Search

Magic, witchcraft, and divination have been intensely exploited fields throughout the history of anthropological thought. One of the relevance for focusing on this topic in the twenty-first century is that no other field could connect better postmodernity to the past and present of “traditional” societies; another possible focal point is that the magic and witchcraft practices give voice to represent fine recorders for social change within contemporary societies. The “Introduction” of this special issue of Martor overviews the research on this topic in Romania, done in the late twentieth century, but also in these past 23 years, and presents the articles that are included in the volume.

If witchcraft in Lorraine (France) has been widely studied and commented on by medieval and modern historians thanks to the analysis of the context of the Inquisition, books on demonology, witchcraft trials and ordeals such as torture or the stake, this is because it has long been considered and described as a peasant superstition, even a naive belief, which disappeared decades ago. However, since the second half of the 20th century, ethnologists and social and cultural anthropologists have sought to show that witchcraft remains a living social and cultural phenomenon in many regions of France and Europe. In the same way, this article aims to affirm, with regard to the results of a long-term field survey of unwitchers-healers and their clientele, that 21st century witchcraft still constitutes an explanation of misfortune, the disease, which aims to be coherent and effective in the face of events or symptoms deemed unexplained or strange. The article also proposes implicitly to question the status, place and role of contemporary healers in a region of eastern France. It is therefore a question of enriching the reflection on the plurality of the offer of care which is deployed in French society and comes to question the monopoly of scientific medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic materials from Kargopol'skii region at the turn of the twentyfirst century demonstrate that while paradigms of witchcraft and beliefs in the supernatural still existed, the paradigms had been somewhat narrowed when viewed within the historical context of the longue durée. Due to a reduction in the scope of bewitchments, entire communities no longer experienced epidemics of demonic possession brought about by the evil intent of an individual. Instances of bewitchment in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras became restricted to individuals who believed that they became ill because of the evil eye or a hex. The range of illnesses subsumed under bewitchment also decreased. Yet, depersonalization of witchcraft accusations did not occur. Kargopol'skii residents continued to identify individuals whom they or a family member believed were witches and sorcerers. The gendered feminine discourse of the nineteenth century had also been weakened somewhat. Finally, community violence against witches was not discernable in the Kargopol'sk discourse. In essence, these rural communities remained tied to a rhetoric of magic to explain imbalances within the social fabric caused by individual transgressions of boundaries, suspicions against individuals for causing illnesses, and other violation of norms that could only be corrected by way of counter-magic and the restoration of "the notions of social equality and social" harmony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]