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Book Cover
E-book
Author Luongo, Katherine, 1975-

Title Witchcraft and colonial rule in Kenya, 1900-1955 / Katherine Luongo
Published New York : Cambridge University Press, 2011
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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 243 pages) : illustrations, maps
Series African studies ; 116
African studies series ; 116.
Contents Clans and councils, caravans and conquest, cosmology and colonialism : Ukambani in the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- Understanding Uoi, Uwe, and Kithitu in Ukambani -- The "cosmology" of the colonial state -- The Wakamba witch trials : a witch-murder in 1930s Kenya -- Witchcraft, murder, and death sentences after Rex v. Kumwaka -- The world of oathing and witchcraft in Mau Mau-era Machakos -- Cleansing Ukambani witches -- Epilogue
Summary Focusing on colonial Kenya, this book shows how conflicts between state authorities and Africans over witchcraft-related crimes provided an important space in which the meanings of justice, law and order in the empire were debated. Katherine Luongo discusses the emergence of imperial networks of knowledge about witchcraft. She then demonstrates how colonial concerns about witchcraft produced an elaborate body of jurisprudence about capital crimes. The book analyzes the legal wrangling that produced the Witchcraft Ordinances in the 1910s, the birth of an anthro-administrative complex surrounding witchcraft in the 1920s, the hotly contested Wakamba Witch Trials of the 1930s, the explosive growth of legal opinion on witch-murder in the 1940s, and the unprecedented state-sponsored cleansings of witches and Mau Mau adherents during the 1950s. A work of anthropological history, this book develops an ethnography of Kamba witchcraft or uoi
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Witchcraft -- Kenya -- History -- 20th century
Witchcraft -- Political aspects -- Kenya -- History -- 20th century
Kamba (African people) -- History -- 20th century
British -- Kenya -- History -- 20th century
Colonial administrators -- Kenya -- History -- 20th century
Trials (Witchcraft) -- Kenya -- History -- 20th century
Witchcraft -- Law and legislation -- Kenya -- History -- 20th century
HISTORY -- Africa -- General.
BODY, MIND & SPIRIT -- Magick Studies.
BODY, MIND & SPIRIT -- Witchcraft & Wicca.
British
Colonial administrators
Colonial influence
Kamba (African people)
Manners and customs
Politics and government
Trials (Witchcraft)
Witchcraft
Witchcraft -- Law and legislation
SUBJECT Kenya -- Colonial influence
Kenya -- Politics and government -- To 1963. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85072004
Kenya -- Social life and customs -- 20th century
Subject Kenya
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781139161633
1139161636
9780511997914
0511997914