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African Ethnographic Studies of the 20th Century


About the Series

Routledge is delighted to be re-issuing 79 volumes originally published between 1931 and 1988 in association with the International African Institute. Unavailable outside a few key libraries, many of these republished volumes were at the cutting edge of a fieldwork and ethnographic revolution in African anthropology in the decades after 1930. It involved the production of a wide body of fieldwork-based ethnographic documentation about the cultures of the different societies in Africa. Secondly, it saw a methodological turn to intense, localized investigations of cultural tradition and social change in a rapidly modernizing context. These investigations involved a more sustained and systematic, more professional and ‘scientific’ form of immersion and participant observation, than anything that had gone before. The sites of engagement were urban as well as rural; the pioneering researchers were female as well as male. No longer was the journal essay the repository of the latest research in the discipline, but rich ethnographies running into hundreds of pages.

The volumes are supplemented with maps, which will be available to view on https://www.routledge.com/ or available as pdfs from the publishers.

 

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A Black Byzantium The Kingdom of Nupe in Nigeria

A Black Byzantium: The Kingdom of Nupe in Nigeria

1st Edition

By S. F. Nadel
April 28, 2020

Originally published in 1942 this now classic book is a study of the Nupe of Northern Nigeria. The economic and political complexity of their kingdom evoked comparisons with the civilization of Byzantium. The detailed description and analysis of their social life and political institutions was the ...

A Manual of Nuer Law Being an Account of Customary Law, its Evolution and Development in the Courts Established by the Sudan Government

A Manual of Nuer Law: Being an Account of Customary Law, its Evolution and Development in the Courts Established by the Sudan Government

1st Edition

By P. P. Howell
April 28, 2020

Originally published in 1954 this book was originally designed for administrators but has become a key title for anthropologists. It includes a summary account of the history and social organisation of the Nuer and provides a descriptive analysis of their customary practices concerning homicide, ...

A Tribal Survey of Mongalla Province

A Tribal Survey of Mongalla Province

1st Edition

Edited By L. F. Nalder
April 28, 2020

Originally published in 1937, this book describes and compares the tribes of the Mongalla Province in what is now South Sudan. In the second part of the book some 27 individual tribes are discussed in detail, and topics such as linguistics, culture, tribal structure, religious beliefs, crime and ...

Adamawa Past and Present An Historical Approach to the Development of a Northern Cameroons Province

Adamawa Past and Present: An Historical Approach to the Development of a Northern Cameroons Province

1st Edition

By A. H. M. Kirk-Greene
April 28, 2020

Originally published in 1958 this book presents a straight-forward and vivid picture of Adamawa Province in Nigeria. It discusses the varying fortunes of the territory, the life of its people, the efforts of its explorers and the achievements of the early administrators. It discusses the geography ...

African Agrarian Systems

African Agrarian Systems

1st Edition

Edited By Daniel Biebuyck
April 28, 2020

Originally published in 1963 this volume surveys various aspects of the complex relations between rights in land, social organization and economic interests in tropical Africa. The papers - in English and French but with summaries in the other language - analyse case studies illustrating the ...

African Farmers in Rhodesia Old and New Peasant Communities in Karangaland

African Farmers in Rhodesia: Old and New Peasant Communities in Karangaland

1st Edition

By A K H Weinrich
April 28, 2020

Originally published in 1975 this book analyses the factors making for success and failure in agricultural development among black Zimbabweans during the 20th century. A detailed analysis is given of 2 tribal trust lands, including government policies and administrative control of these areas, ...

An African Aristocracy Rank Among the Swazi

An African Aristocracy: Rank Among the Swazi

1st Edition

By Hilda Kuper
April 28, 2020

Originally published in 1947 and reprinted with a new preface in 1961, this book is based on field studies and gives an account of the social organization of the Swazi, wiith special reference to the aristocratic structure of their society and the way in which birth and rank determine social ...

Anthropology in Action An Experiment in the Iringa District of the Iringa Province Tanganyika Terrirtory

Anthropology in Action: An Experiment in the Iringa District of the Iringa Province Tanganyika Terrirtory

1st Edition

By G. Gordon Brown, A. McD Bruce Hutt
April 28, 2020

Originally published in 1935, when the province of Iringa in what is now Tanzania was still under British administrative control, this book is inevitably a product of its time, but nonetheless it represents an important project in collaboration between an anthropologist and a government official. ...

Arts of West Africa (Excluding Music)

Arts of West Africa: (Excluding Music)

1st Edition

Edited By Michael S. Sadler
April 28, 2020

Originally published in 1935, the aim of this book was to introduce the European to the art of West Africa. Many of the examples (extensively illustrated with black and white photos are from the regions between Senegal and Angola, primarily from Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Nigeria ...

Bantu Prophets in South Africa

Bantu Prophets in South Africa

1st Edition

By Bengt Sundkler
April 28, 2020

Originally published in 1948 and then updated in 1961 outlines the religious and social background of the Zulus and discusses the rise of the Independent Church Movement. It examines the organization and inner workings of the different Churches, their forms of worship, and the personalities of ...

Benin Studies

Benin Studies

1st Edition

By R. E. Bradbury, Peter Morton-Williams
April 28, 2020

This collection of R. E. Bradbury's papers, originally published in 1973 includes edited sections of his (then hitherto) unpublished thesis on the Benin village in Western Nigeria. The book is arranged in 3 parts: historical and political studies of the kingdom of Benin; Benin village organization ...

Caravans of the Old Sahara An Introduction to the History of the Western Sudan

Caravans of the Old Sahara: An Introduction to the History of the Western Sudan

1st Edition

By E. W. Bovill
April 28, 2020

Since publication in 1957 the importance of Bohannan's study of judicial institutions and procedures among the Tiv has been widely recognized. It has contributed widely to the continuing discussion concerning the objectives and methods to be followed in the anthropological study of law and the ...

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