Anthropology and Africa: Changing Perspectives on a Changing Scene (European Perspectives)

No one working in Africa today or studying Africa in any discipline whatever can afford to ignore the anthropological literature. It has long been the foundational background for a variety of African studies. However, there has never been a succinct historical description of the way the Africanist field has evolved in anthropology, together with a broad bibliographical guide. This book supplies that basic information. But it does more It reviews the field as a controversial history of ideas. African studies in anthropology throw light on the way Anglo-Europeans and Americans have conceived of the rest of the world and the way academic disciplines have changed in this century.