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The embodiment of sorcery: Supernatural aggression, belief and envy in a remote Aboriginal community.
- Source :
- Australian Journal of Anthropology; Dec2017, Vol. 28 Issue 3, p286-300, 15p
- Publication Year :
- 2017
-
Abstract
- Anthropologists have long attempted to come to grips with Indigenous Australian sorcery beliefs and especially with the idea that acts with no understandable efficacy bring about illness and death. In this ethnographic interpretation of sorcery beliefs in the remote community of Numbulwar, I follow those few who have attempted to find a link between these apparently harmless acts and real physiological consequences, arguing that the fear of sorcery that pervades Numbulwar contributes directly to the stress of daily life and indirectly to the premature morbidity and mortality of too many lives. Belief is posited as the mechanism whereby the human stress response is activated to a harmful extent, a process in which the projection of envious feelings may often be critical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- MAGIC
ETHNOGRAPHIC analysis
SUPERNATURAL
ABORIGINAL Australians
ETHNOLOGY
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 10358811
- Volume :
- 28
- Issue :
- 3
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Australian Journal of Anthropology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 126530308
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12228