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My latest book! African Science: Witchcraft, Vodun, and Healing in Southern Benin (2018, University of Wisconsin Press). Purchase at Amazon

Praise for African Science:

“Falen’s masterful African Science cracks open the concealed and yet simultaneously public and omnipresent operations of African pluritheistic spiritual practice with unparalleled sensitivity, precision, and erudition….[This] book is a masterwork, and easily the most compelling work on African spirituality I have read in decades […] Falen’s reframing of magic, witchcraft, and religion as African science is as enthralling as Carl Sagan’s reconceptualization of astrophysics as belief in Contact.” — Benjamin Lawrance, Editor-in-Chief, African Studies Review

“a masterpiece of ethnography and among the best books available on African spirituality […] It is his willingness to treat informants’ viewpoints as legitimate rather than as simple expressions of the sort of outside social forces
with which Westerners are comfortable that makes this work so exceptionally innovative and valuable to specialists and non-specialists alike.” — Jeffrey Anderson, University of Louisiana Monroe

“This book is not only a welcome, scholarly contextualization of Beninese practices and beliefs on their own terms, but also a useful resource for
non-scholars and scholars alike who find African witchcraft unfamiliar and may wonder why and how West Africans ‘believe’ in it.” — Kayla Kauffman, Birmingham Southern College

“African Science beautifully illustrates how good ethnography penetrates beyond the surface of cultural phenomena to reveal the rich and complex worlds of lived experience […] [Falen] ventures into this complex terrain in a profoundly sensitive and approachable way that transforms elusive and abstract concepts into clear and compelling human experiences.” — Faidra Papavasiliou, Georgia State University

“A stunning achievement in the anthropology of religion. Weaving together narrative and analysis, Falen provides a gripping account of the imponderables that constitute the occult in Benin. He demonstrates how African science can refine our comprehension of fidelity and betrayal, health and illness, science and religion, and life and death — the philosophical themes that define our humanity.” — Paul Stoller, West Chester University

“Guides readers straight into the untranslatable Beninois world of àzě on its own terms. Falen’s sensitivity and commitment to local framings and his accessible experiential narratives make this an ideal ethnography with which to explore the ontological turn, as well as a marvelously provocative challenge to the bulwarked categories separating science from magic and religion.” —Sasha Newell, Université Libre de Bruxelles