Ethnographers Before Malinowski

Pioneers of Anthropological Fieldwork, 1870-1922

Frederico Delgado Rosa editor Han F Vermeulen editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Berghahn Books

Published:2nd Feb '24

Should be back in stock very soon

Ethnographers Before Malinowski cover

Focusing on some of the most important ethnographers in early anthropology, this volume explores twelve defining works in the foundational period from 1870 to 1922. It challenges the assumption that intensive fieldwork and monographs based on it emerged only in the twentieth century. What has been regarded as the age of armchair anthropologists was in reality an era of active ethnographic fieldworkers, including women practitioners and Indigenous experts. Their accounts have multiple layers of meaning, style, and content that deserve fresh reading. This reference work is a vital source for rewriting the history of anthropology.

“This is a valuable and important book, a timely addition to the growing field of literature in both anthropology and the history of ideas. It is also a reminder of the valuable heritage that some learned women and men have left for us, … with important lessons that can serve us well in navigating through the complexities of contemporary debates.”• Aleksandar Bošković, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (2023)

“Ethnographers before Malinowski is a fundamental reference work in the history of anthropology. Hopefully, history will reserve a place for it alongside the other titans of our discipline’s historiography …”Erik Petschelies, Anthropology Today (2022)

“For its erudition, as much as for the issues it addresses and the finesse of its analyses, Ethnographers before Malinowski is a must-read for historians and anthropologists alike, for whom this imposing volume will have demonstrated the relevance of the ethnographic archive.”Beatrice Di Brizio, European Journal of Social Sciences (2024)

“This volume, its contributing authors, and the fieldworkers and ethnographies they restore constitute a creative, necessary resistance to iconoclastic, postcolonial assaults on anthropology. Highly recommended.”• Choice

Ethnographers before Malinowski provides a valuable contribution on the work of those ethnographers who formed the broader mosaic of the disciplinary evolution of professional anthropology. The contributors provide visibility to those pioneers who were discarded during the historiographical sifting of the Malinowskian Revolution. Ultimately, this volume provides the historical substance that can counter the disciplinary trend”.Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

“This collection is an important event in the subfield of history of anthropology. Its editors, two well-known European scholars, have assembled an impressive collection of essays … It should be in the library of every major university.”• Andrew Lyons, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo

ISBN: 9781805391487

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

540 pages