The essays herein thus give primary attention to these questions by presenting in-depth discussions of methods and techniques of sorcery (Buchillet, Lagrou, Wright); in some cases by an examination of previously little-known societies, such as the Parakanã (Fausto) or the Arara (Pinto); in others, by offering fresh approaches to well-known societies (Pollock on the Kulina; Vidal and Whitehead on Arawakan and Cariban groups). All of the essays seek to relate sorcery and witchcraft to social and political processes, particularly relating to questions of power (Heckenberger, Mentore, Santos-Granero, Vidal and Whitehead), where the contradictions of egalitarian societies in which inequalities, whether or not produced by external contacts, become the crux for witchcraft and sorcery accusations (Wright, Buchillet). By the same token, many of the contributions demonstrate how sorcery accusations may represent forms of discourse about tensions in intervillage and interethnic relations, and may be structured by the idiom of kinship (consanguinity and affinity) and village hierarchy (Heckenberger). It is more likely that other communities, other societies, are to be held responsible for sorcery, and it is equally unthinkable that kin would ever resort to sorcery or witchcraft as a form of action. Such discourse shapes social action, as is demonstrated in several of the case histories in this volume. It is also apparent that dark shamanism becomes an idiom for wider interethnic relations and engages with other occult traditions, such as obeah (Vidal and Whitehead).