Magic and Witchcraft Implications for Democratization and Poverty-Alleviating Aid in Africa

ABSTRACT & RÉSUMÉ & ZUSAMMENFASSUNG: The belief in occult forces is still deeply rooted in many African societies, regardless of education, religion, and social class of the people concerned. According to many Africans its incidence is even increasing due to social stress and strain caused (among others) by the process of modernization. Most often magic and witchcraft accusations work to the disadvantage of the poor and deprived, but under particular circumstances they become a means of the poor in the struggle against oppression by establishing "cults of counterviolence." Magic and witchcraft beliefs have increasingly been instrumentalized for political purposes. Apparently they can be used to support any kind of political system, whether despotic or democratic. The belief in occult forces has serious implications for development cooperation. Development projects, which constitute arenas of strategic groups in their struggle for power and control over project resources, are likely to add further social stress to an already endangered precarious balance of power, causing witchcraft accusations to flourish. In addition, witchcraft accusations may serve as indicators of hidden social conflicts which are difficult to detect by other methods. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RÉSUMÉ : [ La magie et la sorcellerie : conséquences pour la démocratisation et l'aide à la réduction de la pauvreté en Afrique ] - La croyance en forces occultes est encore profondément enracinée dans des nombreuses sociétés africaines, indépendamment de l'éducation, de la religion et de la classe sociale des personnes concernées. Selon des nombreux Africains, son incidence augmente encore en raison du stress social et de la tension causée (entre autres) par le processus de modernisation. Le plus souvent, les accusations de magie et de sorcellerie font mal aux pauvres et aux personnes défavorisées, mais dans des circonstances particulières, elles deviennent un moyen pour les pauvres dans la lutte contre l'oppression en établissant des « cultes de contre-violence ». Les croyances magiques et sorcelleries ont de plus en plus été instrumentées à des fins politiques. Apparemment, ils peuvent être utilisés pour soutenir tout type de système politique, qu'il soit despotique ou démocratique. La croyance en forces occultes a de sérieuses implications pour la coopération au développement. Les projets de développement, qui constituent des arènes de groupes stratégiques dans leur lutte pour le pouvoir et le contrôle sur les ressources du projet, sont susceptibles d'ajouter un stress social supplémentaire à un équilibre de pouvoir précaire déjà menacé, ce qui entraînera des accusations de sorcellerie. En outre, les accusations de sorcellerie peuvent servir d'indicateur de conflits sociaux cachés qui sont difficiles à détecter par d'autres méthodes. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ZUSAMMENFASSUNG: [Magie und Hexerei: Implikationen für Demokratisierung und armuts-lindernde Entwicklungshilfe in Afrika] - Der Glaube an okkulte Mächte ist immer noch fest verankert in vielen afrikanischen Gesellschaften, unabhängig von Ausbildung, Religion und sozialer Klasse der betroffenen Menschen. Viele Afrikaner glauben sogar, dass Hexerei weiter zunimmt durch die wachsenden gesellschaftlichen Gegensätze im Rahmen der Modernisierung. In der Regel wirken Hexenanschuldigungen zum Nachteil der Armen und Entrechteten. Aber unter bestimmten Umständen können sie durch die Etablierung von ‚Kulten der Gegengewalt‘ auch zum Mittel der Armen in ihrem Kampf gegen Unterdrückung werden. Der Glaube an Magie und Hexerei wird in Afrika zunehmend für politische Zwecke instrumentalisiert. Augenscheinlich kann er zur Unterstützung jeglicher politischer Systeme, ob despotisch oder demokratisch, genutzt werden. Aus dem Glauben an okkulte Mächte ergeben sich gravierende Implikationen für die Entwicklungszusammenarbeit. Entwicklungsprojekt, die auf lokaler Ebene Schauplatz strategischer Gruppen in ihrer Auseinandersetzung um Macht und Kontrolle über Projektmittel bilden, sind dazu angetan, weiteren sozialen Stress zum ohnehin schon prekären Machtgleichgewicht hinzuzufügen, und heizen Hexenanschuldigungen damit an. Davon abgesehen, können Hexenanschuldigungen als Indikator für versteckte soziale Konflikte dienen, die durch andere Methoden der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit kaum aufzudecken sind.

Dealing With COVID-19 Through Employee Stock Ownership Plans

In this chapter, the authors argue that far from the shocking decision of firing employees to leverage their short-term liquidity, organizations may draw other innovative options such as giving company shares to their employees. Employee stock ownership (ESO) plans have the potential to secure financial liquidity for firms while simultaneously providing social inclusion as well as empowerment to people, relating their efforts directly to firms' performance and driving the economic system into a shared capitalism. However, while companies may be solving their financial constraints through ESO, the authors identified a trade-off related to the traditional position of hegemony of firms. They argue that the decision to share the risk through paying wages using firms' stock options derives in a progressive detriment of power and control that some organizations would not be willing to suffer.

Experiencing Religion: Post-Colonial Views for Religious Education

Framed within religious historicism, the present study reviews, through historical and empirical insights, the lessons that Philippine RE can learn from the liberating function of religion and liberated religious undercurrents parallel to institutional religion in the Philippines. The liberating function of religion is often overlooked in post-colonial discourses while religious undercurrent views seem neglected due to pre-occupations with untangling power imbalances submerged in the voices of institutional religion in post-colonial analysis. Hence, in this presentation, I give particular attention to the liberating role of contemporary religion in contrast to the post-colonial thrust to rid institutional religion of power and control and secondly, the liberated religious views of young Filipino audiences from empirical findings I found from my previous studies. For religious undercurrents, I limit myself to current unorthodox religious interpretations of young Filipino audiences departing from conventional assumptions of religion and culture. My analysis of liberating religion and liberated religious views from empirical findings show epistemological shifts from the Christian interpretation in a post-colonial context. These shifts point to de-institutionalized but theocentric religious ideas inspired by moral and communal considerations, which form the basis of RE content.

Women in Adébáyọ̀ Fálétí’s Poetry

Women have been victims of gender ideology which, according to Hussein (2005), is a systemic set of cultural beliefs through which a society constructs and wields its gender relations and practices. Gender ideology contains legends, narratives and myths about what it means to be a man or a woman and suggests how each should behave in a society (Olabode, 2009). Women are a non-homogenous group as their status and roles in the society are determined by a complexity of factors such as being a daughter, sister, and wife; a cultic member; and the economic and political positions they hold in the market place and in local governance (Ilesanmi, 2013). Sub-ethnic variations were also reported in customs and practices such as a marriage and family life, pre-natal and post-natal practices and others. Men in various sub-ethnic (Yorùba) groups are given privileges in matters relating to power and control ́ in domestic and public spheres. Since culture is not static but rather dynamic, therefore contemporary writers are now advocating for portrayal that will extol women’s virtues, thereby bringing to the fore the indispensable roles women play in society. In order to redeem and recreate an enhanced status for women, studies about women abound in literary studies, with little attention given to issues of women in Adébayó ̀ Fa ̩ ́letí ’s poetry. Thus, using the feminist approach ex ́ - amines how women are portrayed in Fálétí’s poetry so as to establish his view about the womenfolk.

Practice in a Time of Uncertainty: Practitioner Reflections on Working With Families Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence During the COVID-19 Global Pandemic

This paper reports findings of a qualitative study examining the perceptions of 21 Australian women professionals who conduct home visiting with families experiencing intimate partner violence. There is scant evidence documenting how home visiting professionals adapted practice to address the safety concerns of women and their children within the context of the pandemic. Practitioners noted an increase in the risk level and complexity of intimate partner violence (IPV), including the ways that perpetrators weaponized the pandemic to exert power and control over women and children. Practitioners reported on their rapid adaptation of practices, to ensure the continuation of services which included moving to online delivery methods, wearing PPE, and negotiating practice from a distance. While responses to these changes were mixed, most reported their desire to continue to use online platforms post-pandemic, reporting increased safety, flexibility, and accessibility for the majority of clients. This research addresses a gap in respect of professionals’ perceptions of the issues facing survivors of IPV and of their professional practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. As policies, practices, and protocols continue to adapt to the challenging environment posed by the pandemic the experiences of professionals and service users are critical to inform these changes.

Frontline Responses to Domestic Abuse in Scotland

Scotland's progress in tackling domestic abuse is recognised for the gendered analysis which underpins it. This gendered analysis recognises structural gender inequalities as the context in which domestic abuse occurs, enabling more effective targeting of resources for prevention and response. The Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018, described as a 'gold standard' in legislation to tackle domestic abuse, draws on the gendered concept of coercive control. The Act seeks to recognise in law the nature of domestic abuse not as isolated incidents but rather as an ongoing exercise of power and control by the perpetrator, using various tactics. In this chapter, we describe what is known about domestic abuse in Scotland, the strengths and weaknesses of different data sources in capturing the gendered nature of domestic abuse and the reality of how victim-survivors experience it. We consider the multi-agency structures, in particular Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences and Multi-Agency Tasking and Coordinating groups, which support Scotland's partnership approach in the front-line response to domestic abuse, recognising the crucial role of feminist third sector agencies alongside statutory agencies such as police, health, social work, and housing.

The body as an archive

ABSTRACT This paper aims to offer an understanding of the body as an archive while analysing poems written by queer and non-binary poet and performer Danez Smith. Seen as a conflicting field for power and control disputes, the archive can be read in different ways and this paper approaches it in order to theorise what a queer archival practice may signal when elements such as gender, sexuality and desire are interrogated in Smith’s poems. Taking into consideration theoretical contributions from Celia Pedrosa et al. (2018), Julietta Singh (2018), David Lapoujade (2017), Ann Cvetkovich (2003) and others, it is concluded that Smith’s poems display a complex negotiation of feeling and the world, allowing new meanings to erupt from the archive.

Intimations of Mortality: Death in Children's Fantasy

<p>"Children's books have always been filled with death," Patrick Ness writes in his review of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. "You can't have an orphan without at least two dead people, after all." Literary childhood, from its origins, is not only associated with, but commonly defined by the experience of loss. This thesis argues that children's literature is fixated on endings; that it is marked by the insistent, and persistent, presence of mortality. Further, it argues that mortality is not just a prevalent theme, but a fundamental organising principle both thematically and structurally, working to define the genre and shape its form and substance. The mortal notes in children's literature are an inevitable effect of the peculiar conditions of its production. Children do not, for the most part, write their own literature: it is written by adults who necessarily write to, of, and for the child from a point in time irrevocably apart from it. Critic Jacqueline Rose has famously articulated the "acknowledged difference, a rupture almost, between writer and addressee" on which children's literature rests. The overwhelming presence of mortality in the genre is a direct effect of the rupture at its heart: inevitably aware of the acknowledged difference between writer and addressee, and filtered through adult memory and imagination, literary childhood cannot help but be framed as eulogy and elegy, constructed as the beginning of an ending. This reading, then, addresses the gap between adult and child that has occupied children's literature criticism for almost thirty years, but it moves beyond questions of power and control to focus on its creative effects. The thesis explores mortality and the construction of literary childhood in relation to adulthood in a range of fantasy subgenres. It begins with the classics of the Victorian Golden Age, exploring the writing of childhood at the origins of modern children's fantasy. The chapters on animal stories, toy stories and ghost stories all shed light on the figuring of childhood through close association and identification, each foregrounding particular qualities with which literary childhood is invested. In animal characters, primacy is given to an intense and largely contextless vitality, to an orientation in a paradoxically eternal and eternally fleeting present moment. Toys are memory boxes, highlighting the importance of the child (and children's literature) as a lieu de mémoire. Ghost characters emphasise the ways in which childhood is figured as past and as haunting, memorialised even in its presence. In time-slips and alternate world fantasy, the dissonant once-and-future oriented, mortal qualities of literary childhood manifest themselves in the manipulation of the time and space of setting. But as dependent as the impulse to elegy is on difference, it also depends for its entire effect on the inescapable continuity between adult and child. Put another way, we were once them. They will be us. That the "impossible" relation between adult and child is so neatly encapsulated by the memento mori – "that which you are, we were; that which we are, you shall be" – speaks to how and why mortality casts so deep a shadow in the literature.</p>

Intimations of Mortality: Death in Children's Fantasy

<p>"Children's books have always been filled with death," Patrick Ness writes in his review of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. "You can't have an orphan without at least two dead people, after all." Literary childhood, from its origins, is not only associated with, but commonly defined by the experience of loss. This thesis argues that children's literature is fixated on endings; that it is marked by the insistent, and persistent, presence of mortality. Further, it argues that mortality is not just a prevalent theme, but a fundamental organising principle both thematically and structurally, working to define the genre and shape its form and substance. The mortal notes in children's literature are an inevitable effect of the peculiar conditions of its production. Children do not, for the most part, write their own literature: it is written by adults who necessarily write to, of, and for the child from a point in time irrevocably apart from it. Critic Jacqueline Rose has famously articulated the "acknowledged difference, a rupture almost, between writer and addressee" on which children's literature rests. The overwhelming presence of mortality in the genre is a direct effect of the rupture at its heart: inevitably aware of the acknowledged difference between writer and addressee, and filtered through adult memory and imagination, literary childhood cannot help but be framed as eulogy and elegy, constructed as the beginning of an ending. This reading, then, addresses the gap between adult and child that has occupied children's literature criticism for almost thirty years, but it moves beyond questions of power and control to focus on its creative effects. The thesis explores mortality and the construction of literary childhood in relation to adulthood in a range of fantasy subgenres. It begins with the classics of the Victorian Golden Age, exploring the writing of childhood at the origins of modern children's fantasy. The chapters on animal stories, toy stories and ghost stories all shed light on the figuring of childhood through close association and identification, each foregrounding particular qualities with which literary childhood is invested. In animal characters, primacy is given to an intense and largely contextless vitality, to an orientation in a paradoxically eternal and eternally fleeting present moment. Toys are memory boxes, highlighting the importance of the child (and children's literature) as a lieu de mémoire. Ghost characters emphasise the ways in which childhood is figured as past and as haunting, memorialised even in its presence. In time-slips and alternate world fantasy, the dissonant once-and-future oriented, mortal qualities of literary childhood manifest themselves in the manipulation of the time and space of setting. But as dependent as the impulse to elegy is on difference, it also depends for its entire effect on the inescapable continuity between adult and child. Put another way, we were once them. They will be us. That the "impossible" relation between adult and child is so neatly encapsulated by the memento mori – "that which you are, we were; that which we are, you shall be" – speaks to how and why mortality casts so deep a shadow in the literature.</p>