Sorcerers, ‘works’ and development witchcraft

Sorcerers, ‘works’ and develoenvironmental licensing as a ritual of initiation and sacrifice

Abstract

The text proposes thinking of environmental licensing as a ritual, an event that stands out from the daily routine and is experienced as a social drama. Having an expected meaning, although not pre-defined, this constitutes a way of organizing society that takes place through the ordering of actions referred to specific social purposes. To achieve this, at least two rites must be fulfilled: sacrifice and initiation. The first takes place after the consummation of a complex chain of events whose scenes and roles of its protagonists will be described throughout the text. In the second, going through licensing instills in those sacrificed a condition of liminality between before and after the enterprise, but also between life outside and inside it. A perverse imprisonment which means that, although people don't want to be ‘affected’ in the embodied sense of the term, it leads them to seek to be legally recognized as such.