Robin Derby

Office:  Bunche 7238                                                            

Tel. O. 267-5461

derby@history.ucla.edu

Office hours: Tuesdays, Thursdays 3:30-4:45 PM, or by appointment         

 

History 191E:

Witchcraft and Modernity in Latin America

Bunche 2173

TH 10-12:50 PM

 

Winter, 2005

 

This class examines a range of beliefs and practices related to witchcraft and magic in Latin America from the colonial period to the present, including colonial witchcraft accusations, messianic movements, shamanic sorcery, spirit possession and fat-stealing rumors in their individual and collective dimensions.  Drawing upon African and European-derived as well as indigenous traditions, we will analyze material from Brazil, the Amazon, Mexico, the Caribbean and the Andes with special attention to the role of ideas about gendered and racial otherness and state fetishism in animating notions of magical potency and assault sorcery.  We will interpret case studies in relation to key concepts in the study of magical practices by anthropologists such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Emile Durkheim, Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner and sociologists Karl Marx and Georg Simmel.  The course will consider both the sociology of magic, such as how witchcraft accusations map social tensions and the logic and function of secrecy, as well as the more expressive dimensions of collective symbols.  

This course requires students to read and synthesize a lot of materials.  Do not take the course if you are not able and willing to read approximately 100-120 pages per week. Students are responsible for coming to their discussion section prepared to discuss the weekly readings.  Attendance is mandatory.  Other requirements include two seven page papers, a short in-class presentation on one of the week’s readings, and each week students will be required to post to the course bulletin board a comment, issue or question about the week’s readings before class.  The amount of reading in the class is formidable, so you will need to plan your time effectively in order to keep abreast of the assignments.  Course grades will be tabulated in the following matter:  class preparation and participation (including the class presentation and weekly post) 40% and each paper 30%.  Unexplained class absences and late assignments will affect your grade.   All required books are on reserve at Powell library, and the required articles have been scanned onto or attached to the class website.  I strongly urge you to purchase the books, or make copies of the chapters well in advance of class, however, since you will need to refer to the text during class discussion, and be able to do close textual analysis of the texts in your essays.  Materials marked with an asterisk are recommended.

The two essays will be both be due at the end of the class.  I assume you will have proper and full citations where appropriate, and that the work you submit is your own.  Academic honesty will be assumed in the class, and violations will be dealt with harshly. 

 

 

Books available for purchase at the UCLA Bookstore:

 

Paul Christopher Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods:  The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé, New York:  Oxford University Press, 2002.

Laura A. Lewis, Hall of Mirrors:  Power, Witchcraft and Caste in Colonial Mexico, Durham:  Duke University Press, 2003.

Patricia R. Pessar.  From Fanatics to Folk:  Brazilian Messianism and Popular Culture, Durham:  Duke University Press, 2004.

João José Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil:  The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia, Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Raquel Romberg, Witchcraft and Welfare:  Spiritual Capital and the Business of

Magic in Modern Puerto Rico, Austin:  University of Texas Press, 2003.

            Jim Wafer, The Taste of Blood:  Spirit Possession in Brazilian Candomblé, Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.

Neil l. Whitehead and Robin Wright, eds., In Darkness and Secrecy:  The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia, Durham:  Duke University Press, 2004.

 

Jan. 6.  Introduction:  Approaches to the Study of Religious Phenomena

Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Victor Turner, Geertz

 

            Film:  Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard:  Strange Beliefs

 

1.Jan. 13 Explaining Witchcraft

 

“Introduction” and “Comparative Interface 1:  The Variable Faces of Sorcery and Witchcraft,” in Peter Geschiere. The Modernity of Witchcraft:  Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, Translated by Peter Geschiere and Janet Roitman, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997.

 

“Introduction,” Birgit Meyer and Peter Pels, Magic and Modernity:  Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment, Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press, 2003.

 

Jean and John Comaroff, “Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction:  Notes from the South African Postcolony,” American Ethnologist 26 (2) 1999: 279-303.

 

*Robin Briggs, “’Many Reasons Why’:  Witchcraft and the Problem of Multiple Explanation,” in Jonathan Barry et al., eds., Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe:  Studies in Culture and Belief, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 49-63.

 

2.Jan. 20.  Race, Power and the Devil  in Colonial Mexico

 

Laura A. Lewis, Hall of Mirrors:  Power, Witchcraft and Caste in Colonial Mexico, Durham:  Duke University Press, 2003, chapters 1-5.

 

*Ruth Behar, “Sex and Sin:  Witchcraft and the Devil in Late Colonial Mexico,”  American Ethnologist 14, 1 (Feb. 1987), 34-55.

 

*Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World :  The impact of Diabolism in New Spain, New Haven:  Yale University, 1994.

*Andrew Orta, 1999 "Syncretic subjects and body politics: doubleness, personhood, and Aymara catechists."  American Ethnologist 26(4): 864-889.

*Andrew Orta, 1998 "Converting difference: missionaries, metaculture, and the politics of locality." Ethnology 37(2):165-185.

 

3.Jan. 27. Religion and Social Revolt:  Islam

 

João José Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia, Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, parts I & II, *III.

 

4. Feb. 3.  Nationalism and The Religious Imagination:  Patron Saints

 

Eric R. Wolf, "The Virgin of Guadalupe:  A Mexican National Symbol," Journal of American Folklore, 71, (1958): 34-39.

http://www.jstor.org/view/00218715/ap020274/02a00060/0?searchID=cce44037.11005574360&frame=noframe&currentResult=00218715%2bap020274%2b02a00060%2b0%2c01%2b19580100%2b9995%2b80419899&userID=a9e83017@ucla.edu/01cc99333c00501663367&dpi=3&sortOrder=SCORE&config=jstor&viewContent=Article

William B. Taylor, "The Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain:  An Inquiry into the Social History of Marian Devotion," American Ethnologist, 14, 1 (February 1987): 9-33.

http://www.jstor.org/view/00940496/ap020053/02a00020/0?searchID=cc99333c.11005511710&frame=noframe&currentResult=00940496%2bap020053%2b02a00020%2b0%2c01%2b19870200%2b9995%2b80129799&userID=a9e82e0e@ucla.edu/01cce4403500501603ba7&dpi=3&sortOrder=SCORE&config=jstor&viewContent=Article

Jeanette Favrot Peterson, "The Virgin of Guadalupe:  Symbol of Conquest or Liberation?," Art Journal 51, 4 (Winter 1992): 39-47.

http://www.jstor.org/view/00043249/ap030127/03a00140/0?searchID=cc99333c.11005513162&frame=noframe&currentResult=00043249%2bap030127%2b03a00140%2b0%2c01%2b19921200%2b9995%2b80078799&userID=a9e82e0e@ucla.edu/01cce4403500501603ba7&dpi=3&sortOrder=SCORE&config=jstor&viewContent=Article

*Louise Burkhart, “The Cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico,” in Gary Gossen, ed., South and Meso-American Native Spirituality:  From the Feathered Serpent to the Theology of Liberation,  Vol. 4 of World Spirituality:  An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, New York:  Crossroad Publishing Company, 198-227.

*William Christian, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain,  Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1981.

5.Feb. 10.  Millenarianism as Ritual Process

 

Patricia R. Pessar.  From Fanatics to Folk:  Brazilian Messianism and Popular Culture, Durham:  Duke University Press, 2004, chapters 1-6 and conclusion.

 

*Todd Diacon, “Peasants, Prophets, and the Power of a Millenarian Vision in Twentieth-century Brazil,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 3 (July, 1990), 488-514.

 

6.Feb. 17.  Secrecy and the Gods

 

Paul Christopher Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods:  The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé, New York:  Oxford University Press, 2002.

 

7.Feb. 24. Shamanism as Assault Sorcery

 

Neil l. Whitehead and Robin Wright, eds., In Darkness and Secrecy:  The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia, Durham:  Duke University Press, 2004, chapters by Vidal and Whitehead, Wright, Heckenberger, and Santos-Granero.

 

8.Mar. 3.  Sorcery and the White Man

 

Andrew Canessa, “Fear and Loathing on the Kharisiri Trail:  Alterity and Identity in the Andes,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6 (4), 2000: 705-721.

 

P. Gose, “Sacrifice and the Commodity Form in the Andes, “Man,  21 (1986): 296-310.

 

http://www.jstor.org/view/00251496/dm993939/99p0720n/0?searchID=cc993341.11005594041&frame=noframe&currentResult=00251496%2bdm993939%2b99p0720n%2b0%2c01%2b19860600%2b9995%2b80139399&userID=a9e83017@ucla.edu/01cc99333c00501663367&dpi=3&sortOrder=SCORE&config=jstor&viewContent=Article

 

Mary Weismantel, “White Cannibals:  Fantasies of Racial Violence in the Andes,” Identities, 4: 1 (1997): 9-44.

 

*Abigail E. Adams, “Gringas, Ghouls and Guatemala:   The 1994 Attacks on North American Women accused of Body Organ Harvesting,” The Journal of Latin American Anthropology 4, 1 (1998), 112-133.

 

*Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “Theft of Life:  The Globalization of Organ Stealing Rumors,” Anthropology Today, 12, 3 (June, 1996):  3-11.

 

*Luise White, “The Traffic in Heads:  Bodies, Borders, and the Articulation of Regional Histories,” Journal of Southern African Studies 23, 2 (1997): 225-38.

 

*Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: a Particular History of the Senses, New York:  Routledge, 1993, esp. chap. 1.

 

*Hugo G. Nutini and John M. Roberts, Bloodsucking Witchcraft:  An Epistemological Study of Anthropomorphic Supernaturalism in Rural Tlaxcala, Tucson:  University of Arizona Press, 1993.

 

9.Mar. 10.   The Business of Religion/ Religion as Business

 

Raquel Romberg, Witchcraft and Welfare:  Spiritual Capital and the Business of Magic in Modern Puerto Rico, Austin:  University of Texas Press, 2003, introduction and chapters 2-4.

 

*Sidney M. Greenfield, “The Return of Dr. Fritz:  Spiritist Healing and Patronage Networks in Urban, Industrial Brazil,” Social Science & Medicine, 24, 12 (1987):  1095-1107.

 

*James Holston, “Alternative modernities: statecraft and religious imagination in the Valley of the Dawn.” American Ethnologist 26(3) 1999: 605-631.

 

10. Mar. 17.  Spirit Possession:  Self, Personhood and the Spirits

 

Jim Wafer, The Taste of Blood:  Spirit Possession in Brazilian Candomblé, Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.

 

*Janice Boddy, “Spirit Possession Revisited:  Beyond Instrumentality,” Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1994): 407-34.