Butterflies and Barbarians - Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa

Erscheinungsjahr 2007
ISBN: 978-0-85255-983-3
Verlag: James Currey

Buch, Englisch, 352 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 158 mm x 233 mm, Gewicht: 468 g

A complex and layered analysis of the impact of Swiss missionaries on the ordering and understanding of the African continent.

The Swiss missionaries played a primary role in explaining Africa to the literate world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book emphasises how these European intellectuals, brought to the deep rural areas of southern Africa by their vocation, formulated and ordered knowledge about the continent.
Central to this group was Junod who became a pioneering collector in the fields of entomology and botany. He would later examine African society with the methodology, theories and confidence of the natural sciences. On the way he came to depend on the skills of African observers and collectors. Out of this work emerged, in three stages between 1898 and 1927, aninfluential classic in the field of South African anthropology, Life of a South African Tribe.
At the same time Patrick Harries examines how local people absorbed imported ideas into their own body of knowledge. Through a process of interchange and compromise, Africans adapted foreign ways of seeing and doing things, and rapidly made them their own. This is a history of new ideas and practices that shook African societies before and during theearly years of colonialism. It is equally a history of ordinary people and their ability to adapt, change, and subvert these ideas.
Professor T.O. Ranger says: 'Now, really for the first time, Harries sets these argumentsin a wonderfully persuasive, detailed and dynamic context. He really understands the principle of nineteenth-century botany and insect classification, the organising concepts of linguistics, and the changing assumptions of ethnography and anthropology. One gets a profound sense of intellectual formation of debate and development of ideas. Missionary ideas are themselves no single thing but constantly in debate and in flux.'

North America: Ohio U Press; South Africa: Wits U Press; Zimbabwe: Weaver

Autoren/Hrsg.

Harries, Patrick

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christentum/Christliche Theologie Allgemein Missionswissenschaft, Missionsgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Kultureller Wandel, Kulturkontakt, Akkulturation
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Ethnographie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Physische Anthropologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Afrikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Switzerland
African itineraries & Swiss identities
Landscape
Christianity
Natural science
Linguistics
Literacy
Anthropology
Politics

Über Autor(innen)

Harries, Patrick
Patrick Harries was Professor for African History at the University of Basel and a member of the steering group of the Centre for African Studies Basel (CASB). He died on 2 June 2016.