RITUAL POWERS AND SOCIAL TENSIONS AS MORAL DISCOURSE AMONG THE TUAREG

Ritual powers traditionally glossed as ''witchcraft'' in anthropology need not be an archaic or exotic phenomenon, isolated from historical processes of global political and economic transformation. The author analyzes how, among the Kel Ewey Tuareg of northern Niger, these emerg e as a moral discourse, an attempt to make sense of and cope with the interplay of long-standing social forms and emergent sociopolitical tr ansformations.