Inside African Anthropology

'Inside African Anthropology … not only provides engaging insights into anthropology and anthropological research in twentieth-century Africa, but it is also a celebration of Monica Wilson as a teacher, mentor, and human being.' Owen J. M. Kalinga, African Studies Review
'This deftly organized, meticulously researched, and thoughtful volume places Monica Hunter Wilson at its core … Inside African Anthropology contributes to disciplinary and regional understanding of the co- or perhaps ensemble nature of anthropological scholarship through its manifold discussions of race, gender, and fieldwork methods in Southern Africa. It adds to a growing corpus of work on typically unseen co-producers of such knowledge, which in certain arenas includes Wilson herself.' Christopher M. Annear, International Journal of African Historical Studies
'Inside African Anthropology is an extremely important book because it brings to light the once 'hidden' relationship between Monica Wilson and the field assistants and some of the students she had. It also serves as a model for which other disciplines (physical, health and humanities sciences) need to explore their own complicities. The book places emphasis on the 'experiential' - the practice of fieldwork or ethnography, and the downplaying of the structural context. Such an approach shows the complexity of these relationships and by implication shuns a simplistic notion that it was a one-dimensional 'hidden form of colonialism', or that it provided in an equally simplistic way the space for an indigenous intelligentsia to emerge.' South African Journal of Science
'… a substantial achievement which successfully uses South African material to illuminate issues that lie at the heart of anthropology.' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
'… the volume is not only about intellectual history. It is also a social history of the micro-politics of fieldwork. In this regard it is an advance on the pioneering work of Lyn Schumaker (2001), among others, offering superb studies on the production of knowledge at the rock face. It effectively destroys the image of a few lonely isolated minds rising like mountain peaks above their compatriots. It demonstrates that the clouds can hide other peaks and routes as well.' Anthropology Southern Africa