@article{e974319f83154db1b1f7785be4e3a92f,
title = "THE HEART of the MATTER: INTERPRETING BLOODSUCKING ACCUSATIONS in MAURITANIA",
abstract = "This article examines events involving accusations of bloodsucking in the southwestern Sahara. French colonial archives allow researchers to identify specific cases in time and location; however, this article seeks to address but then move beyond histories of colonial governance. To highlight how communities in the Saharan desert dealt with crises provoked by environmental and social change, this investigation also relies on locally-produced written legal opinions and oral testimony. Emerging from these Saharan sources is one facet of how desert communities envisioned the enchantment of their social worlds and understood difficult periods caused by famine, weak economies, and domestic tensions.",
keywords = "Islam, Mauritania, Sahara, West Africa, colonialism, gender, race, slavery, witchcraft",
author = "Erin Pettigrew",
note = "Funding Information: Support for this research was provided by the Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship, The American Institute of Maghrib Studies (AIMS), Stanford University, the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, and the Mellon Foundation. I thank Greg Mann, the anonymous reviewers of The Journal of African History, participants of the 'Dissections' Workshop at the CUNY Graduate Center and the AIMS Workshop held at Yale University, as well as Joel Beinin, Brandon County, Damien Droney, Mark Gardiner, Michael Gomez, Sean Hanretta, Christopher Hemmig, Marissa Mika, Uǧur Pe{\c c}e, Elly Power, Richard Roberts, Elias Saba, and Katherine Wiley for reading this article in its various forms. I also thank Yahya ould el-Bara, Ahmed Mahmoud ould Mohamed, and Sam Anderson for sharing documents and Ann McDougall, Benjamin Acloque, Mohamedou ould Meyine and Fatimatou mint 'Abdel Wahhab for continuing conversations over the longue dur{\'e}e of my research. Publisher Copyright: Copyright {\textcopyright} Cambridge University Press 2016.",
year = "2016",
month = nov,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1017/S0021853716000323",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "57",
pages = "417--435",
journal = "Journal of African History",
issn = "0021-8537",
publisher = "Cambridge University Press",
number = "3",
}