Return To Laughter Summary

Han Wei
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Matthew C. Watson
26th February 2017

Anthropology Paper-Witchcraft in Return to Laughter

Anthropology is a study in which people study human beings and their culture. Anthropologists can study human beings’ social life through different methods such as participant observation. Laura Bohannan (Elenore Smith Bowen), the author of Return to Laughter, exercised this method by spending time in the African bush living with and studying Tiv tribe. She not only observed the locals’ daily routines and the function of their society, she also participated as one of the members of their society. In the beginning, she still distinguished herself as a European with different cultural living standard. Slowly,

she learned the local language and conformed to her surroundings and people to understand their actions and beliefs. One of the institution that is demonstrated in her book is witchcraft, which greatly implemented within their society and can be seen as part of the African tribes social structure.
Witchcraft can be defined as an explanation of events based on the beliefs that some individuals possess a psychic power. This power is capable of causing harm, including sickness and death. Bowen mentioned the concept of witchcraft in numerous chapters. One of the cases of witchcraft is the sick wife of Poorgbilin, another one is the death of Amara.
In chapter eleven, Poorgbilin’s second wife was sick and Bowen went to Poorgbilin’s house to see her. Poorgbilin’s wife believed that witchcraft should account for her sickness and Poorgbilin suspected that it were his brothers and cousins who bewitched his wife because they envy him his many wives and children. He feared the witchcraft because there was the possibility that the witches were getting at Poorgbilin through his wife. Also, Poorgbilin’s wife had borne no children while children were one’s only hope of immortality. In Tiv tribe, if woman die without children, it meant to die barren and to vanish from the earth without trace. Because witches could drive people mad, torment them with leprosy, make them barren, they considered it was the witchcraft by human malice that snatched away her immortality. In modern society, if a woman is childless or sick, she will seek help from doctors and may get a physical examination to find the medical reasons of her sickness. But in Tiv tribe, they can’t explain why she is childless or why she is sick. So it seems that people in the Tiv tribe attribute things they can’t explain to witchcraft caused by human because they have little knowledge of modern science. The witchcraft in an African context is a response to the dislocations of modernity and urbanization.
Another example of witchcraft is the death of Amara.

Amara fell ill when she was pregnant and she had been given so many medicines that were of little use. Udama, who was with Bowen at Amara’s, believed that there was magic in what was going on, perhaps witchcraft. People in Tiv tribe believed that there was a meaning or a cause for the actions that happened to them, reversing the action was also possible; therefore there became an assumption that the problem can be taken care of by practicing witchcraft. That’s why Udama believed that unless the elders seek out this evil and remove it, no medicine can help Amara. The diviner had found that four men had reason to bewitch Amara: her father Lam, her two uncles Yabo and Yilabo, and her husband. That demonstrated the rule of witch accusation: since witches often are supposed to have a special hold over their relatives, witchcraft accusations primarily target persons from within the family, even if they may have worked others from outside. Then, Amara’s husband accused Yabo that he coveted more bridewealth and therefore bewitched her to force him pay more bridewealth. Yabo made counteraccusation then. Finally Yabo lowered his first price. Amara’s husband paid it and they stopped accusing each other. Again, Yilabo and Yabo accused each other, saying that the other one envy his wife and inheritance. So it seems that the witchcraft accusation associated with personal feelings, hate and rancor could lead to witchcraft accusation. Witchcraft therefore epitomizes the frightening realization that there is jealousy and aggression within the intimate circle of the family where only solidarity and trust should reign. In their witchcraft accusation and counteraccusation, “Each knew himself innocent. Each therefore knew the other guilty. I knew them both innocent. I watched while each strove to break the other, to force his confession, to save Amara. I knew they could not. Their battle was the more terrible to me because it was in

vain and fought against shadows.” Witchcraft here served as a reasonable way to explain death, tragedy or other evil things, so they had to continue accusing others of causing the illness and the death of Amara, or people will be in a panic due to the unknown power that could kill them.
The understanding of the meaning of witchcraft belief and the function it served in African society helped Bowen shaping the ethnographic understanding of Tiv tribe. Her experience provides the rationale for witchcraft in contemporary Western Africa. She revealed the fact that most black people in Western Africa live in a world where “witchcraft” is an everyday reality. Witchcraft in Africa can not be treated as simply manifestations of ignorance and supersition. In addition to chronic poverty and violence, the context of everyday life in Tiv is marked by more or less acute forms of spiritual insecurity, of which “witchcraft” is a part. And this insecurity cannot be divorced from there religious, cultural, and political history of the place and its people.