“Recasting sorcery as critical psycho-social commentary, moral discourse, and local psychotherapy”

Abstract

This article critically reflects on future directions in cross-cultural psychiatry and cultural psychology by engaging the challenges of interpreting psycho-social theories of causation and evidence in what is conventionally called “sorcery” in anthropology. This anthropologist argues that sorcery, notwithstanding its status as an older, classic topic in the history of anthropology and its seemingly “exotic” reputation, has continuing value in recent efforts to de-colonize the study of local ontology and moral personhood, in particular, in contexts of transcultural encounters. The focus here is on an incident in a Saharan Tuareg community that is locally-defined as “sorcery” (called ark echaghel in Tamajaq, their Amazigh language). Many Tuareg, predominantly Muslim, traditionally semi-nomadic, and socially-ranked, have experienced socio-economic and ecological upheavals, armed conflicts, and settled life in towns. This analysis examines a case of sorcery practice and its social context—of a transcultural encounter between a smith/artisan and a tourist and its aftermath—of diagnosis and commentary by an Islamic scholar—as moral discourse and local psycho-social treatment as critical commentary on and resistance to transcultural inequalities. The broader goal here is to suggest avenues to pursue by showing how sorcery reveals local ontology, moral discourse on evil, and culture theory. Thus, sorcery, rather than a “retrograde” or irrelevant topic, offers rich insights into local ontology’s psycho-social and political implications, thereby contributing to current concerns in transcultural psychiatry with social and political power asymmetries, critical epistemologies, and indigenous critiques that question universalizing absolutist psychological interpretations in cultural encounters.