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Abstract
This collection represents a significant intervention in the space cohabited by witchcraft, spirit worlds, and development – a realm frequently marginalised by development practice. Through a diverse set of scholarly and methodological orientations, the contributions draw on contrasting case studies (spanning the local, national, and borderlands) to explore the current and possible future co-productions of development through various forms of spirituality. They do so with attention to the paradoxes, nuances, and complexities of these intersections. This introduction explores some of the cross-cutting themes arising from these complexities, including: scale; limitations of Euro-dominant conceptualisations of development; Othering of polytheistic, multi-theistic, and non-theistic spiritual ontologies; entanglements of spirituality, politics, and power; and co-productions of new forms of development. We argue that thinking through these various cross-cutting themes provides a multitude of possibilities for decolonising the development project.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank all of the authors that have contributed their work to this collection, and the editors of Third World Thematics for their time and understanding during its creation.
Notes
1. Ashforth, “Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy”; Comaroff and Comaroff, “Modernity and Its Malcontents”; Geschiere, “The Modernity of Witchcraft”; Geschiere, “Witchcraft, Intimacy and Trust”; Kohnert, “Magic and Witchcraft”; Niehaus, “From Witch-Hunts to Thief-Hunts.”
2. Geschiere, The Modernity of Witchcraft; Fisiy and Geschiere, “Witchcraft, Development and Paranoia.”
3. Sidaway et al., “Planetary Postcolonialism.”
4. Geschiere, Witchcraft, Intimacy and Trust, xxvi.
5. Ashforth, “Of secrecy and the Commonplace”; Murrey, “Invisible Power”; Nyamnjoh, “Expections of Modernity.”
6. Abrahams, Witchcraft in Contemporary Tanzania; Schram, “Witches’ Wealth”; Smith, “Buying a Better Witch Doctor.”
7. Mesaki, “Witchcraft and the Law”; Moore and Sanders, Magical Interpretations, Magical Realities; Smith, “Witchcraft, Spiritual Worldviews and Environmental Management.”
8. Smith, “Witchcraft, Spiritual Worldviews and Environmental Management.”
9. Adinkrah, “Child Witch Hunts”; Englund, “Indigenous Cosmopolitics”; Geshiere, “Globalisation and the Power of Indeterminate Meaning.”
10. See Murrey, “Invisible Power, Invisible Disposition”; Smith, “Witchcraft, Spiritual Worldviews and Environmental Management,” and indeed the articles in this collection.
11. See Murrey’s contribution in this collection for an example of the World Bank’s engagements with witchcraft, which display precisely these tendencies to both romanticise and marginalise.
12. Briggs, “Indigenous Knowledges.”
13. De La Cadena, “Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes.”
14. Comaroff and Comaroff, Modernity and Its Malcontents; Moore and Sanders, Magical Interpretations, Magical Realities.
15. Murrey, “Decolonising the Imagined Geographies of Witchcraft.”
16. Mosurinjohn, “The Dance between Artefact, Commodity and Fetish.”
17. Storer et al., ‘Poisoning at the Periphery’.
18. Winch, “‘La iha fiar, la iha seguransa’.”
19. Thornhill, “Power, Predation, and Postwar State Formation.”
20. Stoler, “Imperial Debris.”
21. Bovensiepen, “Spiritual Landscapes.”
22. Palmer et al., “Opening the Paths to Healing.”
23. Jeater and Mashinge, “Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay.”
24. McGiffin, “Oral Poetry and Development Ideology in South Africa’s Eastern Cape.”
25. Smith, “Witchcraft, Spiritual Worldviews and Environmental Management.”
26. Leck, “The Role of Culture in Climate Adaption.”
27. Rubis, “Ritual Revitalization as Adaptation to Environmental Stress.”
28. Harris, “Mountain-Bodies, Experiential Wisdom.”
29. Smith and Andindilile, “Assemblages of Forest Conservation in Tanzania.”
30. Castellanos Domínguez and Johnson, “From Nahua Migrants to Residents in Sonora, Mexico.”
31. Fois, “Shamanic Spiritual Activism.”
32. Cooke and Kothari, Participation.
33. Smith, “Local Knowledge.”
34. Comaroff and Comaroff, “Occult Economies”; Niehaus, “From Witch-Hunts to Thief-Hunts.”
35. See Murrey, “Invisible Power, Visible Dispossession” for a similar analysis of politics in Cameroon.
36. Allerton, “Introduction: Spiritual Landscapes of Southeast Asia”; Bovensiepen, “Spiritual Landscapes of Life and Death.”
37. Mignolo, On Pluriversality.
38. Escobar, Encountering Development.
39. King, “Orientalism and Religion.”
40. Briggs, “Indigenous Knowledge.”
41. A few of these dangers are emphasised by Sylvia Federici in “Witch-Hunting, Globalization, and Feminist Solidarity in Africa Today.”
42. Comaroff and Comaroff, “Occult Economies”; Kohnert, “Magic and Witchcraft”; Smith, “Buying a Better Witchdoctor”; Luongo, “Polling Places.”
43. Dudley et al., “Protected Areas, Faiths, and Sacred Natural Sites”; Howitt and Suchet-Person, “Ontological Pluralism.”
44. De la Cadena, “Indigenous Cosmopolitics”; Sundberg, “Decolonising Posthuman Geographies.”
45. Blaser, “Ontology and Indigeneity.”
46. Geshiere, “The Modernity of Witchcraft.”
47. Blaser, “Ontology and Indigeneity”; Howitt and Suchet-Person, “Ontological Pluralism.”
48. World Bank, “Knowledge for Development”; Smith, “Local Knowledge.”
49. See Briggs and Sharp, “Indigenous Development.” See also Murrey’s article in this Collection, in which she argues this romanticisation has also been a form of racialised Othering that echoes the earlier colonial discourse of the ‘noble savage’.
50. See Murrey, “Invisible Violence, Visible Dispossession.”