La fabrique institutionnelle des enfants-sorciers à Lubumbashi (République démocratique du Congo)

The Institutional Construction of Child Witches in Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of Congo).— This article proposes to examine the institutional manufacturing of “child- witches” in Lubumbashi, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Starting with some ethnographic casework, I then propose to shift the focus of the analysis from the economic crisis that affects the country and the dynamics of socio-familial deconstruc- tion on comparing institutional apparatuses that act in the Katangese public space. This approach provides a clear reading of the ways in which institutions “think” and, as a result, how they reproduce the category of the “child-witch.”