Last edited by Maximilien de Robespierre (2010-10-31 01:06:48)

In the 1920s Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard spent several months traveling to what is now the South Sudan, where he lived for a number of years with the Azande. Evans-Pritchard, an anthropologist, was interested in Azande thought. In the 20s most Europeans believed that African thought differed greatly from European thought - more specifically they held that African minds were muddled and infantile and incapable of reason. Evans-Pritchard suspected that human thought was in fact universal, and that Africans and white men reason in the same way.

Ethnological evidence collected by missionaries did not provide overwhelming support for E-P's theories - colonial powers characterized the Zande as a people burdened with an especially heavy weight of superstition. The Zande, the missionaries reported, blamed ill fortune entirely on witchcraft. They could not follow cause and effects; they attributed even simple physical accidents to malign supernatural powers.

Evans-Pritchard, unlike the missionaries, stayed with the Zande for a long time. He collected their explanations of misfortune and asked about them. He determined that their beliefs about witchcraft followed a rigorous internal logic, despite the fact that they departed from an originary assumption that was quite foreign to European enlightenment-derived reasoning. If you accepted that witches exist, then you would find no fault with Azande reasoning.

E-P provides an example: the Zande kept granaries, heavy buildings raised on three stout wooden poles. During the hottest part of the day men would sit beneath these granaries in the cool shade. Termites inevitably infested the supports of these granaries, and they regularly collapsed. Sometimes they would collapse while people were sitting beneath them, crushing them.

The Zande told Evans-Pritchard that witchcraft caused the granaries to collapse. He found this explanation extraordinary and pressed them. The Zande reported that they knew all about the termites and how they weakened the supports, but that this was only part of what happened. Witchcraft explained why the granary collapsed at that particular time, and with that particular group of people resting in its shade.

For the Zande witchcraft was a spontaneous psychic action, a spasm of malice that a witch caused unconsciously. Yet the malefic action of witchcraft was always rooted in spite and jealousy. A witch would cause a granary to collapse on a man who he envied. The man's surviving relatives would consult oracles to determine who had sent witchcraft against their kin. They were required to engage in various forms of vengeance sorcery when they found the identity of the killer. Azande witchcraft belief embedded misfortune in a web of social relations. To be the victim of witchcraft was to express a moral relationship with the community and with the universe.

I think that's why the igents can't keep their fucking mouths shut whenever anyone posts a pretty shoe. To let another's good fortune go by without one's own narrative of supernatural oppression would be intolerable.

E-P actually recounts an even more relevant anecdote - an Azande boy was walking along a path and stubbed his toe on a stump. He cut his foot badly and the wound healed slowly. Evans-Pritchard suggested that they boy had been careless. The boy replied that all Zande boys watch carefully for stumps, and that he had certainly been watching carefully. Witchcraft was the only conceivable explanation for why he had stubbed his toe this time and not other times, and for why the wound wasn't healing. It's the nature of Zande boys to watch for stumps, and it's the nature of wounds to heal - only witchcraft can work against these basic facts.

This is why it's so traumatic for the iGents to get flawed Allen-Edmonds, and why they constantly seek out these personal relationships with customer service. It's the nature of Allen-Edmonds to arrive without any flaws; if they have flaws, it means that the person who bought them is out of place in his moral relationship with the universe, and he must now seek financial or supernatural redress from the company.

Richard James "sic" Man is baaaaack!

http://www.styleforum.net/showthread.php?p=3753092#post3753092

Flashback: his farewell received such an outpour of emotional expressions of sympathy and outrage by fellow members... even JLibourel said he was ashamed of posting on FNB!

http://www.styleforum.net/showthread.php?p=3248128#post3248128

Since then, it seems he has been quite active trying to sell his clothes on the buy/sell forum, his melodramatic farewell notwithstanding.

What is most amazing is some of the political comment Manton is writing in the Current Events thread.

WineGuy plays funny buggers:
http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?13274-What-are-you-wearing-today&p=1110258&viewfull=1#post1110258

I'm saying that whatever Maximilien de Robespierre was drinking last night, get me a case of it, fast.

A trad "gentleman" lets the other trad gentlemen know that he despises crinkly nylon snow pants for skiing.  What do the gentlemen trads of the fora recommend? Surely there must be a Brooks Brothers, J. Press or Andover Shop Harris Tweed, no darts, 3/2 roll, sack, shell cordovan, and most importantly SECOND QUALITY solution for this snow bunny.

http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/forum/showthread.php?108851-Skiing-Apparel