Marc, I don't think the practice of witchcraft/sorcery, in the context of ritual child sacrifice, has got anything to do with social stress or social strain at all. Infanticide, maybe, because certainly exogenous social shocks to the system create sociogenic forces which cause crime. But, the ritual practice of killing kids to appease spirits comes endogenously (from the other direction). The idea that when one is unhappy with their station in life, one should sacrifice a child in hopes of a better, wealthier future doesn't correlate with any known system stressors that I know of, except maybe demographic pressures. The belief system is a warped kind of theodicy where the thinking goes like this: if I make the ultimate sacrifice, I may be better off. There are indeed certain rituals with social structural links like this, but child sacrifice isn't one of them. I'm going to have to go with this just being a psychologically twisted kind of crime on this one.