Azande

But I think that simply to dismiss Azande mangu, to shrug it off as part of a superstitious primitivism from which we have happily been weaned, is to miss something essential.

In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

The Azande and the Nuer both studied by Evans-Pritchard may not be expert in eclipses, but they understand perfectly well the concatenation of meteorological events that brings about a failed harvest, for example.

In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

I had no difficulty in discovering what Azande think about witchcraft, nor in observing what they do to combat it.

In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

Evans-Pritchard describes a somewhat foggier reckoning with this distinction among the Azande:

In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

The world inhabited by the Azande, indeed, by our pre-Homeric, prebiblical ancestors, was first and foremost one in which we were different, and our being different made everything else different too.

In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

But… Azande undoubtedly perceive a difference between what we consider the workings of nature on the one hand and the workings of magic and ghosts and witchcraft on the other hand, though in the absence of a formulated doctrine of natural law they do not, and cannot, express the difference as we express it.5

In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

Juan, leaving him alone beside a stream so that he would have water to drink, found a village of the anti-Simba Azande tribe and returned with a rescue party.

Looking Back On the Spy Life Charles McCarry 2011

The indomitable Juan missionaries reported that the pilot of the second plane was captured and devoured by Simbas and two Azande tribesmen set off on bicycles to find help, eventually reaching a Belgian outpost.

Looking Back On the Spy Life Charles McCarry 2011

Thinking about this, I came back to what the anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard had written about the Azande, a people of central Africa whom he had studied in the 1920s.

In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

There is not even need to question the Azande about it, for information flows freely from recurrent situations in their social life, and one has only to watch and listen…

In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011