Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande is one of social anthropology's most noted texts. In this work E. E. Evans-Pritchard examines the witchcraft beliefs of the Azande, a group of agricultural people in southern Sudan on the upper Nile. There are two main points he makes in the work. One is that witchcraft can be seen as a safety valve, that releases potential harmful conflict into less damaging activities. The other is that it can be seen as an attempt to explain a complex alien world in a society's own terms of reference. Together these make for a practical solution that is consistent and rational.
Eriksen and Nielsen (2013) argue that the remarkable thing about Evans-Pritchard is the way the two approaches are combined into a single approach. In this approach the Zande are seen to have developed a belief systems that both acts stabilise and harmonise the order of society, but also is both rational and logically consistent. A logical consistency based on the presuppositions of the Azande's thought. Eriksen and Nielsen also report the criticism of other scholars of Evans-Pritchard's monograph. They record Peter Winch (1958) as making a big deal out of Evans-Pritchard's structural-functionalist approach where in he is reported as arguing that the Azande's belief in witchcraft is reduced to its âÂÂsocial functionsâÂÂ.
The work was a development of his earlier (1928). Oracle-magic of the Azande. Sudan Notes and Records, 11, 1-53..
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. (1937). Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: The Clarendon Press
<ol>I. Witchcraft is an organic and hereditary phenomenon</ol> <ol>II. The notion of witchcraft explains unfortunate events</ol> <ol>III. Sufferers from misfortune seek for witches among their enemies</ol> <ol>IV. Are witches conscious agents?</ol> <ol>V. Witch-doctors</ol> <ol>VI. Training of a novice in the art of a witch-doctor</ol> <ol>VII. The place of witch-doctors in Zande society</ol> <ol>VIII. The Poison Oracle in daily life</ol> <ol>IX. Problems arising from consultation of the poison oracle</ol> <ol>X. Other Zande oracles</ol> <ol>XI. Magic and medicines</ol> <ol>XII. An association for the practice of magic</ol> <ol>XIII. Witchcraft, oracles, and magic, in the situation of death</ol>