Pioneers of the Field: South Africa's Women Anthropologists

Andrew Bank

Aga 2016 · The International African Library Ibhuku elingu-51 · Cambridge University Press

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Focusing on the crucial contributions of women researchers, Andrew Bank demonstrates that the modern school of social anthropology in South Africa was uniquely female-dominated. The book traces the personal and intellectual histories of six remarkable women through the use of a rich cocktail of archival sources, including family photographs, private and professional correspondence, field-notes and field diaries, published and other public writings and even love letters. The book also sheds new light on the close connections between their personal lives, their academic work and their anti-segregationist and anti-apartheid politics. It will be welcomed by anthropologists, historians and students in African studies interested in the development of social anthropology in twentieth-century Africa, as well as by students and researchers in the field of gender studies.

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Andrew Bank is a professor in the History Department at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He was commissioning editor of the journal Kronos: Southern African Histories from 2001 to 2015 and is a member of the editorial board for the South African Historical Journal. He is also the co-editor of Inside African Anthropology: Monica Wilson and her Interpreters (Cambridge, 2013). His previous monographs are on slavery in Cape Town (1991) and the Bleek-Lloyd Collection of Bushman folklore (2006).