ウィッチクラフトの"邪悪さ"について : Lugbara事例を中心に

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Evans-Pritchard's monograph on the Azande witchcraft published in 1937 marked the beginning of contemporary social anthropological study of witchcraft and sorcery in African tribal societies. This fascinating topic has since been investigated by a number of anthropologists and their social function in particular societies has been described. Nevertheless, apart from a few brilliant exceptions, the comparative study of witchcraft and sorcery has made little progress. Harwood pointed out two major flaws in it : (i) the technical terms "witchcraft and "sorcery" have not been defined adequately enough to serve the needs of a comparative study; (ii) there were few ethnographies which have recorded case materials detailed enough to be reanalyzed. In a previous paper I indicated at least two problems caused by the terminological confusion. One has to do with criteria invoked to distinguish between witchcraft and sorcery and the other with the nature of evil by which the witch has been characterized. In this paper, I focus on the latter. My point of departure is a simple question : Is the witch really evil ? For my illustrative material, I draw mainly from Middleton's excellent and detailed ethnographies of the Lugbara, Uganda. First, I analyze a witchcraft case which actually took place in a certain "family cluster" and make three points (i) The vernacular notion Middleton translated as the process of "witchcraft" really has a morally neutral implication. For the native idiom (ole ro) also means a socially approved exercise of the mystical power he called "the ghost invocation". (ii) Though the original notion means neither good nor bad, its moral quality is necessarily determinded one way or the other, when ole ro takes place in the actual social context. One and same social event may be seen by different people as either good or bad ole ro. Their explanations are largely influenced by the political position of the explainers themselves and the way they are committed to the series of political affairs within the family cluster. (iii) The Lugbara are conscious of two opposite assessments that may be given to the single notion. They express it by saying that the approved mystical action is supported by the ghost but anti-social one is backed by the Spirit, Adro. I next examined whether analogous remarks can be found among the other societies : Azande, Nyakyusa, Safwa and Ndembu. I conclude by presenting a working hypothesis that the vernacular terms which have been translated as "witchcraft" or "witch" in many tribal societies originally have morally neutral implications with varying propensities toward one of the scale or the other So called "witches" seem to be rather morally ambiguous beings. Why, then, are the notions neutral and why are the actions of"witches"seen to be ambiguous ? In order to answer these questions theoretically, I turn to the theoretical framework of phenomenological sociologists, Schutz, Berger and Luckmann. The magico-religious experiences are more or less marginal situations of the life of the individual, which constantly threaten the reality of his everyday life. The magico-religious world is thus naturally dangerous for everyday life. But to maintain the everyday order, these marginal situations in both individual and social domains must be integrated within the symbolic universe. The political heretics stand on the marginal position in the legitimate symbolic universe. One of the important tasks which the political leader performs is to keep and control these deviants within the universe. To do so, I think, he must manipulate some magico-religious means which, of course, belongs to the marginal spheres.
日本文化人類学会の論文
1976-03-31

著者

大塚和夫
東京都立大学

ウィッチクラフトの"邪悪さ"について : Lugbara事例を中心に

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