Once considered as a "rural" phenomenon, issues pertaining to the occult have, at the height of
globalization, become an "urban" problem. Witchcraft is particularly invoked to designate success;
to provide information on individual and collective misfortunes, justifying battles against
fetishes, misfortune, bad genies and all kinds of evil spirits leading to poverty, unemployment,
bad luck or (a state of ) being possessed. Increasingly since the nineties, the city has become the
stage for Pentecostal effervescence. Preacher-healers have settled predominately in urban areas
and play a crucial role in the reconstruction of sorcery's collective imagery, updating magicalreligious
systems of reference; rehabilitating exorcism and devotion in matters of deliverance.
Religious and magical justifications have become regular features of urban acts and behaviours.
In this context, witchcraft distinguishes itself as a response to urban life and could even be one
of its founding elements. What are its urban markers? How does it express itself in contemporary
urban life? Using an in situ approach, active observation and semi-structured interviews – this
research examines, from an ethnographical perspective, urban witchcraft as amplified by a Pentecostal
discourse vector of anti-witchcraft violence.