Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Pioneers of the Field
  • Cited by 26
  • Andrew Bank, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
August 2016
Print publication year:
2016
Online ISBN:
9781316584187
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316584187
Series:
The International African Library (51)
Subjects:
Area Studies, African Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, History, Anthropology: General Interest, Anthropology, African History
  • 44.99 (USD)
    Digital access for individuals
    (PDF download and/or read online)
    Add to cart
    Added to cart
    Digital access for individuals
    (PDF download and/or read online)
    View cart
  • Export citation
  • Buy a print copy
  • Recommend to librarian
Information

Book description

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.

Reviews

‘Andrew Bank has made a major contribution to intellectual history in a volume that recognises the role played by six women anthropologists who were major contributors to the creation of a distinctive South African voice in anthropology: Winifred Hoernle, Audrey Richards, Monica Hunter Wilson, Hilda Beemer Kuper, Ellen Hellman and Eileen Jensen Krige. All, with the exception of Audrey Richards, were South African by birth. They were headed by Winifred Hoernle, founder of the anthropology department at the University of Witswatersrand. She was an inspiring teacher and mentor who encouraged her students to read widely, think deeply, and do superb ethnographic studies that focused on the contemporary world of Southern Africa with its reserves, farms, small towns and mining centres. Somehow these women have largely been forgotten by successors who owed them much but did not know it. This work celebrates their enduring contribution to the study of African life and the development of the anthropological discipline.'

Elizabeth Colson - University of California, Berkeley

‘Original, meticulously researched and eminently readable, Andrew Bank's landmark study in the history of South African anthropology in its formative phase is a major corrective to the male-dominated view in which the achievements of women anthropologists were greatly undervalued. Aside from its main thesis, the compelling human interest of this book lies in the finely drawn and richly documented biographical portraits of six talented women, ‘foremothers' of the Wits anthropology department. Four of these remarkable women were star pupils of Bronislaw Malinowski, whose innovative fieldwork methods they deployed to great effect in their ethnographic accounts. Andrew Bank has succeeded brilliantly in bringing their lives and works together in an engagingly written narrative celebrating their humanist legacy.'

Michael Young - Australian National University, Canberra

‘Andrew Bank's insightful scholarship provides a much-needed revision not only to the history of South African anthropology, but to the history of socio-cultural anthropology in general. His vivid portraits of six outstanding South African women social anthropologists beginning with the dynamic Winifred Hoernle and continuing with her exceptional female students - lead us to amend the heretofore androcentric history of social anthropology in South Africa. But perhaps even more significantly, Bank presents a compelling argument that causes us to appreciate the important role these women - and by association, social anthropology - played in the anti-apartheid movement and the transformation of race relations in twentieth-century South Africa.'

Nancy Lutkehaus - University of Southern California

‘This penetrating study of pioneering women academics in South Africa and beyond explores the tensions between personal, scholarly and political engagements. A major contribution to African studies, it will also enrich - and complicate - current debates about the public role of anthropology.'

Adam Kuper - Centennial Professor, London School of Economics and Political Science

'[In] Pioneers of the Field Bank has made an important contribution to the history of social anthropology by reclaiming the place of its foremothers.'

Anne Heffernan Source: Africa at LSE Blog (www.blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse)

‘Andrew Bank has provided us with a panoply of new stories and a range of far-reaching analyses that will, for many years to come, inform our teaching, research, writing and, perhaps, even our sense of what on earth anthropology was and is all about.’

Joanna Davidson Source: Journal of Southern African Studies

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.