Practical Magic Religious of the Pastors and Maestro’s Fetish in Congolese Football

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to apprehend the magic religious practices which emanate from pastors and maestro’s fetish and which integrates and invests the mechanisms of sporting management to football. This investigation was articulated around the various phases which characterized the action of pastors and maestro’s fetish with an aim attributing victory with the club solicitant. Thus, a cross-sectional anthropological investigation was conducted undertaken from October 2015 to June 2016. It was based on participating observation. The sampling comprised 190 subjects which are 90 leaders of football teams, 20 maestro’s fetish, 50 heads of family, clans and notables and 30 circumstantial advisors. These different actors of Congolese football were volunteers to participate in this study. The variables were representations and magic religious practices of pastors and maestro’s fetish for their activities in football. The results indicate seven phases of intervention of different actors studied: consultation; engagement of process to aim prediction; prediction of restoration of results born of vision; instruction of pastors and maestro’s fetish to the consultant; implementation of the instructions; application of instructions; rescue of consultant. Generally, two objectives characterizing all these phases bias two fundamental situations: 1) to know the score before the unfolding of the competition; 2) to safeguard the results if they are good or to forget the bad scores. These magic religious practices are activities answering expression of habitus. In conclusion, the magic religious beliefs provide in representations of actors as function as habitus, hidden in the collective unconscious memory.