Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

48 ENVY AND BLACK MAGIC
other more or less interested persons may attribute to him the motive of
envy. As suspicion grows, everyone in the community, whether rich or
only fairly prosperous, is driven to fear the incurably envious man.
Eventually he may be expelled. The danger to the group lies in the
destructive envy of an individual-the sorcerer.
This situation can also be reversed, in which case social tension arises
from the envy felt by several persons against one who may be richer,
more popular or more successful than they. The majority then spread the
rumour that the happy man owes his success to illicit sorcery. Tanner
mentions a notorious case in Sukumaland: A chief was suspected of
employing the spirits of dead fellow tribesmen for the cultivation of his
fields as the number of people to be seen working there was not enough
to explain their excellence and yield. Tanner rightly describes this as a
manifestation of envy of success or superior work rather than the
expression of occult ideas.
In common with most other individual field studies, Tanner's work
fails to offer us a theory based on the phenomena he describes. The
universality of such sorcery cannot be founded merely on sporadic
hatred. The writer expresses his agreement with the currently popular
theory of pent-up emotions without legitimate (e. g., orgiastic) outlet.
Hence it is suggested that before contact with Europeans and European
jurisdiction, there were far fewer evil sorcerers than there are today.
Escape into destructive magic is therefore explained almost apologetically
as a reaction to the pressure of white administration and
colonization. Yet the increase in envy-based magic-which is vouched
for solely by the memory of old members of the tribe-might, I believe,
only be connected with the arrival of Europeans in so far as it was in fact
their colonization that, for the first time, brought to the tribes a rule of
rational law and thereby created a socio-economic situation in which
individual success-and thus reason for envy-became possible in any
degree.
The Lovedu
In his description of the Lovedu in Africa, more especially in a chapter
on witchcraft and black magic, Krige presents many observations in
which the element of envy is clearly distinguishable. If a man in that