Dr Matthew Engelke, A609

For MSc Social Anthropology, MSc Anthropology and Development and MSc Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies.

This course serves as an introduction to the ethnography of Southern Africa. Topics to be considered include colonialism and postcolonialism, Christian missionization, labour migration, Apartheid and anti-colonial struggles, changing kinship and gender relations, ethnicity and identity, witchcraft, and the role of performance and expressive culture in social transformation.

The ethnography of South and southern Africa has played a formative role in social anthropology, generating some of the key theoretical issues which underpin the discipline. This course provides students with an opportunity to understand changes in anthropological theory and practice by comparing the classic ethnographic texts with more recent writings from the same regions. Areas covered include South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The course develops students’ ethnographic knowledge about specific communities, and also equips them with the skills to address key theoretical issues from the broader corpus of anthropological writings, in the context of data from this particular region.

Lectures AN429 weekly, Seminars AN429.A.

Students are expected to prepare discussion material for presentation in the seminars.

J Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance; J L & J Comaroff, From Revelation to Revolution; J Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity;; L White, Magomero; A Ashforth, Madumo: A Man Bewitched; D Lan, Guns and Rain; V Turner, The Forest of Symbols. Detailed reading lists are provided at the beginning of the course.

There is a two-hour examination in the ST.