ETHNOGRAPHIC SORCERY
Book ID/图书代码： 13560007B11647
English Summary/英文概要： According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery—for many of them, West’s efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In Ethnographic Sorcery, West explores the fascinating issues provoked by this equation.
A key theme of West’s research into sorcery is that one sorcerer’s claims can be challenged or reversed by other sorcerers. After West’s attempt to construct a metaphorical interpretation of Muedan assertions that the lions prowling their villages are fabricated by sorcerers is disputed by his Muedan research collaborators, West realized that ethnography and sorcery indeed have much in common. Rather than abandoning ethnography, West draws inspiration from this connection, arguing that anthropologists, along with the people they study, can scarcely avoid interpreting the world they inhabit, and that we are all, inescapably, ethnographic sorcerers.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 据生活在莫桑比克北部穆埃达高原上的人们所述，巫师们通过维护其心中的权威来重塑世界。然而当人类学家哈里•G•韦斯特对居住在穆埃达的人们进行研究时，他却有了一个惊人的发现---对于他们当中的绝大多数人而言，韦斯特试图去解释他们对于世界的人种观这一行为本身就已经是一种巫术。在《人种巫术》一书中，韦斯特深入探索了由这一平衡状态所引发的的一系列有趣的课题。
韦斯特巫术研究的一个中心主题便是：一名巫师的论断可以受到另一名巫师的挑战或颠覆。当韦斯特尝试构建用隐喻的方式去解读穆埃达族人的坚持，他们认为四处逡巡的狮子是巫术师们所编造出来的幻象，而韦斯特与他的同伴们所进行的研究对其造成了破坏与影响。韦斯特意识到人种与巫术确实有着许多的共性之处。韦斯特因此并未抛开人种学，相反地，他从两者的联系中获取灵感，认为人种学家们，以及他们所研究的人们几乎都是无法解读其自身所生存的世界的，而我们所有人都不可避免的，是人种的巫术师。(DC)
Awards/获奖情况："这部极具意义的作品就其中心思想而言，无疑是对如何理解穆埃达高原上的巫术的一种反思。在本书中，哈利•韦斯特所考虑的问题是：穆埃达人们究竟是如何使用巫术技能去解释世界，并在其中有所作为。“我发现本书从头至尾都极度有趣，细致入微，并且深深根植于当地人们对于复杂且模糊世界的理解，以及其眼中的人种学理论。" - 唐纳德•布鲁内斯，加利福尼亚大学，桑塔•科鲁兹"
"At its core, this very significant book is a meditation on how to understand discourses on and around sorcery on the Mueda plateau in Mozambique. Here, Harry West is concerned with the question of how Muedans use sorcery discourse, both ’to speak about the world and to act within it.’ I found this book consistently fascinating, subtle, and deeply grounded in local understandings of a complex and ambiguous world and in anthropological theory." - Donald Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz"
About the Author/作者介绍： 哈利•G•韦斯特是伦敦大学东方与印度研究学院社会人类学专业讲师，他著有Kupilikula: Governance and the Invisible Realm in Mueda, Mozambique，两部作品同样均由芝加哥大学出版社出版发行。
Harry G. West is lecturer in social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and the author of Kupilikula: Governance and the Invisible Realm in Mueda, Mozambique, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
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Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
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