Abstract:The paper draws on three years' fieldwork and twelve years' familiarity withfeminist witches in New Zealand. These women are thoughtful and articulate about their magical practice, and it is their theories about how magic works and the function of ritual-making which are the paper's central concern. Scholarly theories and debates about magic and ritual have frequently been dichotomously constructed: science versus magic, the symbolists versus the intellectualists, causality versus participation, ritual as acti… Show more
“…Societies of the global North remain suffused with magic, spiritualism, witchcraft and the occult (Comaroff & Comaroff, 1999). There are degrees by which individuals in all societies may hold the supposedly dissected worldviews of the scientific and the spiritual, magical or religious, evidenced by the persistence of the fantastic (including magical animals) in popular culture (Rountree, 2002), and in major and minor religions, cults and witchcrafts (Moore & Sanders, 2001). Beliefs in magical animals are dynamic, and can transcend from the spiritual or mystical to become cultural heritage (Comaroff & Comaroff, 1999), such as the Loch Ness Monster, Welsh dragons and the Beast of Bodmin Moor in the UK, trolls in Denmark (Karrebæk & Maegaard, 2015), and various lake-dwelling monsters across the globe, including the Kanas Lake Monster in Xinjiang, China, the Seljordsormen in Norway, the Lagarfjót Worm in Iceland, and the Storsjöodjuret of Sweden (the latter was briefly given protected status by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency but this was later revoked by the Swedish Parliament; Sandelin, 2014).…”
Section: Magic Animals and Contemporary Human Societiesmentioning
There is a broad set of human beliefs, attitudes and behaviours around the issue of magical animals, referring to both mythical animals not recognized by science and extant animals that are recognized by science but have magical properties. This is a broad issue ranging from spiritual beliefs around mythical animals living in Malagasy forests, to cultural heritage associated with the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland. Beliefs and behaviours around magical animals can have positive and negative impacts on biodiversity conservation goals. Yet, so far, the discipline of conservation biology has not adequately considered magical animals, neglecting to account for the broader knowledge from outside the natural sciences on this issue, and taking a narrow, utilitarian approach to how magical animals should be managed, without necessarily considering the broader impacts on conservation goals or ethics. Here we explore how magical animals can influence conservation goals, how conservation biology and practice has thought about magical animals, and some of the limitations of current approaches, particularly the failure to consider magical animals as part of wider systems of belief and culture. We argue that magical animals and their implications for conservation merit wider consideration.Keywords Conservation, ethics, Madagascar, magic, snakes, spirituality, Tanzania Introduction I n a proposed new highway in Iceland was contested in court on the basis that it would cross the habitat of a valued species (The Guardian, ). In , , tourists visited a site in Scotland primarily because it is inhabited by a rare, endemic animal (ASVA, ), supporting a thriving ecotourism industry. Hyaenas Crocuta crocuta in Ethiopia are tolerated because they provide vital provisioning ecosystem services that benefit local communities (Baynes-Rock, ). In Madagascar, in contrast, some snakes are persecuted because they provide ecosystem disservices, harmful to human health (Tingle, ). These are seemingly straightforward conservation stories, where human-animal interactions produce benefits and costs for both biodiversity and people. Yet there is an often-overlooked complexity to these cases, with important implications for conservation outcomes. The species involved are either not recognized by science, or the properties of these species that local people resent or value are not recognized by science. The Icelandic protesters were protecting the habitat of Huldufólk, or elves. Ecotourists in Scotland were seeking the Loch Ness Monster Nessiteras rhombopteryx. The Ethiopian hyaenas provide the ecosystem service of eating evil spirits. The Malagasy snakes harm humans and cattle by transforming into sharp spear-like forms and dropping from trees. We argue that conservationists should take magical animals seriously, because they have important positive and negative implications for many species and habitats. Magical animals have been neglected and oversimplified within conservation, probably because of a lack of tr...
“…Societies of the global North remain suffused with magic, spiritualism, witchcraft and the occult (Comaroff & Comaroff, 1999). There are degrees by which individuals in all societies may hold the supposedly dissected worldviews of the scientific and the spiritual, magical or religious, evidenced by the persistence of the fantastic (including magical animals) in popular culture (Rountree, 2002), and in major and minor religions, cults and witchcrafts (Moore & Sanders, 2001). Beliefs in magical animals are dynamic, and can transcend from the spiritual or mystical to become cultural heritage (Comaroff & Comaroff, 1999), such as the Loch Ness Monster, Welsh dragons and the Beast of Bodmin Moor in the UK, trolls in Denmark (Karrebæk & Maegaard, 2015), and various lake-dwelling monsters across the globe, including the Kanas Lake Monster in Xinjiang, China, the Seljordsormen in Norway, the Lagarfjót Worm in Iceland, and the Storsjöodjuret of Sweden (the latter was briefly given protected status by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency but this was later revoked by the Swedish Parliament; Sandelin, 2014).…”
Section: Magic Animals and Contemporary Human Societiesmentioning
There is a broad set of human beliefs, attitudes and behaviours around the issue of magical animals, referring to both mythical animals not recognized by science and extant animals that are recognized by science but have magical properties. This is a broad issue ranging from spiritual beliefs around mythical animals living in Malagasy forests, to cultural heritage associated with the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland. Beliefs and behaviours around magical animals can have positive and negative impacts on biodiversity conservation goals. Yet, so far, the discipline of conservation biology has not adequately considered magical animals, neglecting to account for the broader knowledge from outside the natural sciences on this issue, and taking a narrow, utilitarian approach to how magical animals should be managed, without necessarily considering the broader impacts on conservation goals or ethics. Here we explore how magical animals can influence conservation goals, how conservation biology and practice has thought about magical animals, and some of the limitations of current approaches, particularly the failure to consider magical animals as part of wider systems of belief and culture. We argue that magical animals and their implications for conservation merit wider consideration.Keywords Conservation, ethics, Madagascar, magic, snakes, spirituality, Tanzania Introduction I n a proposed new highway in Iceland was contested in court on the basis that it would cross the habitat of a valued species (The Guardian, ). In , , tourists visited a site in Scotland primarily because it is inhabited by a rare, endemic animal (ASVA, ), supporting a thriving ecotourism industry. Hyaenas Crocuta crocuta in Ethiopia are tolerated because they provide vital provisioning ecosystem services that benefit local communities (Baynes-Rock, ). In Madagascar, in contrast, some snakes are persecuted because they provide ecosystem disservices, harmful to human health (Tingle, ). These are seemingly straightforward conservation stories, where human-animal interactions produce benefits and costs for both biodiversity and people. Yet there is an often-overlooked complexity to these cases, with important implications for conservation outcomes. The species involved are either not recognized by science, or the properties of these species that local people resent or value are not recognized by science. The Icelandic protesters were protecting the habitat of Huldufólk, or elves. Ecotourists in Scotland were seeking the Loch Ness Monster Nessiteras rhombopteryx. The Ethiopian hyaenas provide the ecosystem service of eating evil spirits. The Malagasy snakes harm humans and cattle by transforming into sharp spear-like forms and dropping from trees. We argue that conservationists should take magical animals seriously, because they have important positive and negative implications for many species and habitats. Magical animals have been neglected and oversimplified within conservation, probably because of a lack of tr...
“…Whilst witch hunts once were rampant across Europe, the last conviction for witchcraft in the UK in 1944 marked the terminus of official recognition of supernatural forces (Bukurura, 1994). However, the continued pervasiveness of the supernatural and fantastic has not gone unnoticed, including the preference for creationist over evolutionary accounts (Legare et al, 2012); the business of magic across literature, film and tourism (Rountree, 2002); interest in psychic phenomena;…”
Section: The Durability Of Witchcraft and Spiritual Worldviewsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…One of the first studies in the anthropology of witchcraft, Evan-Pritchard's (1937) research on the Azande, suggested that Azande worldviews had an internal logical coherence. This was the inauguration of attempts to demark witchcraft as internally rational: a coherent worldview, logical in structure, where magic acts as a substitute for science, but also a social force moderating hierarchies and norms (Schram, 2010), an understanding which also aligns with symbolist logics of witchcraft as symbolic of social order (Rountree, 2002).Whilst both claims are functionalist (witchcraft performs a social function) and culturally relativist (witchcraft is logical 'from within'), they are substantiated through work demonstrating the social functions witchcraft and witchcraft accusations play (Kohnert, 1996). Witchcraft can act as a levelling force whereby individuals who outstrip their status are socially sanctioned (Geschiere, 1998), an idiom through which to interpret local inequality (Ciekawy, 1999).…”
Section: Witchcraft and Rationalitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In the contemporary West, technological systems can be imbued with quasi-supernatural agency (Szerszynski, 2006), whilst biotechnologies can be interpreted by the public through theological rather than scientific-rationalist ontologies (Dean-Drummond et al, 2001). Comaroff and Comaroff (1999) and Peltzer (2003) point to the popularity of fantastical explanations including the Loch Ness Monster, black cats, alien invasions and genetic mutation, and others parallel witchcraft fears in Africa and the obsessions with child abuse in the West (Geschiere, 1998), or the presence of scientists and medical professionals amongst modern practising witches (Rountree, 2002). This suggests the continued presence, and intermingling, of the non-rational within the rational.…”
This article interrogates the interrelationship between witchcraft, spiritual worldviews and environmental management. Drawing on diverse literatures from anthropology, conservation science and geography, this article explores how witchcraft and spiritual worldviews have been rationalised in order to explain their continued significance, for society as a whole and for the conservation of natural resources and biodiversity specifically. Using an assemblage framework, this article examines how the agencies of spirits and witches are entangled with other social and material entities, drawing on examples from three communities in Tanzania. It argues that thinking through assemblage allows the agentic capacities of spirits and witchcraft to be recognised, whilst also acknowledging their inseparability from other expressive and material components of assemblages, including social organisation and more-than-human actors. Finally, this article turns to evidence for the deterritorialisation, or breaking apart, of these assemblages around spiritual worldviews and witchcraft, and considers their future role in local conservation.
“…As Rountree suggests of a group of feminist witches she worked with in New Zealand:Central to their holistic worldview and their theories about magic's efficacy is the shamanistic belief that all things—plants, animals, people, rocks, the elements, and so on—are connected in dynamic relationship. (Rountree : 44)…”
Reclaiming is a contemporary Pagan tradition rooted in the understanding that sacrality infuses the cosmos. Reclaiming teachers critique the ‘mechanistic’ basis of modern science and its rejection of magical thought, implicating this worldview in oppression, environmental devastation and colonialism. Their concerns resonate with an emerging critique among historians, who argue that the Enlightenment's rejection of Europe's ‘superstitious’ past was tied to the colonial project of refuting the religious and magical beliefs of non‐Europeans. Engaging with Reclaiming theology exposes the still‐uncomfortable relationship of anthropology to ‘non‐rational’ forms of knowledge. In embracing systems of thought profoundly repudiated since the Enlightenment and reimagining what it is to be human, Reclaiming understandings potentially disturb anthropology at its roots, including its very delimitation as a ‘science of humanity’.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
