Inside African Anthropology
Monica Wilson and her Interpreters

Offers an incisive biography of the life and work of South Africa's foremost social anthropologist, Monica Hunter Wilson, between the 1920s and 1960s.

Andrew Bank (Edited by), Leslie J. Bank (Edited by)

9781108453172, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 March 2018

372 pages, 23 b/w illus.
23 x 15.4 x 2.4 cm, 0.58 kg

'… the volume is not only about intellectual history. It is also a social history of the micro-politics of fieldwork. In this regard it is an advance on the pioneering work of Lyn Schumaker (2001), among others, offering superb studies on the production of knowledge at the rock face. It effectively destroys the image of a few lonely isolated minds rising like mountain peaks above their compatriots. It demonstrates that the clouds can hide other peaks and routes as well.' Anthropology Southern Africa

Inside African Anthropology offers an incisive biography of the life and work of South Africa's foremost social anthropologist, Monica Hunter Wilson. By exploring her main fieldwork and intellectual projects in southern Africa between the 1920s and 1960s, the book offers insights into her personal and intellectual life. Beginning with her origins in the remote Eastern Cape, the authors follow Wilson to the University of Cambridge and back into the field among the Mpondo of South Africa, where her studies resulted in her 1936 book Reaction to Conquest. Her fieldwork focus then shifted to Tanzania, where she teamed up with her husband, Godfrey Wilson. In the 1960s, Wilson embarked on a new urban ethnography with a young South African anthropologist, Archie Mafeje, one of the many black scholars she trained. This study also provides a meticulously researched exploration of the indispensable contributions of African research assistants to the production of this famous woman scholar's cultural knowledge about mid-twentieth-century Africa.

Introduction Andrew Bank
Part I. Pondoland and the Eastern Cape: 1. Family, friends, and mentors: Monica Hunter at Lovedale and Cambridge, 1908–30 Andrew Bank
2. The 'intimate politics' of fieldwork: Monica Hunter and her African assistants, Pondoland and the Eastern Cape, 1931–2 Andrew Bank
3. City dreams, country magic: re-reading Monica Wilson's East London fieldnotes Leslie J. Bank
Part II. Bunyakyusa: 4. Pondo pins and Nyakyusa hammers: Monica and Godfrey in Bunyakyusa Rebecca Marsland
5. Working with the Wilsons: the brief career of a 'Nyakyusa clerk', Leonard Mwaisumo (1910–38) Sekibakiba Peter Lekgoathi, Timothy Mwakasekele and Andrew Bank
Part III. Fort Hare and the University of Cape Town: 6. 'Your intellectual son': Monica Wilson and her students at Fort Hare, 1944–6 Seán Morrow
7. Witchcraft and the academy: Livingstone Mqotsi, Monica Wilson, and the Middledrift healers, 1945–57 Leslie J. Bank
8. 'Speaking from inside': Archie Mafeje, Monica Wilson, and the co-production of Langa: A study of social groups in an African township Andrew Bank with Vuyiswa Swana
Part IV. Legacy: 9. 'Part of one whole': anthropology and history in the work of Monica Wilson Seán Morrow and Christopher Saunders
10. Gleanings and leavings: encounters in hindsight Pamela Reynolds
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Anthropology [JHM], African history [HBJH], Biography: general [BG]