"For the African intellectual, of course, the problem is whether-and, if so, how-our cultures are to become modern. What is for the West a fait accompli-indeed, we might define modernity as the characteristic intellectual and social formation of the industrialized world-offers most Africans at best vistas of hope, at worst prospects to fear. But, plainly, the question what it is to be modern is one the Africans and Westerners may ask together. And [...] neither of us will understand what modernity is until we understand each other" (Appiah 1992, 107).

Researchers committed to the understanding of current social processes in African societies have ascertained that spirits feature persistently in political, economic and social action-either as subtle subtext or in decidedly apparent ways. Spirits' involvement is evident in divination ceremonies in grassroots environments but also noted to determine interactions at various societal levels including government politics, warfare and peace-making, sports and the media as well as international economic transactions. In response to this observation, this anthology addresses persisting questions social anthropologists, historians, and political scientists working in African societies have been confronted with: Do spirits enter the scene after politics have failed as a relapse into an allegedly non-modern condition-as the concept of the 'failed state' suggests? Or do they precede colonial processes of political transformation, as classic theories of modernization try to establish, thus relegating African societies to a 'pre-modern' stage within this essentially evolutionistic 'Heart of Darkness paradigm'?

This book seeks to extend the theoretical reflections on the relationship of religious phenomena in the socio-political sphere in African societies. It does so through case studies from Gabon and the Congo (Bernault), Sierra Leone (Combey), Nigeria (Harnischfeger), Mozambique (Igreja & Racine), Zambia (Kirsch), Zanzibar (Larsen), Uganda (Meier), South Africa (Niehaus), and Malawi (Steinforth) as well as arguing from a comparative African perspective (Ellis & ter Haar). Through a wide range of scholarly expertise, this volume focuses on the concepts of modernity, power, and violence, adding the notion of healing to this context and investigating their empirical correlations. All the articles in this volume address entities and phenomena that challenge classical European distinctions of the 'natural' versus the 'supernatural'. The notion of spirits as implied by the title of this anthology therefore represents an idiom around which a number of related phenomena are clustered, addressing a broad range of religious categories that have otherwise been characterized as 'occult'.

The properties of the relationship between religion and politics in con-temporary Africa have already been addressed by a number of scholars in the social sciences and humanities. Many of these contributions have indicated its deep interconnectedness with post-colonial development and democratization (Ashforth 2005; Ellis and ter Haar 2004; Ferguson 1999; Haynes 1996; Ranger 1986), have questioned the taken-for-grantedness of African religio-political exceptionalism (Green 2006; van Dijk and Pels 1996), and have critically addressed the alleged role of the 'occult' in Afri-can social and political life (Kiernan 2006; Ranger 2007; ter Haar and Ellis 2009). In social anthropology, a considerable number of scholars have dedicated their work to investigating the interplay between local concepts of witchcraft or magic and specific constellations of modernity (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; Geschiere 1995; Meyer and Pels 2003; Moore and Sanders 2001; Stroeken 2010; West 2005).

The quintessential crux of this discussion lies in the question of African secularism. In many specific historical contexts, repressive colonial and post-colonial measures have vowed to eradicate religion and associated 'traditional', non-