Mambila Divination

David Zeitlyn is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford, UK.

“The book, with its exceptional ambition and thorough ethnography, is essential for all social scientists studying divination.” - Erwan Dianteill in International Journal of Divination and Prognostication“David Zeitlyn offers a stimulating account following over thirty years of meticulous interaction with the practitioners of the spider divination system of the Mambila […] I recommend Zeitlyn’s work as not only one that exposes the reader to Mambila spider divination but also serves as an affirmation to some of the similarities in the modus operandi of African systems of divination.” - Emmanuel Ofuasia in Arụmarụka: Journal of Conversational Thinking

• 1. Introduction. Divination studies in the twenty-first century: setting the research agenda; Part I: Studying; 2. Techniques of divination: studies in interpretation; 3. Finding meaning in the text: the process of interpretation in text-based divination. Leavis in the bush; 4. Spiders in and out of court: styles of spider divination in their sociological contexts; 5: Divinatory logics: how diagnoses and predictions mediate outcomes; Part II: Doing; 6. Mambila Divination; 7. Case studies: logic in action; Part III: Using; 8. Framing questions: does divination pay attention to pragmatics?; 9. A sociology of problems; 10. Divination in life histories