Africanizing Anthropology: Fieldwork, Networks, and the Making of Cultural Knowledge in Central AfricaAfricanizing Anthropology tells the story of the anthropological fieldwork centered at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) during the mid-twentieth century. Focusing on collaborative processes rather than on the activity of individual researchers, Lyn Schumaker gives the assistants and informants of anthropologists a central role in the making of anthropological knowledge. Schumaker shows how local conditions and local ideas about culture and history, as well as previous experience of outsiders’ interest, shape local people’s responses to anthropological fieldwork and help them, in turn, to influence the construction of knowledge about their societies and lives. Bringing to the fore a wide range of actors—missionaries, administrators, settlers, the families of anthropologists—Schumaker emphasizes the daily practices of researchers, demonstrating how these are as centrally implicated in the making of anthropological knowlege as the discipline’s methods. Selecting a prominent group of anthropologists—The Manchester School—she reveals how they achieved the advances in theory and method that made them famous in the 1950s and 1960s. This book makes important contributions to anthropology, African history, and the history of science. |
Contents
The Water Follows the Stream | 1 |
Contexts and Chronologies | 22 |
Archetypal Experiences | 39 |
The Laboratory in the Field | 75 |
A Lady and an American | 115 |
Atop the Central African Volcano | 150 |
Africanizing Anthropology | 188 |
The Culture of Fieldwork | 225 |
Epilogue | 258 |
Notes | 261 |
Bibliography | 337 |
Index | 361 |
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Common terms and phrases
academic Afri African Social African societies African Studies agricultural analysis anthro anthropologists areas Audrey Richards Barotseland behavior Bemba British Cambridge Cape Town career Central Africa chapter colonial administrators Colonial Office communication with author context Copperbelt CSSRC culture Cunnison director directorship discussed Elizabeth Colson Epstein ethnic Ethnography European experience field fieldnotes fieldnotes 28 fieldsite fieldwork gender groups held by author Holleman informants Institute's intellectual interest interview with author Journal Katilungu labor later Livingstone London Lozi Luanshya Lukhero Lusaka Malinowski Manchester School Manchester University Press Marwick Max Gluckman ment missionaries Mitchell Papers Mitchell's Museum Ngoni Northern Rhodesia Nyasaland Oxford period personal communication political pology practices racial research assistants Rhodes House Rhodes-Livingstone Institute Rhodes-Livingstone Papers RLI anthropologists RLI researchers RLI team RLI's role rural social anthropology sociology South Africa southern Africa style theory tion Tonga tribal urban Africans urban research urban survey team village women Zambia