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of this volume's contributors, who represent a wide range of religious attitudes, suggests a similar conclusion. |
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9. For example, Tylor's family was Quaker and Frazer's Presbyterian, while Durkheim's was rabbinical. |
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10. Evans-Pritchard never addressed his own personal belief, which was a constant throughout his life: his father was an Anglican reverend; he was strongly impressed by the missionaries he met in Africa; and he converted, not unexpectedly, to the Roman Catholic Church in 1944 (Lienhardt 1974; Douglas 1981:43; Burton 1983:175, 184 n.5). |
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11. See Cooper (1975), Salmon (1978), and Ahern (1982). Hallpike (1979) also has generated much discussion. |
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12. Yet Evans-Pritchard used the oracle regularly and "found this as satisfactory a way of running my home and affairs as any other I know of" (1968:270). |
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13. Fortes (1966), Gluckman (1972), and Gell (1974) argue this position even more strongly. |
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14. Lévi-Strauss (1966:3) and Zuesse (1987:375) argue against the opposition of magic and science; Marwick (1973) and Singleton (1979) effectively dispute the use of this rigid dichotomization when discussing other epistemologies. |
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15. Evans-Pritchard cites Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution (1894) to the effect that "social evolution or progress" came about due to religious systems and that "through the operation of the law of natural selection the race must grow ever more and more religious" (1966:166-67). |
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16. But Middleton does oppose Evans-Pritchard's portrayal of coherent systems of belief among the Zande and Nuer (Karp 1980); probably Lienhardt (1970) shares the most affinity with Evans-Pritchard's approach. |
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17. For example, Middleton and Winter's Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa (1963) (with Evans-Pritchard's foreword), Beattie and Middleton's Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa (1969), Douglas's Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations (1970; both the book and the conference on which it was based were dedicated to Evans-Pritchard), and Gluckman's aptly titled The Allocation of Responsibility (1972). |
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18. Even Forde's African Worlds (1963; subtitled Studies in the Cosmological Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples) and Fortes and Dieterlen's African Systems of Thought (1972) contain only passing references to divination. |
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19. As Richards summarizes the matter, "It is then because of his basic functional assumptions, the way in which he has traditionally worked and the data with which his note-books are filled, that the empirical hackles of the British ethnographer tend to rise when the autonomy, consistency and logic of primitive systems of belief are stressed" (1967:294-95). |
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20. "Thus Griaule and Dieterlen describe the lay-out of Dogon fields in relation to a pattern of ideas and not as providing a more or less efficient use of land for food. . . . The system sought after was a system of ideas" (Richards 1967:295). Richards's discussion has been insightfully extended by Southall (1972), Douglas (1979:124), and Clifford (1988). |
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21. Turner dedicated Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual (1975) "to Muchona, friend and educator," the diviner who was his primary informant. |
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22. Among others, Devisch cites Beattie (1967b) and Turner (1975) as emphasizing psychological interpretations; Middleton (1964), Evans-Pritchard (1968), Harwood (1970), and Gluckman (1972) for sociological interpretations; and Bourguignon (1976) and Rigby (1975) for comparisons to social systems. |
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23. Here Devisch cites Evans-Pritchard (1968), Turner (1975), Horton (1967), and Mendonsa (1978). |
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24. Others who have questioned the functionalist bias include Hallpike (1979:493), Ahern (1981:115, n.12), MacGaffey (1981:238-40), Crick (1982), Winkelman (1982:37), Shaw (1985), and several contributors to this volume. Even Evans-Pritchard queried how |
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