Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande is one of social anthropology's most noted texts. In this work E. E. Evans-Pritchard examines the witchcraft beliefs of the Azanade, a group of agricultural people in southern Sudan on the upper Nile. There are two main points he makes in the work. One is that witchcraft can be seen as a safety valve, that releases potential harmful conflict into less damaging activities. The other is that it can be seen as an attempt to explain a complex alien world in a society's own terms of reference. Together these make for a practical solution that is consistent and rational.

Eriksen and Nielsen (2013) argue that the remarkable thing about Evans-Pritchard is the way the two approaches are combined into a single approach. In this approach the Zande are seen to have developed a belief systems that both acts stabilise and harmonise the order of society, but also is both rational and logically consistent. A logical consistency based on the presuppositions of the Azande's thought. Eriksen and Nielsen also report the criticism of other scholars of Evans-Pritchard's monograph. They record Peter Winch (1958) as making a big deal out of Evans-Pritchard's structural-functionalist approach where in he is reported as arguing that the Azande's belief in witchcraft is reduced to its ‘social functions’.

The work was a development of his earlier (1928). Oracle-magic of the Azande. Sudan Notes and Records, 11, 1-53..

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. (1937). Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: The Clarendon Press