Routledge Classic Ethnographies bring together key anthropology texts which have proved formative in the development of the discipline. Each book contains the text and illustrations from the original edition as well as a new forward by a leading anthropologist explaining the book's contribution to the development of anthropology and its continuing relevance in the twenty-first century.
By Abner Cohen
November 20, 2003
Based on Cohen's fieldwork in the 1960s among the Hausa migrants, a people of the Yoruba area (then the western region of the Federation of Nigeria), Custom and Politics in Urban Africa looks at how ethnic groups use elements of tradition in jostling for power and privilege in new urban situations....
By Audrey Richards
November 13, 2003
Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe examines the cultural aspects of food and eating among the Southern Bantu, taking as its starting point the bold statement 'nutrition as a biological process is more fundamental than sex'. When it was first published in 1932, with a preface by Malinowski, it laid ...
By Phyllis Kaberry
November 20, 2003
First published in 1939 by Routledge, this classic ethnography portrays the aboriginal woman as she really is - a complex social personality with her own prerogatives, duties, problems, beliefs, rituals and point of view. This groundbreaking and enduring study was researched in North-West Australia...
By Paul Spencer
November 13, 2003
When first published in 1988, this classic study was the first to relate the dynamics of the Maasai age organisation to the tensions within the family. Together, these provide the twin strands of a man's career, opposed ritually and reflecting a fundamental ambivalence in Maasai thought. The ...
By Phyllis Kaberry
November 20, 2003
This classic ethnography examines the social and economic position of women in Bamena, British Cameroons, in 1944. The field study was prompted by the conditions in Bamenda, when despite considerable natural resources, there was underpopulation, a very high infant mortality, and the status of women...
By Paul Spencer
November 13, 2003
Samburu society is a gerontocracy in which power rests with the older men; men under thirty may not marry or otherwise assert their personal independence. This nomadic tribe from the arid regions of northern Kenya cling to their traditional way of life despite the rapid change throughout Africa. ...
