RAI no 35963
these phenomena if I shared, in some sense, a belief in the
Fig. 1. Evans-Pritchard in
supernatural. This is, of course, an age-old question for
the field, in a somewhat
awkward pose, with two anthropologists of religion, and raises something I will call
unnamed informants. ‘the problem of belief’.
The problem of belief rather, since society cannot exist except in and through
Belief – to say nothing of religion – is a thorny concept, in individual consciousness, this force must also penetrate us
part, as Katherine Ewing (1994) suggests, because it can and organize itself within us’ (1965:240). For many
collapse the distance between the anthropologist and the anthropologists who study religion, this is precisely why
people he or she studies.1 If an anthropologist holds the belief is problematic. Belief is a subjective, and therefore
same religious beliefs as ‘the natives’ – or even, some personal, experience. But subjectivity makes under-
might say, any at all – the implicit concern of the discipline standing religion as simply a ‘social fact’ difficult.
is that he or she might be surrendering too much anthro- In his recent study of witchcraft in Soweto, Adam
pological authority. But if there is no attempt to understand Ashforth (2000) deals with the problem of belief at length.
the native’s point of view, the anthropologist will have Ashforth does not engage the scholarly literature directly;
failed as a researcher. Ethnographers must strike a balance instead, his work takes a more prosaic approach.
of being ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ in order to find an appro- Ashforth’s book is a portrait of his friend Madumo, a
priate tone; to paraphrase Geertz (1976:223), someone young Sowetan man who claims to have been bewitched
who studies witchcraft should sound neither like a witch by his family. Madumo suffers from poor health, he has no
nor like a geometer. In dealing with this quandary, most job, and, by the time Ashforth finds him on one visit to
anthropologists accordingly treat religious belief as an South Africa, he has managed to alienate almost everyone
ethnographic concern, because it helps them maintain who ever cared for him. In the process of trying to cure
‘professional’ distance. But as Ewing argues, belief these witchcraft-induced ills, Madumo submits to the strict
remains an ‘embarrassing possibility’ that stems from ‘a regime of a witch doctor’s medicine and to the spiritual
refusal to acknowledge that the subjects of one’s research counsel of a Zionist prophet, with the aim of escaping and
might actually know something about the human condition ejecting the evil spirits and creatures that plague him.
that is personally valid for the anthropologist’ (1994:571; Ashforth’s narrative does not read like most social sci-
see also Harding 1987). The problem of belief, then, is the entific work on witchcraft (it has the feel of a novel) and
problem of remaining at the proper remove from ‘natives’ perhaps because of this he is able to capture the complex-
inner lives’ (Geertz 1976:236). ities and ambiguities of what it means to believe in the
Durkheim’s discussions of belief in The elementary supernatural in a way that many anthropological accounts
forms of the religious life still shape enquiries in the cannot. Ashforth states quite bluntly that he himself does
anthropology of religion. These discussions have lent not believe in ‘invisible forces or beings that shape the
comfort and support to those of us who do, in fact, find lives and destinies of the living’ (2000:249). But neither
belief a problem in the way I have defined it here. does he claim that they do not exist – exist, that is, as phys-
Durkheim defined religious beliefs as ‘states of opinion ical manifestations. Rather he says, ‘the secrecy of witch-
[that] consist in representations’ (1965:15). In doing so, he craft can never be penetrated’ (2000:254). In this instance
reinforced his classic model of the relationship between and others (e.g. Favret-Saada 1980, Stoller and Olkes
the individual and the collective in social organization. 1987, E. Turner et al. 1992), the problem of belief is raised
‘For the collective force’, he wrote, ‘is not entirely outside and left open, and the ethnography, I think, is richer for it.2
of us; it does not act upon us wholly from without; but ***
Victor Turner
Like Evans-Pritchard, Turner owed a good deal to
Durkheim. As a student in Max Gluckman’s ‘Manchester
School’ (see Werbner 1984), Turner came to emphasize
the dynamics between process and structure in the tradi-
tion of Marx and Durkheim. Turner’s work on ritual, and
particularly on communitas (1977), can be traced to
Durkheim’s treatment of collective effervescence in The
elementary forms. Durkheim’s argument that efferves-
cence is a moment of religious creativity had a deep impact
on Turner. At the start of The drums of affliction, Turner
states that religious ritual ‘actually creates, or re-creates,
the categories through which men perceive reality’
(1968:6). Indeed, Drums, which is Turner’s most thorough
treatment of healing cults among the Ndembu, is written in
a distinctly sociological vein with an emphasis on the con-
nections between the individual and the collective in reli-
gious representations. For example, Turner argues in his
treatment of curing rites: ‘it would seem that the needs of
the biopsychical organism and the needs of society, in
many respects opposed, come to terms with one another in
the master symbols of Ndembu society’ (1968:19). But in
the short monograph Chihamba, the white spirit, Turner
takes Evans-Pritchard’s concern with the religious convic-
tions of the anthropologist a step further, and he takes
sacrifice of desire:
Nazarite women’s
performance in South
Africa. University of
Chicago Press.
Preus, J. Samuel 1987.
Explaining religion:
Criticism and theory from
Bodin to Freud. New
Haven: Yale University
Press.
Ray, Benjamin 2000.
Discourse about
difference: Understanding
African ritual language. In
K. Patton & B. Ray (eds)
A magic still dwells:
Comparative religion in
the postmodern age,
pp.101-116. Berkeley:
University of California
Press.
Ruel, Malcolm 1997.
Christians as believers. In
Belief, ritual, and the
securing of life: Reflexive
essays on a Bantu religion.
Leiden: Brill.
Stocking, George W. 1984.
Dr. Durkheim and Mr.
Brown: Comparative
sociology at Cambridge in
1910. In G.W. Stocking
(ed.) Functionalism
historicized: Essays on
British social
anthropology, pp.106-130.
Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press.
– 1995. After Tylor: British
social anthropology, 1888-
1951. Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press.
Stoller, Paul & Cheryl Olkes
1987. In sorcery’s shadow:
A memoir of
apprenticeship among the
Songhay of Niger.
University of Chicago
Press.
Sundkler, Bengt 1961. Bantu
prophets in South Africa
(2nd edn). Oxford
University Press. Durkheim to task for his sociological reductionism. In to relate themselves and their lives to Kavula, something
Turner, Edith with William Chihamba, Turner sounds more like the German romantics akin to a high god, whose essence is captured symbolically
Blodgett, Singleton
Kahona & Fideli Benwa
than the French sociologists. His emphasis is on the inef- in the character of whiteness – white substances, white
1992. Experiencing ritual: fable in religious experience, which did not fit easily into objects, etc. ‘Whiteness’, Turner argued, ‘represents pure
A new interpretation of either Marxian or Durkheimian paradigms (Babcock and act-of-being’ in Ndembu cosmology (1962:82). The goal
African healing. MacAloon 1987, Kapferer 1996; cf. Bloch 1986). of Chihamba, as religious ritual, is ‘to break through the
Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press. Chihamba is an Ndembu cult of affliction, one of the habitual patterns formed by secular custom, rational
Turner, Edith 1996. The most influential and puzzling that Victor and Edith Turner thinking and common sense, to a condition where the pure
hands feel it: Healing and studied during their fieldwork in Northern Rhodesia in the act-of-being is directly apprehended’ (1962:85-86). The
spirit presence among a
northern Alaskan people.
early 1950s (see Engelke [forthcoming]). Adepts in the ritual, in other words, is meant to put the initiands in direct
DeKalb: Northern Illinois Chihamba cult forge strong ties of friendship while contact with the spiritual centre of their existence. As
University Press. working through their misfortunes. In the process, they try Turner describes it, this is an affective breakthrough.