African divination systems ways of knowing (Indiana University Press, 1991)
Includes bibliographical references
The essays in this collection provide a very useful overview of both the diversity of African divination systems and of recent approaches to their study. The introduction critically reviews the preoccupations of earlier students of African divination. The essays that follow are divided into five sections that explore, in turn, the identity of the diviner; comparative and historical issues; the central role of divination in the articulation of cultural ideas, norms, and values within society; the making of knowledge through the divinatory process; and the integration of normal and nonnormal ways of knowing within the divination process. Although all of the essays provide rich ethnographic data, the essays in the fourth and fifth section are the most interesting from a theoretical perspective. They provide the clearest critique of previous positivist approaches to divination, which focus on the outcomes of the divinatory process while failing to appreciate the meanings and truths that inhere to, and are articulated by, the process itself. Of particular interest are the facinating articles by Rosalind Shaw and Philip Peek. Highly recommended for advanced undergraduates
The study of divination, present and past - Philip M. Peek -- - Becoming a diviner. The initiation of a Zulu diviner - Henry Callaway -- - The search for knowledge. Nilotic cosmology and the divination of Atuot philosophy - John W. Burton -- - Divination in Madagascar : the Antemoro case and the diffusion of divination - Pierre Vérin and Narivelo Rajaonarimanana -- - Cultural systems within divination systems. Diviners as alienists and annunciators among the Batammaliba of Togo - Rudolph Blier -- - Divination among the Lobi of Burkina Faso - Piet Meyer -- - Divination and the hunt in Pagibeti ideology - Alden Almquist -- - Mediumistic divination among the Northern Yaka of Zaire : etiology and ways of knowing - René Devisch -- - Divination, epistemology, and truth. Splitting truths from darkness : epistemological aspects of Temne divination - Rosalind Shaw -- - Knowledge and power in Nyole divination - Susan Reynolds Whyte -- - Simultaneity and sequencing in the oracular speech of Kenyan diviners - David Parkin -- - Toward a new approach to divination. African divination systems : non-normal modes of cognition - Philip M. Peek