Introduction: rethinking the canon; 1. Feminizing the foundational narrative: the collaborative anthropology of Winifred Tucker Hoernle (1885–1960); 2. An adopted daughter: Christianity and anthropology in the life and work of Monica Hunter Wilson (1908–82); 3. Anthropology and Jewish identity: the urban fieldwork and ethnographies of Ellen Hellmann (1908–82); 4. 'A genius for friendship': Audrey Richards at Wits, 1938–40; 5. Historical ethnography and ethnographic fiction: the South African writings of Hilda Beemer Kuper (1911–92); 6. Feminising the discipline: the long career of Eileen Jensen Krige (1904–95); Conclusion: a humanist legacy.
This book traces the personal and intellectual histories of six remarkable women anthropologists, using a rich cocktail of archival sources.
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).
'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, 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, Journal of Southern African Studies
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