%0 Journal Article
%T Sorcellerie en milieu urbain amplifi¨Ĥe par les pentec tismes camerounais
%A Batibonak
%A Sariette
%J Afrika Focus
%D 2012
%I Gents Afrika Platform, Afrika Brug
%X Once considered as a "rural" phenomenon, issues pertaining to the occult have, at the height of globalization, become an "urban" problem. Witchcraft is particularly invoked to designate success; to provide information on individual and collective misfortunes, justifying battles against fetishes, misfortune, bad genies and all kinds of evil spirits leading to poverty, unemployment, bad luck or (a state of ) being possessed. Increasingly since the nineties, the city has become the stage for Pentecostal effervescence. Preacher-healers have settled predominately in urban areas and play a crucial role in the reconstruction of sorcery's collective imagery, updating magicalreligious systems of reference; rehabilitating exorcism and devotion in matters of deliverance. Religious and magical justifications have become regular features of urban acts and behaviours. In this context, witchcraft distinguishes itself as a response to urban life and could even be one of its founding elements. What are its urban markers? How does it express itself in contemporary urban life? Using an in situ approach, active observation and semi-structured interviews ¨C this research examines, from an ethnographical perspective, urban witchcraft as amplified by a Pentecostal discourse vector of anti-witchcraft violence.
%K witchcraft
%K Pentecostalism
%K urban
%K occultism
%K churches
%U http://www.gap.ugent.be/africafocus/pdf/2012Vol25_2_AF_SBatibonak.pdf