Ashforth, Adam P.

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Western Australia, B.A., 1979; Oxford University, M.A., 1981, Ph. D., 1987.

ADDRESSES:

Office—School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Dr., Princeton, NJ 08540; fax: 609-951-4457. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, educator. Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, tutor, 1984-88; Bemidji State University, Bemidji, MN, visiting professor, 1988; City University of New York, Baruch College and the Graduate School, New York, NY, assistant professor of political science, 1988-98; Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science, Princeton, NJ, visiting associate professor of social science, 1999—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Social Science Research Council fellowship on peace and security in a changing world, 1991-94; Guggenheim Foundation award, 1998-99.

WRITINGS:

The Politics of Official Discourse in Twentieth-Century South Africa, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

Madumo: A Man Bewitched, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2000.

Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2004.

Contributor to books, including Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, edited by Henrietta L. Moore and Todd Sanders, Routledge (New York, NY), 2001; and Anthropology in the Margins of the State, edited by Veena Das and Debbie Poole, School of American Research Press (Santa Fe, NM), 2004. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Times Literary Supplement, American Anthropologist, Codesria Bulletin, African Studies, Journal of Historical Sociology, Review of Architectural Theory, Social Research, Dissent, Transition, and Sociological Forum.

SIDELIGHTS:

Adam P. Ashforth is a visiting associate professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study. He has also taught at Monash University, Bemidji State University, and the City University of New York. During the 1990s, his work took Ashforth to South Africa, where he was "adopted" into a black family in the township of Soweto. The close relationship he developed with the family and their community forms the basis for two books: Madumo: A Man Bewitched and Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa. Both titles examine the traditional belief in witchcraft that still plagues South Africa.

Madumo tells the story of a young man that Ashforth befriended. Madumo has left school because he believes himself to be plagued by witchcraft. His friends and family shun him because they believe he magically caused his mother's death. When Ashforth realizes that reasoning with Madumo will not solve the problem, the two go on a search for spiritual assistance. Among those they consult is Mr. Zondi, a renowned traditional healer, who recommends drinking herbal concoctions which cause severe vomiting. But Madumo is pleased with the treatment, believing that such purging rids him of a curse. In the course of chronicling Madumo's story, Ashforth reveals much about contemporary South Africa, where the belief in witchcraft is widespread. "In this book," Ashforth explained, "I tell a story, arising from a decade-long friendship, about a young man named Madumo struggling to free himself from the curse of witchcraft in Soweto, South Africa, at the close of the twentieth century."

Madumo, Mark Schone wrote in Salon.com, is "a warm, colorful book, a mix of memoir, journalism and sociology." Ashforth, Schone noted, "has dual roles, as reporter and friend, and manages to describe Madumo's search for relief with both compassion and professional skepticism." Vanessa Bush in Booklist wrote: "Ashforth, though skeptical of witchcraft, acknowledges its significance for those who believe it and also the power of what he witnessed." A critic for Publishers Weekly found that Ashforth "offers his compelling story with very little in the way of explanation…. Indeed, one of his major points is that spiritual beliefs are untranslatable." Celia Wren in the Village Voice found that "Ashforth has penned a fascinating page-turner that recounts one man's battle with an eerie symptom of powerlessness: obsession with witchcraft."

While Madumo focuses on one man's encounter with modern-day witchcraft in South Africa, Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa takes a look at its wider societal impact. Most serious is that the fight against an AIDS epidemic is hindered by this widespread belief. When there is a premature death, as happens frequently with AIDS, natives tend to blame a witch instead of listening to medical explanations. So widespread is the belief in the supernatural that even the country's economic woes and social strife are frequently blamed on witchcraft. Ashforth examines the range of superstitious beliefs in the South African township of Soweto in such chapters as "On Living in a World with Witches," "Poison, Medicine, and the Power of Secret Knowledge," "Invisible Beings in Everyday Life," and "Vulnerabilities of the Soul." Ashforth successfully explains just how a society that believes in witchcraft actually operates on an everyday basis. "This is where his personal experience of Soweto comes to the fore—we learn how friends, neighbours, relatives, and strangers have been influenced by witchcraft," wrote Gary Kynoch in his review for H-Net Reviews, "the ways in which they conceive of these multiple dangers and the coping mechanisms they employ. For this reader, these anecdotes are the most valuable dimension of an impressive book." "Ashforth uses his intimate understanding of township life and his personal friendships to offer an account of the causes and consequences of what he calls ‘spiritual insecurity’ in the midst of massive economic and social transformation," stated Maia Green in a review posted on the American Ethnologist Web site. "Ashforth's work," wrote Owen Davies in Folklore, "stands out from the crowd…. It is a fascinating study of witchcraft in post-apartheid South Africa." Stephen Ellis, writing in the American Anthropologist, described Ashforth as "perhaps the first professional researcher to write about Soweto on the basis of having lived there." Ellis concluded: "Ashforth has shown the way for a discussion of witchcraft that goes beyond the ‘modernity of witchcraft’ approach, above all in taking seriously the spiritual insecurity that abounds in Africa today." Writing in the African Studies Quarterly, Mieke deGelder concluded: "Ashforth's book forms an important contribution to African studies, political science and anthropology, one of its strong points being the author's development of the notion of spiritual insecurity in a world of witches."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Africa Today, spring, 2001, Frank A. Salamone, review of Madumo: A Man Bewitched, p. 147.

American Anthropologist, Volume 108, issue 2, 2006, Stephen Ellis, review of Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa, pp. 401-449.

Booklist, June 1, 2000, Vanessa Bush, review of Madumo, p. 1804.

Folklore, April, 2006, Owen Davies, review of Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa, p. 120.

Journal of African History, August, 1993, Shula Marks, review of The Politics of Official Discourse in Twentieth-Century South Africa, p. 531; October, 2002, Peter Geschiere, review of Madumo, p. 499.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, March, 2001, Deborah James, review of Madumo, p. 159.

Library Journal, August, 2000, Edward K. Owusu-Ansah, review of Madumo, p. 134.

Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, winter, 2007, James R. Brennan, review of Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa, p. 199.

Publishers Weekly, June 26, 2000, review of Madumo, p. 71.

Village Voice, August 22, 2000, Celia Wren, "Madumo Consults with Traditional Healer Mr. Zondi."

ONLINE

African Studies Quarterly,http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/ (March 21, 2008), Mieke deGelder, review of Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa.

American Ethnologist,http://www.aaanet.org/aes/ (August, 2006), Maia Green, review of Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa.

H-Net Reviews,http://www.h-net.org/reviews/ (March 21, 2008), Gary Kynoch, review of Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa.

Salon.com,http://www.salon.com/index.html/ (August 10, 2000), Mark Schone, review of Madumo.