Moral Power

Moral power is what the Sukuma from Tanzania attribute in times of crisis to an unknown figure they call their witch. A universal process is involved, as much biological as social, which obstructs the patient's recovery. Healers turn the table upon the witch through rituals showing that the community and the ancestral spirits side with the victim. In contrast to biomedicine, their magic and divination introduce moral values that assess the state of the system and that remove the obstacles to what is taken as key: self-healing. The implied "sensory shifts" and therapeutic effectiveness have largely eluded the literature on witchcraft. This book shows how to comprehend culture other than through the prism of identity and politics.