|
A witch-hunt is a search for people labelled "witches" or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic or mass hysteria. * The classical period of witchhunts in Early Modern Europe and Colonial North America falls into the Early Modern period or about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 100,000 executions.〔 * Europe: The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. * Kingdom of Great Britain: Witchcraft ceased to be an act punishable by law with the Witchcraft Act of 1735. * Germany: Sorcery remained punishable by law into the late 18th century. * Africa: Contemporary witch-hunts have also been reported from Sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea. * Cameroon and Saudi Arabia: Official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon. * From at least the 1930s, the term "witch-hunt" has been used figuratively to describe activities by governments (and, occasionally, by business entities) to seek out and expose perceived enemies, often apparently as a means of directing public opinion by fostering a degree of moral panic. * The Second Red Scare of the 1950s, culminating in the McCarthyist persecution of suspected communists in the United States, is especially associated with this usage of the term "witch hunt." * In India, around 2,100 suspected, mostly women, witches were murdered between 2000 and 2012. ==Anthropological causes== The wide distribution of the practice of witch-hunts in geographically and culturally separated societies (Europe, Africa, India, New Guinea) since the 1960s has triggered interest in the anthropological background of this behaviour. The belief in magic and divination, and attempts to use magic to influence personal well-being (to increase life, win love, etc.) are human cultural universals. Belief in witchcraft has been shown to have similarities in societies throughout the world. It presents a framework to explain the occurrence of otherwise random misfortunes such as sickness or death, and the witch sorcerer provides an image of evil.〔Jean Sybil La Fontaine, ''Speak of the devil: tales of satanic abuse in contemporary England'', Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-521-62934-8, pp. 34–37.〕 Reports on indigenous practices in the Americas, Asia and Africa collected during the early modern age of exploration have been taken to suggest that not just the belief in witchcraft but also the periodic outbreak of witch-hunts are a human cultural universal.〔Behringer (2004), 50.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「witchhunt」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|