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The Moroccan evil eye (l-ʿayn) acts as a devil-like, distributed force of harm, manifesting in gazes, objects, and relationships. Negotiated through amulets, gestures, and rituals, it externalises social tensions while avoiding direct moral demonisation, offering a relational ontology of evil.

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This paper approaches the evil eye (l-ʿayn) in the Moroccan context as a devil-like figure: a distributed, nonhuman agent that actualises social tension, moral ambiguity, and the risks of exposure in everyday life. Rather than a singular demonic being such as Satan or Iblis, the evil eye constitutes a relational ontology of evil, in which harm emerges not from deliberate transgression, but admiration, and envy. Often perceived as an uncontrollable force of harm, the evil eye may or may not be embodied in others, but it nevertheless impacts human existence and must be continually negotiated.

In urban Morocco, the evil eye manifests through relationships, gazes, and objects - requiring continuous management through practices such as amulets, gestures, concealment, Qur’anic recitation, and ritual countermeasures. These practices do not merely ward off misfortune but actively engage the evil eye whose presence renders social life morally and ontologically unstable.

Using Viveiros de Castro’s notion of ‘controlled equivocation’, I treat the evil eye as a homonym of ‘the devil’, gesturing to a different referent within a distinct reality. Rather than a singular figure of evil, the evil eye acts like a devil without a body - a mysterious, relational force that externalises social tensions while avoiding direct moral demonisation. By examining how negativity is distributed across relations rather than merely located in individuals, this paper contributes to the panel’s comparative project and suggests how such ontologies of evil may illuminate alternative ways of containing conflict and mitigating moral polarisation.

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This paper will address the relationship with the demonic among members of a Ugandan Pentecostal movement called “The Saved”, where ‘demons’ are rendered the spirits of one’s departed family members. Is the ‘better devil’ from the saying really the one you know?

Paper long abstract

Drawing on fieldwork among the “Balokole” (‘the Saved’), a Ugandan born-again Pentecostal movement, this paper will speak about its members’ relationship with the demonic. While all contemporary Ugandans are familiar with the image of the Devil, through either a Christian or Muslim upbringing, during my fieldwork with the Pentecostal movement called the Balokole there was rarely any talk of the Devil. Instead, it was ‘demons’ [emizimu] which preoccupied my interlocutors’ thoughts – and in and outside of church, much ritual work was aimed at combating the demonic forces which plagued people. Interestingly, emizimu, the word to describe demons in this homegrown branch of Pentecostalism, was also the Luganda word for an ‘ancestral spirit’. The spirit of a departed grandparent, aunt or sibling was therefore the very demon which my interlocutors were trying to distance themselves from by dutifully attending church.

This paper will outline the theological underpinnings of the diabolisation of one’s departed relatives, as it relates to the pre-Christian public healing practices, but also try to reason around what the implication of this notion of the demonic does. How is evil conceptualised when the demonic actor who brings the evil unto you is a dead family member? How do the Balokole negotiate the demonic influences in their lives when the devil is not something external and out there, but rather something in the family?

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In Malaita, Solomon Islands, feared “devil-devil” artifacts persist despite Christian iconoclasm. Their circulation reveals how colonial racism, shame, heritage, and development collide, as ancestral objects haunt moral, economic, and spiritual life.

Paper long abstract

It is believed that on the island of Malaita, Solomon Islands, there is Satanic stuff. Despite waves of Colonial and Christian iconoclasm, a pre-Christian "Devil-Devil Culture" persists. These artifacts come from the taem bifo (time before), one of Kastom ways of being which, amongst many practices included what many see as the deeply shameful institutions of headhunting, cannibalism and human-sacrifice. Some Christians, who "backslide" into "Paganism" hide such artifacts in the woven thatch of their roofs. Others sell and often give them to outsiders, hoping that the cultural heritage of an increasingly forgotten history may survive and, perhaps one day return to a more welcoming, even celebratory environment. Evangelicals today preach that only when the last of the devil-devil culture is destroyed will Malaita develop, instantaneously and overnight becoming a tourist destination like Honolulu or a deep-sea port like Singapore. In the context of these deeply polarizing discourses of shame, development, past and future, this papers attempts an exorcism of the evangelical possession. Moving beyond demonization as a rhetorical trope, the paper treats devil-devils as indexing distinct ontological realities and historical forces, following Viveiros de Castro’s notion of “controlled equivocation.” It explores how colonial racism is manifest in Devil-Devil culture. It also asks who benefits from this shame. By tracing how ancestral objects entangle issues of economics and identity, the paper shows how the past persistently haunts the present, illuminating both the generativity of the negative and the ongoing struggles to negotiate moral and material life in a polarized world.

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This presentation examines Indigenous Maseual cosmo-ecological frameworks concerning the existence of primordial evil or harmful action (amo kwali), as well as the practices of defense or abjuration enacted through good or appropriate action (kwali) lonked to Nixikol, the devil in the land.

Paper long abstract

This presentation examines Indigenous Maseual cosmo-ecological frameworks concerning the existence of primordial evil or harmful action (amo kwali), alongside practices of defense or abjuration enacted through good, proper, or appropriate action (kwali). These principles extend beyond interpersonal relations to encompass interactions with animals, landscape spirits, and other non-human entities. Central to these relational configurations is Nixikol, or “the Devil”—not as an equivalent of the Christian malevolent deity, but as an inescapable potential stakeholder, and at times even a partner, in any significant endeavor, given its intrinsic association with the land itself. Rather than constituting a simple moral or symbolic opposition, the dynamic relationship between kwali and amo kwali actions and values articulates a broad relational ontology in which all forms of interaction—human and non-human, visible and invisible—carry the potential for unintended harm, even when undertaken with the best intentions and successful outcomes. Drawing on these foundational cosmological principles, the presentation explores contemporary Maseual models of causation through which environmental, political, and economic crises are understood as directed forms of harm emerging from complex configurations of agency. It demonstrates how these ontological assumptions shape present-day local practices, ethical orientations, and interpretations of social and environmental change, grounding collective responses in a cosmology where responsibility, action, and the maintenance of relational balance remain central.

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This paper offers a comparative ethnographic analysis of Nahua and Otomi engagements with the figure of the devil in the Huasteca region of Mexico. By examining how relationships with an entity associated with land, abundance, and prosperity articulate shifting moral economies.

Paper long abstract

The figure of the devil in the Huasteca region of Mexico acquires differentiated meanings and modes of relational engagement across communities. Drawing on a comparative analysis of Nahua and Otomi populations, this paper examines the narratives and practices through which relationships are configured with an entity associated with land, seeds, and abundance, locally referred to as friend, patron, or owner.

In both contexts, relationships with the devil are commonly linked to episodes of material prosperity and enrichment; however, these relationships are embedded within broader historical processes associated with the commodification of life and the reconfiguration of rural economies. The central argument advanced here is that such transformations have entailed shifts in the moral economies that organize relationships with this entity, generating tensions between affective and relational bonds, on the one hand, and more instrumental forms of engagement associated with calculation, debt, and exchange.

From an ethnographic perspective informed by theories of value, the paper proposes to approach the devil not as an exclusively religious or moral figure, but as a relational agent through which local conceptions of value, abundance, and reciprocity are articulated. In this sense, the relationships established with this being make it possible to problematize transformations in both value and the forms of affect directed toward him.

The comparative analysis identifies the forms that emerge from the relationships different communities establish with the devil, demonstrating that, although they share certain imaginaries surrounding this entity, the modalities of relational engagement and the associated moral economies differ significantly.

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This contributes explores the agentive, immanent and ontological nature of the devil in contemporary European street rap. In doing so, it highlights the religious and ethical considerations of street cultural agents, which is generally overlooked in current scholarship.

Paper long abstract

Figures of the devil haunt European street rap and its lyrics. Building on this, I approach the devil, shaytan or iblis as a methodological construct in my analysis of dozens of contemporary European street rap songs and multiple interviews with Dutch/Flemish street rappers. References to the devil by Christian, Muslim, and secular rappers show remarkable consistency in what they signify: money, consumerism, crime, and the power they hold over the subject. These materialist themes are often associated with street rap and street culture in both journalism and academic literature. Whereas my contribution confirms the importance of these themes in street rap, their association with (d)evils reveals that many in street culture inhabit a critical posture towards such values. Following Samanani, this agentic and ethical factor remains overlooked in existing literature. Taking Webster’s notion of references to the devil and their expression in materiality as immanent transcendence, I suggest that the devil is immanently, agentively, and ontologically present in European street rap. However, I also argue that this devilish transcendence does not so much express itself, somewhat contingently, materially, but that it refers to street culture’s foregrounding of material wealth more broadly (and the mainstream consumerism underpinning it). Following Howland and Davies, this contribution connects street culture to debates on evil in moral anthropology by highlighting the moral scruples of its participants, their agency, and that of the ‘evil’ powers they face.

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Based on fieldwork among Salafi men in Saudi Arabia, I show how state reforms promoting social liberalisation are seen as new interstices for Iblīs by retuning the city’s “moral air”. Satan-talk recalibrates responsibility for “negative change” and may reveal some limits of the post-secular.

Paper long abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Salafi men in Saudi Arabia, this paper examines how recent state reforms promoting social liberalisation, pursued as part of an economic diversification away from oil, are experienced as opening new interstices for Iblīs (Satan) and his whispers (waswasa). While Iblīs is understood to be always present in the lower world, interlocutors insist that specific social and political dispositions can constrain or enable how Satanic influence moves.

I trace how reforms retune the urban sensorium, what these men call the city’s “moral air”, through sound, spacing, and movement. Shifting soundscapes, altered gendered proximities, and reconfigured rhythms of public sociability are apprehended as atmospheric conditions in which temptation travels differently, intensifying the labour of vigilance and the everyday management of attention.

Analytically, “Satan-talk” provides a calibrated idiom for distributing moral responsibility for “negative change” without collapsing into open denunciation. It redirects blame away from rulers (to maintain loyalty), away from other humans (to avoid fitna and social division), and away from God (to avoid impugning divine wisdom), while sustaining a doctrine of individual accountability under divine sovereignty.

Finally, the paper probes some limits of post-secularism. If the anthropology of Islam has increasingly accommodated divine presence ethnographically, what epistemological and ethical costs follow when the presence in question is antagonistic, and when interlocutors warn that sustained attention to Iblīs may itself be perilous?

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This paper examines the devil's transformation in Colombia's Eastern Plains from folkloric figure into shadowy paramilitary protector, arguing this shift indexes violent capitalist intensification and experiences of alienation during armed conflict.

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The devil has long wandered the Eastern Plains of Colombia, attending parties, playing music, seducing women, and offering pacts for wealth. Oral tradition, music, and literature of this rural region attest to his folkloric presence. Yet this devil differs radically from the figure with whom paramilitaries, right-wing armed organisations, pacted during the 1990s and 2000s, one of the bloodiest episodes of Colombia's armed conflict. This new devil does not party and crucially, he promises not wealth but life protection and supernatural powers to paramilitary combatants. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Colombian Eastern Plains examining the pervasiveness of the supernatural during paramilitary war, this paper analyses the ontological transformation of the devil figure and what it reveals about violent social rupture under armed conflict. Inspired by Michael Taussig's The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, I argue that the devil, as personification of evil, acquires heightened social relevance during moments of capitalist intensification. In the Eastern Plains, this intensification occurred at gunpoint, as paramilitary groups violently restructured rural economies and social relations. Through close attention to representations of the devil and his relationships with humans described across tales, oral narratives, music, and ritual practice, the paper demonstrates how the devil's transformation externalizes social, economic, and psychic forces unleashed by armed conflict, articulating experiences of alienation and resistance among both paramilitary members and communities subjected to the military and structural violence accompanying the consolidation of neoliberal economies. The shifting devil thus becomes an index of capitalism's violence.

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This paper explores relations between dreams of witchcraft and raskol activity in establishing local ontologies of evil among Kasua people (Papua New Guinea). Its aim is to show that dreaming gives rise to a double polarization process based on the idea of the devil, reconfiguring local antagonisms.

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Based on a 17-month ethnography amongst Kasua people (Papua New Guinea), this paper explores the social and emotional aftermath of an armed conflict between a Malaysian logging company and “raskols”, criminal groups resorting to violence and kidnapping to extort money. During the beginning of my doctoral ethnographic stay in 2022-2023, a group of Huli raskols entered Kasua territory for the first time in their history. Studying Kasua dreaming ecology, I quickly realized that numerous collected dream narratives referred to raskols and Huli people. When those appeared as dream figures, they were systematically interpreted as signs of Kasua witchcraft, including explicit reference to the Christian notion of the Devil. This paper seeks to investigate how the identification of raskols in dreams as signs of witchcraft contributes to the redefinition of an ontology of evil amongst the Kasua. After a brief contextualization of the armed conflict, dream narratives figuring raskols will be mobilized in conjunction to local discourses about Huli brutality. Their analysis outlines a double process of polarization based on demonization of the Huli people. Not only does dreaming play a major part in stabilizing the image of raskols as the incarnation of evil, but the conflict further generates partial reconciliation of local antagonisms – notably Kasua and neighboring communities with the logging company – through general apprehension and stigmatization of Huli as potential sources of conflict and violence. The aim of this paper is to highlight the extent to which dreaming affects moral arrangements around the figure of the devil.