Modern witch-hunts

Witch-hunts are practiced today throughout the world. While prevalent world-wide, hot-spots of current witch-hunting are India, Papua New Guinea, Amazonia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Body counts of modern witch-hunts exceed those of early-modern witch-hunting. Of main terminological interest in ethnographic literature were the emic perspectives and differentiations between witchcraft (spiritual) and sorcery (possible empiric actions like creating amulets, charms, chanting spells and curses) and the classification and translation of native terminology concerning spiritual offenses and powers. Ethnographic literature has used the term "sorcerer-hunt", which is used equivalent to witch-hunt. Also "sorcery" and "sorceress" is sometimes used as equivalent to "witchcraft". A confusion of the terms "witch-hunt", "witchcraft" and "witchcraft notions" permeates scientific literature. In this article, only those cases that involve the notion of a spiritual crime are referred to as witch-hunts. Closely related and sometimes included are accusations of sorcery, where a potentially observable act is suggested, but rarely proven. Acts of lynching involving fabricated rumors of ritual murders occur frequently in Sub-Saharan Africa. They can be classified as very closely related to witch-hunts. Not included is the different phenomenon ritual murder or any ritual abuse, which is sometimes referred to as witchcraft or witch-hunting (meaning the man-hunt for body-parts for ritual purposes). A common parlance refers to witch-hunts as "witchcraft", a confusion of topics. Another common parlance refers to political persecution in general as "witch-hunt"; an example were the trials of McCarthyism in the USA. Witchcraft accusations against children in Africa Most witch-hunts today take place in modern sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of ethnographic literature on the subject remains on a local level. Summarizing studies and meta-analysis remain scarce due to the amount of data involved.