Magic, Science and Religion
Part II, Lecture 5
The Social Functions of Witchcraft: Evans-Pritchard and the Azande
1. In the next two lectures we’ll pursue further the way in which the modern human
sciences have posed the question of the difference between ‘primitive’ and ‘civilised’
cultures. More specifically, we’ll examine the question of the ‘rationality’ of forms of
social conduct that appear to be based on beliefs in non-existent entities and powers.
To introduce the problem, we’ll focus on Evans-Pritchard’s famous anthropological
study, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande (1937).
2. Edward Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973) was one of the most prominent figures in
social anthropology in the middle years of the twentieth century. In The Nuer: a
Description of the Modes of Life and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (1940),
he claimed that the Nuer could be considered as possessing a political system, even
though there was an absence of any formal political institutions or central authority.
Nuer Religion (1956) attempted to chart the connections between Nuer religious
beliefs and practices and their social structure.
However, it is his earliest book, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande
(1937) which remains the most famous. For the Azande misfortune – especially when
it involves death – cannot be ‘coincidental’. It is tied up in witchcraft:
‘Misfortune and witchcraft are much the same to a Zande, for it is only in situation of
misfortune or of anticipation of it that the notion of witchcraft is evoked. In a sense
we may say that witchcraft is misfortune, the procedure of oracle consultations and
presentations of fowls’ wings being the socially prescribed channel of response to
misfortune, and notions of witchcraft-activity giving the requisite ideological
background to make the response logical and coherent.’
3. Witches, oracles, and magic (see overleaf).
4. For EP, then, magical beliefs and practices in Zande society participate in ordering
the world and in regulating social relations. But why do the Azande, who employ
‘common-sense’ notions and behave ‘rationally’ for much of the time, adopt beliefs in
entities like witches, which for EP are clearly nonsense?
He contrasts three kinds of notion: magical, common-sense and scientific. Why is it
that the Azande, according to EP, have so few scientific beliefs, or more pertinently
why have they failed to develop a body of knowledge out of common-sense notions
that could tell them why their mystical notions are fantastic and centred around nonexistent entities?
Five explanations (Hirst and Wooley):
i. Social structural obstacles;
ii. ‘Categorical’ reasons;
iii. Limits in the mode of experimentaion;
iv. No technology of reason;
v. The ‘mentality’ of magic.
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E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1976.
Witchcraft, oracles, and magic from system of mystical notions that order and make
sense of experience of misfortune and death.
1. Witchcraft (mangu)

Witches (boro mangu) are possessed of a witchcraft substance with psychic
qualities (this is a physical substance located in the abdomen and which can be
revealed in autopsy);

Witchcraft is inherited;

The witch (perhaps without awareness) performs witchcraft causing misfortune:
damage to property, accidents, illness and death.
2. Oracles (soroka)

Through divination, the oracle reveals the source of witchcraft (including identify
the name of a witch causing illness, etc.);

The most reliable oracle is benge, a poison administered to fouls;

By questioning the benge, the witch-doctor divines the source of witchcraft and
the kind of measures (including magic) to confront it.
3. Magic (ngua)

The witch-doctor is both diviner and magician (boro ngua) ;

Magic rituals involve the use of medicines;

This may involve vengeance-magic, retaliation against a witch.
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