiji at the moment has a lot of similar cases, although they're not based so much on the need for resources as I understand it (it seems from this article that really, the viewpoint is nothing to so with witches, more to do with dependence and lack of resources).

BTW. Nice Kinney icon :)

[darakat_ewr]

I actually had not seen it. Its really sad sometimes especially when it happens for economic reasons (i.e. I am poor, I will just accuse my sister who happens to be not married of witchcraft), however if the social stigma didn't exist you wouldn't get that happening. Its interesting to see how others see and use the term "witch" and how societies use it.

[juno_domina]

Absolutely- well, I think you'd still get it happening, but they'd put it into another source. Magic, in a lot of non-Western/European cultures, is still very prevalent and heavily believed in even today, and, since a lot of countries are dominated by organised religions now (Christianity/Islam in particular- not too sure about others), there's a conveniant religous scapegoat handy- in Islam, in fact, the worst sin you can possibley commit is to be a witch/pagan- and of course, historically, this excuse was used to wipe out/oppress smaller cultural groups who persisted in the original forms of worship, once Islamic leaders came to power. The same of course, following on from any theocracy (or near-theocracy).

But yes, the defintiions, positive and negative of the term 'witch' are fascinating. It has so many layers to it!