Diane Ciekawy

Recent News

Education

Ph.D.: Columbia University, 1992

Research & Specialization

• Political Anthropology
• Religion
• The Anthropology of Healing
• Colonialism
• Human Rights
• Development and Underdevelopment
• Africa

Courses Taught

• ANTH 1010: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
• ANTH 3490: Life History
• ANTH 3510/5510: Political Anthropology
• ANTH 3570/5570: Anthropology of Religion
• ANTH 3810/5810: Cultures and Peoples of Africa
• ANTH 4941/5941: Seminar on the Anthropology of Witchcraft
• ANTH 4941/5941: Seminar on Reflexive Anthropology

Selected Publications

“Distinctions in the Imagination of Harm in Contemporary Mijikenda Thought: The Existential Challenge of Majini,”in William C. Olsen and Walter E.A. Van Beek (eds.) Evil in Africa: Encounters with the Everyday (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), pp. 157-174.

“Kajiwe’s Witchfinding Movement and the Challenge to Swahili Cultural Hegemony,” in Linda Giles and Rebecca Gearhart (eds.) Contesting Identities: The Mijikenda and their Neighbors in Kenyan Coast Society (Trenton: Red Sea Press, 2013), pp. 169-188.

“Katama G.C. Mkangi: Sociologist, Novelist and Poet,” in Linda Giles and Rebecca Gearhart (eds.) Contesting Identities: The Mijikenda and their Neighbors in Kenyan Coast Society (Trenton: Red Sea Press, 2013), pp. vii- xiii. Co-written with Kamoji Wachiira.

“Fake Kaya Elders and Fake Oaths: Reflections on the Immorality of Invented Tradition in the 1997 Crisis in Coastal Kenya,” in V-Y Mudimbe and Anthony Simpson (eds.) Recontextualizing Self and Other Issues in Africa (Trenton: Red Sea Press, 2013), pp. 195-233.

“‘Demonic’ Traditions: Representations of Oathing in Newspaper Coverage of the 1997 Crisis in Coastal Kenya,” in Kimani Njogu and John Middleman (eds.) Media and Identity in Postcolonial Africa (London: International African Institute, 2009), pp. 287-307.

“Party Politics and the Control of Harmful Magic: Moral Entrepreneurship during the Independence Era in Coastal Kenya,” in James Kiernan (ed.) The Power of The Occult in Modern Africa: Continuity and Innovation in The Renewal of African Cosmologies (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2006), pp. 126-152.

“Utsai as Ethical Discourse: A Critique of Power from Mijikenda in Coastal Kenya,” in George C. Bond and Diane Ciekawy (eds.) Dialogues of "Witchcraft": Anthropological and Philosophical Exchanges (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), pp. 158-189.

“Contested Domains in the Dialogues of ‘Witchcraft’,” in George C. Bond and Diane Ciekawy (eds.) Dialogues of "Witchcraft": Anthropological and Philosophical Exchanges (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), pp. 1-38. Co-written with G.C. Bond.

“Fabricating the Occult, Distancing the Familiar,” in George C. Bond and Diane Ciekawy (eds.) Dialogues of "Witchcraft": Anthropological and Philosophical Exchanges (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), pp. 316-332. Co- written with G.C. Bond.

“Mijikenda Perspectives on Freedom, Culture and Human ‘Rights’,” in C.B. Mwaria, S. Federici, and J. McLaren (eds.), African Visions: Literary Images, Political Change and Social Struggle in Contemporary Africa (Greenwood Press, 2000), pp. 15-27.

“Women's ‘Work’ and the Construction of Witchcraft Accusation in Coastal Kenya,” Women's Studies International Forum 22 (2), 1999, pp. 225-235.

“Witchcraft in Statecraft: Five Technologies of Power in Colonial and Postcolonial Coastal Kenya,” African Studies Review 41 (3), December 1998, pp. 119-141.
“Containing Witchcraft: Conflicting Scenarios in Postcolonial Africa,” African Studies Review 41 (3), December 1998, 1-14. Co-written with Peter Geschiere.

“Cleansing the Social Body: Witchcraft Accusation in an African Society as an Example of Multi-hierarchical Victimage,” Communication Quarterly 46 (3), Summer 1998, 269-283. Co- written with Robert Westerfelhaus.

“Constitutional and Legal Reform in the Postcolony of Kenya,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion 25 (2), 1997.

“Policing Religious Practice in Coastal Kenya,” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 20 (1), May 1997, pp. 62-72.

“Human Rights and State Power on the Kenya Coast: A Mijikenda Perspective on Universalism and Relativism,” Humanity and Society21 (2), May 1997, pp. 130-147.