Call for Papers:

Witchcraft, spiritual worldviews and the co-production of development knowledges, practices and rationalities.

Special issue of Third World Thematics, a new sister journal of Third World Quarterly.

Guest Editors: Thomas Aneurin Smith (School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University – Coordinating Editor); Hayley Leck (Department of Geography, Kings College London); Amber Murrey (Development Studies, Jimma University, Ethiopia).

We are seeking 3-4 more papers to contribute to a planned special issue.

What roles do spiritual, witchcraft and magical worldviews play in 21^st Century development agendas? Responding to this central query, this special issue seeks to engage interdisciplinary scholarship on the variegated means through which these practices, worldviews and/or ontologies intersect, impact and (re)shape contemporary development concerns, particularly in the co-production of knowledges and practices of development at a range of scales.

Across the global South, witchcraft, spiritual and magical worldviews have not receded under variegated forms of development (Comaroff & Comaroff 1993; Kohnert 1996; Luongo 2010). Until more recently, the study of witchcraft and spiritual worldviews has largely been the concern of anthropological research, which has made a valuable contribution to understanding their significance (Ashforth 1996; Geschiere 1997, 2013; Moore & Sanders 2001; Neihaus 2012). However, witchcraft and spiritual worldviews have received considerably less attention from other disciplines within the social sciences, including development scholarship and practice. Whilst current thinking on participation in development, as well as broader post-development work, has done away with privileging knowledges and technologies from the global North, a focus on witchcraft and spiritual worldviews, and their roles in development practice, might ask more fundamental questions about the kinds of rationalities, moralities and ethics being applied to current and future development agendas. In this special issue we seek to explore the rapidly changing contexts in which contemporary development knowledges evolve, and in doing so, disrupt conceptions about where valid knowledge resides and how development challenges are framed.

This special issue will therefore explore the diverse contexts and scales at which development practices and spiritual worldviews, witchcraft and magical ontologies intersect. Papers might consider:

• What role does witchcraft and spiritual worldviews play in contemporary forms of development practice and knowledge? How, for example, do such practices and beliefs intersect with the current participatory, neoliberal and global development agendas?
• Do witchcraft and spiritual worldviews contribute to the ‘co-production’ of development knowledges and imaginaries locally, nationally and globally?
• Conversely, how do development practices and discourses contribute to the production of witchcraft and magical worldviews at these scales?
• How can we theorise the intersection(s) of seemingly diverse ontologies and epistemologies in the practice(s) of development?
• What are the relationships between witchcraft and spiritual worldviews and contemporary agendas in, for example: climate change and disaster risk management (Krüger et al. forthcoming), environmental management, infrastructural and extractive projects, gender-based development, education, rural and urban livelihoods, healthcare and medicine, law, natural resources and/or communities and land tenure?
• We particularly welcome papers from contexts outside of Africa, although we would still welcome further quality contributions from African contexts.

Please submit an abstract of 300 words to Tom Smith ([log in to unmask]) by Friday 19^th February 2016. Any queries please contact Tom.

References:

Ashforth, A. (1996) Of secrecy and the commonplace: witchcraft and power in Soweto, Social Research 63(4), 1183-1234.

Comaroff, J and Comaroff J. (1993) Modernity and its malcontents: ritual and power in postcolonial Africa. Chicago: U. Chicago Press.

Geschiere, P. (1997) The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville & London.

Geschiere, P. (2013) Witchcraft, Intimacy and Trust: Africa in Comparison, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Kohnert, D. (1996) Magic and witchcraft: implications for democratisation and poverty-alleviating aid in Africa, World Development24(8), 1347-1355.

Krüger, F., Bankoff, G., Cannon, T., Orlowski, B., Schipper, L. F. (forthcoming) Cultures and Disasters: Understanding the Cultural Framings in Disaster Risk Reduction, Routledge Studies in Hazards, Disaster Risk and Climate Change.

Luongo, K. (2010) Polling places and “slow punctured provocation”: occult-driven cases in postcolonial Kenya’s High Courts, Journal of East African Studies 4(3), 577-591.

Moore H L and Sanders T (eds) (2001) Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. London: Routledge.

Niehaus I (2012) From Witch-Hunts to Thief-Hunts: On the Temporality of Evil in South Africa. African Historical Review 44(1): 29-52.

Third World Thematics:

Third World Thematics (TWT) is a new sister journal of Third World Quarterly (TWQ). This special issue will receive added promotion as part of the launch of the new journal, TWT will have the same subscriber base as TWQ, and is peer reviewed by the same TWQ community.

All the best