摘要：Reading Smith’s book brought to mind two recurrent episodes in my own experiences researching and teaching African studies.As a graduate student in the mid-1990s I was familiar with the critiques of “development”—it was teleological, it established the West as the benchmark to which the rest of the world should strive, the development project tended to be top-down and funneled aid money back to donor nations.Yet when I arrived in Kenya to carry out historical research, the need for development was on everyone’s lips—how could Kenya develop?What was standing in the way of development?Smith had a similar experience, around the same time: people in Taita “would not shut up about [development]” (p.xii).Kenyans well understood what development meant: education, employment, health care, good roads, electrification.I came to understand—and now understand better, with Smith’s work—that “development” was not the problem, but rather what exactly development meant and who would direct it.In reading Smith, I also reflected on my American students’ reactions to my lectures on African forms of Christianity.I relate stories of my deeply devout Christian friends in Kenya who insist that witches and witchcraft are very real and can ruin people’s lives.My students had to learn that “Christianity” was not one coherent thing, with one set of beliefs, and that staunch Christians—likely stronger Christians than those American students—could legitimately believe in the existence of witchcraft.Smith’s book brought together for me these two things—deep belief in development and in witchcraft—and presents a new way of thinking of each, and how they are, in Taita, intertwined.
