Pioneers of the Field: South Africa's Women Anthropologists PDF

# Pioneers of the Field: South Africa's Women Anthropologists ## Introduction: Rethinking the Canon The question now inevitably asks itself, whether the lives of great men only should be recorded (Virginia Woolf, "The Art of Biography" (1939)). Along the main wall of the hallway in the Social Ant...

# Pioneers of the Field: South Africa's Women Anthropologists ## Introduction: Rethinking the Canon The question now inevitably asks itself, whether the lives of great men only should be recorded (Virginia Woolf, "The Art of Biography" (1939)). Along the main wall of the hallway in the Social Anthropology Department at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, there is an exhibition of the department’s intellectual forefathers. This fictitious lineage, which graduate students and professors pass daily, has been on display, unchanged, for two decades. The exhibition consists of a row of ancestors presented, in each case, in large glass-bound framed portrait form with a paragraph-length caption explaining their significance, with particular emphasis on their theoretical contribution to 'the British school'. Those on display are Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, Winifred Hoernlé, Isaac Schapera, Max Gluckman, David Webster, David Lewis-Williams, David Hammond-Tooke and David Coplan. The problem with this narrative is that the founding intellectuals and heads of this truly remarkable department were, without exception, women. This silence regarding women’s contributions to the history of anthropology is not specific to South Africa, although the dominance of women in establishing and then developing the field in South Africa does make the bias in this case particularly revealing. In the introduction to the landmark collection *Women Writing Culture*, feminist anthropologist Ruth Behar points to the heightened awareness in American anthropology of the late 1980s and early 1990s of the power of a conservative male-dominated canon. Anthropologists have belatedly begun to realize that we, too, have a canon [like literary scholars], a set of 'great books' that we continue to teach to our students, as dutifully as they were taught to us in graduate school. That these books just happen to be the writings of white men is an idea that can never be brought up. It seems somehow impolite. ## Feminizing the Foundational Narrative: The Collaborative Anthropology of Winifred Tucker Hoernlé (1885–1960) Your suggestion of the possibility of our collaboration together [in the field of African sociology] opens up the most enticing vision of possibilities. **Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown to Winifred Hoernlé, 31 July 1925** According to the standard narrative of the history of anthropology in South Africa, it all began in January 1921 when one of ‘the founding fathers’ of the British anthropological tradition, Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955), established social anthropology as a modern, professional, university-based discipline during his five years as professor and head of the social anthropology department in the newly created African School of Life and Languages at the University of Cape Town (UCT). This was the first such chair in the British Commonwealth. ‘Brown’, as he was known, gave social anthropology in South Africa a theory: that of structural-functionalism. Although he did no fieldwork in South Africa, he provided an analysis of the understanding of society derived largely from Durkheim, and an associated set of concepts, mostly concerning kinship. He championed his ‘sociological method’ to missionaries, administrators doing vacation courses, undergraduate students in growing numbers, the wider public in newspaper articles and, indeed, whoever else was willing to listen. He advertised anthropology as a science akin to chemistry, insisting that the role of the anthropologist was to ascertain ‘general laws’ which could ‘lead to results’ The book is a major contribution to intellectual history in a volume that recognizes the role played by six women anthropologists who were major contributors to the creation of a distinctive South African voice in anthropology. - Elizabeth Colson, University of California, Berkeley: “a major contribution to intellectual history in a volume that recognizes the role played by six women anthropologists who were major contributors to the creation of a distinctive South African voice in anthropology” - Michael Young, Australian National University: “Original, meticulously researched and eminently readable.” - Nancy Lutkehaus, University of Southern California: “Andrew Bank's insightful scholarship provides a much-needed revision not only to the history of South African anthropology, but also to the history of socio-cultural anthropology in general.” - Adam Kuper, Centennial Professor, London School of Economics: “A major contribution to African studies, it will also enrich - and complicate - current debates about the public role of anthropology." ### Cover Illustration: Hilda Kuper in the field. From left to right: Sobhuza II, Hilda Kuper and her guide-cum-research assistant. Courtesy of UCLA Library Special Collections. This study will track the lives of the women who worked in this field, their lives, their contributions and their legacy. This book will focus on: * Winifred Hoernlé * Audrey Richards * Hilda Beemer Kuper * Ellen Hellmann * Eileen Jensen Krige * Monica Hunter Wilson The book will also discuss the field of South African anthropology and discuss how work in this field was impacted by larger political and social forces at the time. Importantly, the book will focus on the historical context of anthropological research.