Prologue
Issues
Chapters
Chapter 1
Introduction: The Dangers of Home—Ethnographical and Conceptual Explorations
Witchcraft: The pitfalls of a notion
Academic discourse and the dangers of a panacea notion
Witchcraft and the dangers within
Continuity and new beginnings
Intimacy and the uncanny
The struggle over trust
Chapter 2
Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Changing Perceptions of Distance: African Examples
Changing parameters of intimacy and distance
An urban elite attacked by witchcraft
Urban witchcraft attacks the village
Witchcraft brings the village to the city
Witchcraft, distance, and the post–cold war crisis
Feymen and their magic money: Beyond kinship?
“Bushfallers,” transcontinental migration, and the stretching of kinship/witchcraft
Intimacy and new distances
Chapter 3
To Trust a Witch
Trust: Rational, ontological, or historical?
Trust and doubt: The recourse to the nganga (healer)
Ambiguities of the nganga
Modern nganga and the fear of charlatans
A new solution: God’s work as the basis for ultimate trust
Everyday ways of coping
Chapter 4
Comparative Perspectives I: Witches, Neighbors, and the Closure of “the House” in Europe
Historians and anthropologists on witchcraft: Rapprochements and distancing
Witchcraft and state formation: Europe and Africa
Witchcraft, proximity, and kinship in early modern Europe
An African reading
The dangers of intimacy: Neighbors or family?
Favret-Saada on the Bocage: Désorceleurs denouncing neighbors
Closing or stretching “the house”
Chapter 5
Comparative Perspectives II: Candomblé de Bahia—Between Witchcraft and Religion
Candomblé: Commonalities with and Differences from Africa
History: From witchcraft to religion—The struggle for purity
National identity and regional politics
Feiticaria versus purity
Candomblé on the frontier: Everyday struggles against evil
Candomblé: The occult as a basis for trust?
Interlude
Further Comparisons: Melanesia and Java—Ontological Differences or Aphasia before “the Uncanny”?
Africa and Melanesia: Different Ontologies?
Java: “Post-Suharto Witches” and the Uncanny
Chapter 6
Back to Trust: New Distances, New Challenges
Witchcraft on screen: Changing parameters of intimacy and trust
Pentecostalism, the devil, and the scaling up of witchcraft
Child witches in Kinshasa: Transformations of witchcraft and kinship
Satan and the spirits in Islamic Africa
Mediation, increase of scale, and trust: African specificities
Une didactique contre la sorcellerie?
Notes
References
Index