Accusations: Who Gets Accused?

In the previous lecture, we looked at the “how” of identification. Now we will look at who is involved. I proposed that identification, in many cases, works through accusation that is gossiped. In this lecture, I want to look at the ‘who’ of identification. So the question now is “who is identified as a witch or a sorcerer?” I look at three explanations. First, the witch or sorcerer is a type of person, be it unsociable, marginalize etc. Second, the witch or sorcerer is identified through a relationship with the accuser. In particular, the relationship may be strained—between people who should get along but do not, for example. Copyright 2013 Nicholas Herriman / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.