Sous l’instigation des leaders religieux, les fidèles des Églises et ministères de délivrance considèrent la sorcellerie comme responsable de toutes sortes d’infortunes. Nganga, pasteurs et prêtres exorcistes, se sont progressivement approprié la chasse aux sorciers, faisant de la dénonciation de sorcellerie, jadis l’apanage des prophètes, la méthode de prédilection. Au Cameroun, dans un contexte d’effervescence religieuse, les leaders opposent à ce phénomène la violence anti-sorcellaire. Basée sur des enquêtes effectuées de 2010 à 2015, cette thèse, met l’emphase sur la radicalisation du discours anti-sorcellerie par les pentecôtistes fondamentalistes ; rhétorique qui génère plusieurs formes de violence, y compris des tensions familiales. L’adhésion populaire à cette grille d’interprétation sorcellaire s’explique par le fait qu’elle repose sur un terreau culturel familier. Les résultats interpellent d’autant que l’action procède d’une surinterprétation des faits et du phénomène, dont la compréhension et l’explication restent discutables, eu égard à la place qu’occupe l’imaginaire sorcellaire dans la pensée des acteurs. / Instigated by religious leaders, the believers of the Churches and deliverance ministries consider witchcraft as being responsible for all sorts of misfortunes. Nganga, pastors and exorcist priests, have gradually committed to hunt witchcraft, by the means of denunciation of witchcraft, formerly privileged and defended by the prophets, their preferred method. In Cameroon, in a context of religious effervescence, the leaders oppose to this phenomenon an anti-witchcraft violence. Based on conducted surveys from 2010 to 2015, this thesis focuses on the radicalization of anti-witchcraft discourse performed by fundamentalist Pentecostals; rhetoric that generates multiple forms of violence, including family tensions. The fact that people massively follow this interpretation of witchcraft is explained according to its focus on the familiar cultural context. The results are challenging as the action puts emphasis on over-interpreting the facts and phenomenon, whose understanding and explanation remain questionable, as the mindset of the actors is influenced by imaginary witchcraft.

Bc. Veronika Vopelková The Fate of Witches: Animism and Traditional Healing in Cameroon Abstract Traditional culture and religion disappear and assimilate into the dominant cultures around the world. Globalization has affected all ethnic groups in Africa. Cameroonian Grassfield is still among those which have been preserved diverse customs and rituals. In the past, the Fondom Kedjom Keku - today, village Big Babanki became the focus of this anthropological work. The aim is to understand and describe the current state of the traditional religion of the inhabitants of this village. For comparison with the original form of each religious phenomena serves a number of publications, researches and interviews with witnesses. This work is based on my field research, participatory observation, interviews and questionnaires. My attention is fixed on a belief in Kedjom gods, spirits, souls of ancestors and contemporary celebration of death, magic and witchcraft, supernatural power of amulets, spiritual power of twins and secret societies. Considering the frequency of allegations of witchcraft, this theme is also elaborated in general view with regard to the Kedjom Keku people and the whole Grassfield. Since the connection with the supernatural world is not the only domain of wizards and witches, but this power can be...

This thesis examines the relationships between political power, corruption, and witchcraft in modern Indonesia through an analysis of the discursive construction of these concepts in Indonesian society. The subject is approached through an observation of how public discourses of corruption and sorcery are used by people in an instrumental way to talk about and understand political processes in the country. The central argument of the thesis is that Indonesian society experiences contemporary politics in a context that combines values and practices of political modernity and secular rationality with those of witchcraft, sorcery, and the occult. The thesis demonstrates how Indonesian politics has been transformed into a modern-secular democracy by juxtaposing traditionalism and modernism. Both are interconnected features of contemporary Indonesian modernity. The thesis focuses on corruption and sorcery discourses within the context of the political democracy that has been established in Indonesia following the collapse of the New Order state. There is currently a great deal of expectation that the system of democracy will promote public participation - in the sense that people become involved in political processes, that civil society becomes more effective and that the holders of state powers become more accountable - which should in turn curb corruption. Unfortunately, corruption appears to be pervasive within the new democratic polity, and both corruption and sorcery persist alongside the dynamics of political contestations and power struggles. In the light of continuing corruption practices, many groups of Indonesian society initiate anti-corruption movements by mobilizing social and political resources through collective action. Anti-corruption initiatives are taken by both state institutions and civil society associations, and seek to improve public governance and promote political reform. Nevertheless, non-state actors—NGOs and civil society agencies—appear to have become the major voices of public criticism against corruption and they have taken the lead in promoting anti-corruption reforms. These actors involve educated people from the urban middle classes: social and political activists, intellectuals, artists, poets, journalists, as well as religious leaders associated with Islamic organizations: the Nahdhatul Ulama (NU), the Muhammadiyah, and the Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI). It is argued that the ideas and practices of anti-corruption have found new spaces of expression under the new democratic system, and that Indonesian civil society and NGO activists are determined to continue their struggles to fight corruption for the betterment of the nation despite a great deal of opposition which is mostly political. They believe that the new system of political democracy will be much more beneficial for all Indonesian people if corruption can be eliminated from state agencies and political institutions.

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2004 / Refer to document

This project investigates how rhetorical texts influenced the witch trials that were held in Salem in 1691-1692, how rhetoric shaped the response to this event, and how rhetorical artifacts in the twentieth and twenty first centuries have shaped American public memory of the Salem witchcraft crisis. My analysis draws from three different chronological and rhetorical viewpoints. In Chapter II, I build upon work done by scholars such as McGee, White, and Charland in the area of constitutive rhetoric to address the question of how the witchcraft crisis was initiated and fueled rhetorically. Then, as my examination shifts to the rhetorical artifacts constructed immediately after the trials in Chapter III, I rely on the tradition of apologia, rooted in the ancient Greek understanding of stasis theory to understand how rhetorical elements were utilized by influential rhetors to craft a variety of different explanations for the crisis. And finally in Chapter IV, I draw from individuals such as Halbwachs, Kammen, Zelizer, and Bodnar, working in the cross-disciplinary field of public memory, to respond to the questions of how we remember the trials today and what impact these memories have on our understanding of the themes of witchcraft and witch hunting in contemporary American society. Therefore, this project uses the lens of rhetorical analysis to provide a method for examining and understanding how individuals, both in the seventeenth century and today, have engaged in the act of updating their reflections about this facet of American history.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Kiel, 1999.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 466-477). Also available on the Internet.

This essay examines how witches are portrayed in American produced TV-series in the year 2000 and forward, what elements could have effected that portrayal in the series and also how this portrayal differs itself from witches within Wicca. The material used for this examination are the TV-series Charmed, The Vampire Diaries and Witches of East End and as comparing literature; Living Wicca, The Spiral Dance and Witchcraft Today. The methods used for this process are discourse analysis and content analysis. I used theories of Pierre Wiktorin about religion and popular culture. I used three themes (Characteristics, Practice and mode of thinking) for the processing of the material and to structure the result. The results showed that the witches in the TV-series had a lot in common such as they were all women, they were born with their powers and the human life is sacred in comparison to other creatures that exist in the series. The comparison showed that there are significant differences between the witches in the TV-series and the witches in Wicca. Practicing witches within Wicca is part of a religion where rituals are of high importance and the Goddess and God are worshiped. These are the most important discrepancies that are not a part of witches in TV-series.  The question about why the series are so similar has been analyzed with theories about moral panic and post-feminism to show how social structures can play a part in how TV-series are written. The conclusions that I have reached is that the witches in the series are portrayed very similar. They are all women, they have inherited their abilities as witches and they keep searching for love and are in a constant battle with evil. Elements that could have effected this portrayal are the theories about moral panic, that discusses the fighting against evil, and postfeminism, that discusses the love aspect and the fact that they are all women.  The witches in the series and the witches within wicca are very different. The biggest one is the fact that wicca is a religion that involves rituals for the God and Goddess. This has no part of the portrayal of witches in the TV-series.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Sociology)--Vanderbilt University, Dec. 2008. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 378-389). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.