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Bewitching Development

Bewitching Development

Bewitching Development
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Bewitching Development Paperback - 2008

by Smith, James Howard,

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Details

  • Title Bewitching Development
  • Author Smith, James Howard,
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition [ Edition: First
  • Condition New
  • Pages 272
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher University of Chicago Press
  • Publication date 2008-07-01
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Bibliography, Illustrated, Index, Table of Contents
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 5509701-n
  • ISBN 9780226764580 / 0226764583
  • Weight 0.85 lbs (0.39 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.7 in (22.35 x 14.99 x 1.78 cm)
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: East Africa
  • Category Archaeology / Anthropology
  • Library of Congress subjects Taita (African people) - Social life and, Taita (African people) - Rites and ceremonies
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2008000461
  • Dewey Decimal Code 305.896
  • Quantity available 5

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Reader reviews for Bewitching Development

From the publisher

These days, development inspires scant trust in the West. For critics who condemn centralized efforts to plan African societies as latter day imperialism, such plans too closely reflect their roots in colonial rule and neoliberal economics. But proponents of this pessimistic view often ignore how significant this concept has become for Africans themselves. In Bewitching Development, James Howard Smith presents a close ethnographic account of how people in the Taita Hills of Kenya have appropriated and made sense of development thought and practice, focusing on the complex ways that development connects with changing understandings of witchcraft.

Similar to magic, development's promise of a better world elicits both hope and suspicion from Wataita. Smith shows that the unforeseen changes wrought by development--greater wealth for some, dashed hopes for many more--foster moral debates that Taita people express in occult terms. By carefully chronicling the beliefs and actions of this diverse community--from frustrated youths to nostalgic seniors, duplicitous preachers to thought-provoking witch doctors--BewitchingDevelopment vividly depicts the social life of formerly foreign ideas and practices in postcolonial Africa.

About the author

James Howard Smith is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis.
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