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.
Edited
By P. C. Lloyd
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1966, this book brings together papers dealing with the emergence and development of elites in sub-Saharan Africa among social categories ranging from farmers and women market traders through foremen and merchants to administrators and managers in government and industry. ...
By Adrian C. Edwards
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1962, this study discusses the changes in the life of the Ovimbundu from the time of their caravan trade in slaves, rubber, and ivory down to the more recent period when the organization of their chiefdoms was influenced by the Catholic missions, Portuguese administration ...
By C. Edward Hopen
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1958, this book discusses how marriage and Fulbe family life, the economy and the whole organization of society is centred on cattle; how the welfare of the herd and its increase, the balance betweent he size of the herd and the size of the family are major preoccupations in...
By K. A. Busia
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1951, this book provides an account of the traditional status and functions of the Asanti chief. The effects of British administration on the powers of the chief and his council are described, as are the tensions which the traditional political organization was subjected to ...
By Jacques J. Maquet
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1961, this study of the indigenous system of government in Ruanda-Urundi until the beginning of the 20th century, describes the complex relationship between the Tutsi and the Hutu and shows how the Tutsi succeeded in maintaining their political dominance without endangering ...
By E. Jensen Krige, J. D. Krige
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1943 this book discusses the life and culture of the Lovedu, a Bantu tribe in South Africa. As well as discussing the Rain-Queen, much of the book is devoted to the royal institutions; the network of links woven by kinship, marriage and marriage cattle, the legal procedure ...
By Jack Goody
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1967 (second edition) presents an account of the life and social organisation of the Lo Wiili of the Haute Volta and Ghana. Chapters on the geographic and ethnographic background and economic system are followed by a detailed analysis of Lo Wiili social organisation which in...
By Robert F. Gray
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1963, this was the first monograph concerning an African people in which an irrigation-based society was studied in detail and its implications explored. The Sonjo, a Bantu-speaking people isolated among cattle pastoralists of what was Northern Tanganyika, are remarkable for...
Edited
By Jan Vansina, R. Mauny, L. V. Thomas
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1973, this book reconstructs the political and economic organization and the social life of the Tio kingdom at the end of the 19th century by means of a critical synthesis of documentary and ethnographic data. Based on a detailed study of rich docuemntary sources and ...
By Meyer Fortes
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1949, this book takes the analysis of Tale social structure further. It shows how the patriarchal principle regulates domestic life and thus moulds individual development among the Tallensi. The analysis of the inter-connexion of Legal, econoic and personal relationships ...
Edited
By David Parkin
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1975, the studies in this volume examine the range of factors which mediate the development of social processes in both town and country: as well as migration there is the ebb and flow of beliefs, ideologies and educational and occupational opportunities. It considers the ...
By Merran Fraenkel
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1964, this book analyses the unique type of social stratification which is more akin to a social class system in Monrovia, Liberia's capital. Liberia, established in 1847 has no history of rule by a colonial power and is of perculiar sociological interest, having been ...