Moose Socio-Cosmic Dualism: The Logic of the Village and the Logic of the State in Burkina Faso

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Sjoerd Zanen

Abstract

In the contemporary socio-economic and political order of Moose society in Burkina Faso and elsewhere in Africa so-called “traditional” witchcraft still plays an important role. But how, in modern Moose society, must the occult, the flipside of things, be understood? In what cultural scheme or discourse does it fit and operate? How do the “real” and the “supernatural,” the visible and the invisible, the “dayside” and the “nightside” of things, relate to each other in notions of political power, “development,” law, economy? In other words, what is the ambiguous, cross-fertilizing relation between what is often called “tradition” and “modernity” in modern rural and urban Burkina Faso?

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How to Cite
Zanen, S. (2025). Moose Socio-Cosmic Dualism: The Logic of the Village and the Logic of the State in Burkina Faso. Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, 13(1), 11–32. https://doi.org/10.26806/modafr.v13i1.540
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Author Biography

Sjoerd Zanen, Independent Researcher

He graduated in Cultural Anthropology and obtained a PhD degree at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He carried out fieldwork in Lebanon, South India, Nepal, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, and Mali. He worked for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1978-1998), and for MDF Training and Consultancy as project and programme advisor, evaluator, and trainer until his retirement in 2015.