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which is then "objectified" through the public redefinition of the situation effected by the divination. Through his authority as household head, he thus has control over the "authorizing discourse" of public divination, through which performative, legalistic truth is constituted, and in which the use of the ethically ambivalent secret knowledge of the diviner is defined as acceptable and responsible. |
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Fieldwork in Sierra Leone was conducted over fifteen months in 1977 and 1978, in the village of Petbana Masimbo (Bombali Sebora Chiefdom) and the towns of Makeni, Magburaka, Matotoka, Freetown, and Koidu. Financial support was provided by the (then) Social Science Research Council of Great Britain, the Emslie Horniman Anthropological Research Fund, and the Central Research Fund of the University of London. I wish to thank Philip Peek for his encouragement and David Parkin for his comments on this paper. |
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1. Among many Temne Muslims, heaven and hell are added to these three invisible worlds. |
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2. Littlejohn explores this extrasocial origin in relation to lateral symbolism and concludes that "not-being-in-relation-with-others is for them [the Temne] a condition of perception of truth" (1973:298). |
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3. An-here is not defined as an "Islamic" divination method, however. |
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4. Some diviners alternatively arranged the stones into four rows and a variable number of columns. |
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5. For a fuller account of an-bere divination, see Shaw 1978. |
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6. A witch-gun, a-pinkar a seron, is a small hollow object such as a groundnut shell or papaya stalk in which is placed a minute object such as a grain of sand or a seed of finger-millet. The witch whispers the name of the victim to the "gun," then "shoots" it by igniting a small amount of gunpowder-like substance (a-popa) next to it. The object will enter the victim's body and kill them if it is not removed. |
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7. Le40, approximately fifty dollars at the time of my research in 1978. |
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Ahern, Emily M. 1982. "Rules in Oracles and Games." Man n.s. 17(2): 302-12. |
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Asad, Talal. 1983. "Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz." Man n.s. 18:237-59. |
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Bellman, Beryl. 1984. The Language of Secrecy: Symbols and Metaphors in Poro Ritual. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. |
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Crick, Malcolm. 1976. Explorations in Language and Meaning: Towards a Semantic Anthropology. London: Malaby Press. |
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Crick, Malcolm. 1982. "Anthropology of Knowledge." Annual Review of Anthropology 11: 287-313. |
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Dalby, David, and Abdul Kamara. 1964. "Vocabulary of the Temne Ragbenle Society." Sierra Leone Language Review 3:35-42. |
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Devisch, René. 1979. "Perspectives on Mediumistic Divination in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa." Paper presented to the Conference on Recent African Religious Studies, Afrika Studie-Centrum, Leiden (cited in Werbner 1985). |
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