In rural China, calling out ‘witches’ has repercussions

Study finds accused can mitigate social consequences when their families coalesce.

Witches continue to work their dark arts in some parts of the world, at least in the minds of their accusers.

For example, in a rural farming community in southwestern China, 13.7% of the population has been labeled “zhu,” or “witch,” by their neighbors, according to a new paper published this month in Nature Human Behavior.

“‘ Zhu’ households are considered to raise snakes and poison people by providing them polluted food or simply by eye contact,” said Ting Ji, an anthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who worked on the study.

The concept of zhu, also known as zhubo, can be spread or transferred from zhu households to non-zhu households by giving valuables, such as gold, silver or silk, Ting said.

“The rumor of one household got ‘zhu’ will spread quickly in the villages and to the neighboring villages,” she said.

In the new study, Ting and her colleagues describe the effects of being labeled zhu in the community in southwestern China.

The authors found that the label has serious consequences for the accused and their families, but that these consequences are mitigated when the “witches” band together.

Belief in witchcraft occurs in cultures throughout the world, although the label means different things to different groups.

“Conceptions of witchcraft are very variable, so sometimes it is not helpful to use that word,” said Ruth Mace, an anthropologist at University College London who also worked on the study.

However, there are some common themes. The label is usually applied to middleaged women, and it frequently includes an attribution of blame for some misfortune.

The women designated zhu in the Chinese community where Mace and her colleagues did their fieldwork were mostly middle-aged and, generally, the heads of their households. They were not hunted down and burned at the stake by their neighbors, but they were ostracized from their community, the authors found.

Specifically, zhu and their families were less likely to receive farming help from their non-zhu neighbors, or to be part of the community’s social networks, the authors report.

In addition, women who had been designated zhu had fewer children than those who had not been.

It is illegal to accuse someone of being a witch in China, so it was difficult for the researchers to learn how the designations were originally made, or by whom.

“We think it is rumor or gossip, but don’t know why it sticks in some cases,” Mace said. “Some also are said to inherit the label from their mother. The topic is taboo, so it is a bit sensitive to discuss.”

To better understand the interactions between those bearing the zhu tag and those who don’t, the authors mapped their relationships in five villages in a few ways.

They found that zhu families were more likely to have children with each other than with non-zhu families. And when they played a giftgiving game — allowing villagers to decide how to distribute a small sum of money, non-zhu families were more likely to give the money to other non-zhu families, while zhu families were more likely to give it to other zhu families.

Some anthropologists have suggested that cultures may apply the label of witch to those who are more selfish and less cooperative than others.

In this case, the fear of being tagged a witch might encourage members of a community to act for the collective good. However, in this study, the authors found no evidence that women labeled zhu were any less cooperative than their neighbors.

Therefore, the authors propose another potential reason for why some people get labeled zhu and others don’t.

“Our finding that the label is more likely to fall on wealthier and femaleheaded households fits with anecdotal accounts from other populations of accusations arising out of jealousy or spite, directed particularly at women,” the authors write in the paper published on Jan. 8.