Witchcraft, for the Azande, does not replace science. One example that Pritchard gives is of the collapse of an old granary. The Azande know, practically, that when an old granary collapses due to termites in the wood, it is just that: termites. It is natural and no one is to blame. However, if there are people resting in the building that are caught in the collapse, it was collapsed via witchcraft as a grudge against one of those people. Sure there are scientific explanations for both the people seeking shade from the hot sun and the building collapsing that the Azande recognize, but that doesn’t explain why the building collapsed precisely at the time it did, when people were underneath it to be injured and those people had not done anything morally wrong.
Magic explains the coincidences, as American society would call them, which occur when you have repeated an action often and nothing bad has come of it, but this time, something bad did happen.
This makes the most sense to me out of all the things I have read about Azande magic. This is the only part that my scientific side did not try to dispute and reject. (Which, I do believe that being scientifically minded is part of living in U.S. culture) I think this is because I actually have no explanation to offer for coincidence and I don’t think science does either. It also gives an answer to the old “why me” question: why you is because someone has some sort of grudge against you.
While it’s kind of creepy to think that bad coincidences are because someone holds a grudge, it does offer some explanation. And a lot of the time, it just feels better to have some explanation for bad things in life.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. Witchcraft Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Clarendon P: Oxford. Print.
Chase, Oscar G. "The Lesson of the Azande". Law, Culture, and Ritual: Disputing Systems in Cross-Cultural Context. NYU Press: New York. 2005. pp. 15-29.
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