Witchcraft, spirituality and cargo cults in anthropology
An important debate that began in the 20th century and has continued to present anthropological studies revolved around the rationality of other culture’s beliefs concerning witchcraft and spirits. This essentially began with Evans-Pritchard’s work on the Azande group and continued with the various critiques and analyses of his work that have taken place since its publication in 1935. Having examined this controversy, this article will look through two other case-studies: the spirit possession of the Haitian Vodou religious movement and the spirit belief of Melanesian Cargo Cults of the 19th and 20th centuries. Each section outlines the theories put forward by anthropologists in attempting to analyse the rationality of each culture and discusses the relevance that these hold to the overall aim. The conclusion sets out the author’s own views on the topic and the reasons behind them.
Before looking at different case studies, it should first be made clear what is meant by the term ‘rational’, whilst simultaneously acknowledging that there has been considerable debate concerning this particular issue during the last few decades (e.g. McIntre 1962: 61 vs Winch 1964: 97). The word itself is defined as “being based on or in accordance with reason or logic” (Oxford English Dictionary 2014) and it is the term ‘logic’ that is crucial to this article. Evans-Pritchard gave an example of the Azande ethnic group’s logic from his studies in north Central Africa: “Sickness is due to witchcraft. A man is sick. Let us consult the oracles to discover who is the witch responsible” (Evans-Pritchard 1935) From an Azande point of view this statement is entirely rational and logical but differs from a western perspective where it would be deemed irrational and unscientific. Therefore, in anthropological terms, ‘rational’ must be distinguished as entirely distinct from ‘scientific’: there is no epistemological union between the two (Lukes 2000: 5). A mistake that has been made by anthropologists in the past has been the assumption that their own western scientifically-based viewpoint must automatically be rational across cultures.
Evans-Pritchard’s carried out his work on the Azande culture in the 1920s. The particular interest in this complex culture for him was, and is for this assignment, the Azande’s understanding that a physical substance, mangu, could possess people and make them capable of witchcraft, a belief system which structured almost every aspect of their society. The process of witchcraft itself was always malignant and could be held responsible for injuring or even killing others through psychic acts (Evans-Pritchard 1976: 1–2). In line with Malinowski’s studies in the early 20th century and later comments by Tambiah in 1990, Evans-Pritchard recognised that the belief system was vital both sociologically and psychologically in allowing the Azande cultural group to continue functioning and operating in the manner that it did. Major misfortunes, illness and doubts that could otherwise not be explained (other than just by bad luck) were usually reasons to consult an oracle and identify a possible witch (Evans-Pritchard 1976: 34–35) This gave a Zande person the means of rationalising otherwise inexplicable misfortunes in their own, or their close family’s, life. Evans-Pritchard recognised that the Zande were not uneducated or ‘primitive’ in their beliefs, many having considerable sophisticated knowledge of the intricacies of their environment and ecosystem. They understood the cause and effect of certain undesirable scenarios but the mangu provided a means of explaining why this misfortune happened to a specific person or group.
Not only was this one of the first times an anthropologist had attempted, in seeking to explain another culture, to identify a different point of view from his own but it was also an acknowledgment that studying the reasons behind seemingly alien and ‘mystic’ rituals could make them more intelligible to westerners, who were inevitably ignorant of the processes and thoughts that structured a belief system. Even so, although his work on the Azande helped to start the move away from ‘armchair anthropology’, it has been criticised for its cultural bias and assumptions that the European view is ‘correct’. This view saw various witchcraft practices as being indicative of backwardness and simplicity, with western cultures characterised as complex and developed. Because magical beliefs could obviously not be proved by scientific research — which entirely structured how the anthropologists thought and perceived different scenarios — such groups were presented as inferior. It should also be noted at this point that any comparison between Azande witchcraft beliefs and scientific thinking is not valid as such beliefs are not attempting to provide an understanding of the entire world (which science is) but merely of the scenarios that play out in their everyday lives (Winch 1964: 315). By placing the quasi-science of the Azande in the same bracket as the more advanced science of the western world, Evans-Pritchard presented their beliefs as misunderstood attempts at a western level of understanding and therefore, and more significantly, irrational. It seemed to western audiences at this time unbelievable that “such a system of mistaken beliefs and inefficacious practices can maintain itself in the face of objects that seem to us so obvious” (Winch 1964: 307). However, Evans-Pritchard did make a point that had not been acknowledged before: that the Azande magical beliefs were difficult for Europeans like himself to understand, and highlighted the difference between western associations of the loaded term ‘witchcraft’ and the day-to-day perceptions of witchcraft from the standpoint of a Zande person (Evans-Pritchard 1976: 221). This incommensurability has been questioned since there are in fact clear similarities between the Azande and westerners in their view of witchcraft as evil and malignant (Garib 2005: 8). In the 1930s Evans-Pritchard argued against the famous anthropologist, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, that western anthropologists were not superior or more intelligent than the communities they were studying, and that the scientific approach and science-dominated thinking that structured western lives was as much a controlling function of our culture as magic is in the culture of people like the Azande (Winch 1964: 307).
When exploring the rationality debate in terms of witchcraft and spirit possession, another relevant and contemporary example is the ‘syncretic religion’ of Haitian Vodou which contains strong influences of African witchcraft. The term syncretic religion refers to the fact that elements of traditional west and central African religious beliefs have been amalgamated with the western Catholicism to form a single belief system. The roots of this merging go back to the 17th Century when Europeans took slaves from Africa to islands such as Haiti and forced Catholic beliefs upon them: the Vodou religion is the result of slaves adopting their owners’ beliefs while continuing to worship in their traditional manner (Olmos & Paravisini-Gebert 2011: 116–117). For example, the creators of Haitian Vodou disguised the loa spirits, which they worshipped, as Roman Catholic saints and their monotheistic God Bondye as the Judeo-Christian God (Desmangles 1992: 5). Today, Haitian Vodouists display Catholic symbols such as altars with saintly iconography, rosaries and candles whilst simultaneously attending healing ceremonies led by an oungan or manbo (male and female priests respectively) in which many present may enter altered states of consciousness and be possessed by a spirit. As in Evans-Pritchard’s Azande studies, Haitian Vodou ceremonies are carried out in an attempt to deal with and heal illness or injury within a community. Again, these people are not ignorant or uneducated in understanding cause and effect relationships concerning problems such as disease, accident or theft. Rather, the ceremonies are carried out to determine the reason why the bad luck took place. The reason that this religion is significant in this study is that it spans the general divide seen in many early anthropological studies: Christian westerners studying non-Christian societies. It therefore raises far wider questions of the rationality of all global religions in general. A belief system like Vodouism which incorporates the two belief systems may have the potential to weaken traditional viewpoints on the rationality of belief in spirits, particularly due to the negative associations in western Christianity with the words ‘witchcraft’ and ‘spirit possession’ — despite the fact that belief in both terms is an expanding global phenomenon (Mills 2013: 19–20). The Vodou religion extends far wider than the exterior evidence of spirits and healing would suggest. Its historic associations to slavery and European hegemonic resistance and its adaptive nature to changing political and social issues mean that the followers form tight-knit communities in which their belief system governs almost every aspect of their day-to-day lives (Dayan 1998). Although aspects of the religion which are similar to Catholicism may seem ‘normal’ to an outsider, the spirit possession ceremonies inside a Hounfour temple, and divination, may seem illogical or even absurd. This raises issues not only with the difficulties of arbitrating rationality from distant and unconnected cultural perceptions but also a matter which is discussed below: whether there is any use behind rationality determination.
Another example that assists us in understanding the rationality of such beliefs are the Cargo Cults (or Kago in pidgin), a new religious millenarian movement from Melanesian islands including Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu (Trompf 2012: 10). This belief system developed in the 19th and 20th centuries following the colonisation and change of culture brought first by Europeans and then by US post-war involvement (Hughes 2008: 80). Often beginning as resistance to a colonial hegemony, Cargo Cults were a response to a drastic change to a way of life, usually resulting in loss of freedom, culture and/or religious choice. This was seen in particular in Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea where the indigenous populations were exploited by Europeans for their cheap labour and forced to work on commercial plantations. The new religious movements promised an end to this hegemonic system and preparation for a new system of indigenous power or ‘superior age’. (Eller 2007: 176). The term ‘commodity fetishism’ (Lindstrom 1993) was coined for these cults, whereby the manufactured goods (or cargo) of the colonial, alien outsiders were interpreted as being created by the indigenous people’s spirit ancestors. Shrines were created in the form of airfields, landing strips and associated paraphernalia and members of the cult dressed in the uniforms of their invaders, mimicking their rituals. The ultimate aim was that these ‘status items’ would in turn be gifted to them by the spirits and that they would once more have power (Figure 2) (Hughes 2008: 80) .
As with most anthropological studies from the early 20th century, the cargo cults were initially dismissed as irrational and primitive. Relevant here is Franz Boas’s concept of cultural relativism whereby westerners were unable to comprehend the cults’ reasoning which was, however, entirely straightforward from the Melanesian viewpoint (Boas 1887: 589). Several theories have since been put forward attempting to explain to a western audience the rationality behind this belief in the spirit world. The anthropologist Worsley proposed a Marxist view that cargo cults developed as a nationalist means of resistance to the colonial capitalism undermining their social order (Trompf 2012: 12). Worsley notes that the general decline in cargo cults throughout the 20th century coincides with the growth of independence through political organisation and unification in these island nations (Worsley 1957: 231). The phenomena were also rationalised from a western perspective by drawing comparisons between European materialist association with possessions and the Melanesian personhood and status given to those with ownership of specific items (in this case the sought-after cargo) (Schwartz 1976:174). However, Schwartz’s incorrect presumption is that by being similar to our own views and behaviours they must, by default, be logical and rational. In reality, the large number of contradictory theories concerning these cults confirm that it is immensely hard for anthropologists to attempt to rationalise such behaviour. Without a study conducted by someone who thinks and perceives the world as a cargo cultist, the theories can only remain as speculation. A suggested rationalist hypothesis might venture that for an indigenous people who had had no interaction with outsiders and possessed no concept of the world outside their island(s), it may have seemed to them entirely logical to believe that the outsiders, and their material possessions, were a test for their own societies sent by their spirit ancestors.
Building on the issues raised by the Evans-Pritchard debate in particular, but also by the other two case studies, one has to ultimately question whether anthropologists have the right to judge the ‘rationality’ of other cultures, when all the criteria by which we judge them will be rooted in our own culture. Clearly, carrying out direct observations or immersing oneself in the culture of the community being studied is beneficial to our understanding of the functioning and beliefs of a group far different from our own. Evans-Pritchard spent months living with members of the Azande culture and his accounts of the witchcraft and its associated ceremonies and professions (witch-doctors and oracles) give a far wider insight into the culture than simply discussing their beliefs in magic (Evans-Pritchard 1976: 90). However, there seems little benefit or indeed purpose in judging how rational the opinions of others concerning witchcraft and spirits are: they do not need an assessment from a reality independent of their own culture (Garib 2005: 3). Winch claimed that our culture is as much structured by scientific thinking as others are by magic, meaning that no group can be thought of as more or less intelligent or superior to anyone else (Winch 1964: 312).
The key message to take from these case studies is that culture, and the innate way of thinking which structures any culture, is at the crux of all debates about rationality, no matter what the subject is: witchcraft, religion, ceremony, spirit possession, sacrifice etc. The viewpoints and norms that form language and cultural mind-set govern the rationality of all beliefs (Mills 2000: 30–31). In the introduction, rationality was defined as ‘based on or in accordance with reason or logic’. Therefore, in relation to all of the examples, the habitual behaviours and the culture’s commonplace interactions with witchcraft and spirits make their existence reasonable and logical from their point of view. Thus, the criteria which govern the concept of rationality vary from one society to another: they are culturally relativist (Winch 1964: 317). Anthropologists need to bear in mind that common sense explanations for naturally occurring events vary greatly from place to place, and they must strive toward criteria that are distinct from cultural affiliations associated with the ‘scientific’ and ‘mystical’ when observing and commenting on different groups.
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