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.
By Bronislaw Stefaniszyn, Raymond Apthorpe
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1964, this is a detailed ethnographic record and sympathetic study of Ambo beliefs and activities. The significance of the clan and the matrilineage are discussed and the organization of the village and chiefdom analysed. Childhood and puberty, marriage, death, succession ...
By Valdo Pons
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1969, this is a study of the Congolese community of Kinsangani (formerly Stanleyville), as it was in 1952-3 under Belgian administration. It pays particular attention to the tribal heterogeneity of the community, and to the processes of absorption of urban-dwellers who made ...
By Hans Cory
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1953, this book records the Customary Law of the Sukuma tribe and discusses the differences in law whcih grew up in the various local federations, with the aim of unifying Customary Law for both the Tanzanians and European colonial authorities. The material is presented in ...
Edited
By P. C. Lloyd
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1953, this book discusses the Sukuma people who represent the largest ethnic group in Tanzania. It is devoted mainly to the resources, use, problems and systems of tenure of the territory of Sukumaland, but also contains an account of Sukama social structure, organisation ...
Edited
By Arthur Phillips
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1953, this study examines the effect of social change on African domestic organization and marriage. Changes to African social organization due to increased contact with the West are analyzed and accounts given as to how these changes were handled by various administrations ...
By A. W. Cardinall
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1931, this book collects tales told to the author by agricultural labourers and hunters in what was Togoland in the 1920s. A rare and valuable resource of oral history, the book also contains the history of the Dagomba from Northern Ghana....
By Jack Goody
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1971 this book argues that certain aspects of traditional African social systems have been misunderstood because of a failure to appreciate what is implied by important differences between the technologies of the major traditional African states and those of Europe and Asia....
By G. St. J Orde-Browne
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1933, this book is a comparative study of the labour market in the early part of the twentieth century in different parts of Africa. It focusses particularly on the impact of Western influence, both on an industrial and sociological level, in the period after the First World...
By Diedrich Westermann
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1934, and inevitably a product of the time in which it was published this book nevertheless remains an important volume in African sociology and psychology. Topics such as race, economics, family and kinship, tribal organization, ritual and the supernatural, language and ...
By Gunter Wagner
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1949, this is the first of 2 volumes studying the Bantu tribes inhabiting the westernmost part of Kenya. The book analyses family, lineage and clan structure, kinship relations and the various rituals connected with every stage of the human life cycle. Also included is a ...
By Gunter Wagner
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1956, this second volume of the Bantu of North Kenya (Kavirondo) discusses the traditional Bantu economy, as well as 20th century developments as a result of Western contact. The topics dealt with include technology, food production, land tenure and use, rights in cattle, ...
By Hugh Ashton
April 28, 2020
Originally published in 1952 and as a second edition in 1967 this volume provides a systematic and comprehensive account of the Basuto people and their changing culture, and reviews the developments and changes leading up to 1966 when Basutoland achieved independence as Lesotho. It describes ...