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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Anthropology, history, and the making of past and place |
Author: | James, Deborah |
Year: | 1997 |
Periodical: | African Studies |
Volume: | 56 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 115-136 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | labour migration anthropology songs Urbanization and Migration Labor and Employment History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Anthropology and Archaeology Bibliography/Research |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/00020189708707871 |
Abstract: | The unequal, but changing, relationship between anthropology and history in the context of southern African studies, and the differing effects of the 'struggle agenda' on the two disciplines, is exemplified in the study of migrant or home-boy associations in South Africa. Rather than seizing the interest of anthropologists in South Africa as it had done elsewhere, this topic became an interest area for social historians instead. The author's own interest in home-boy groups derives from 1989-1992 research into 'kiba', a musical and dance genre of migrant men and women from South Africa's Northern Province. She argues that home-boy groups are a worthy subject of enquiry for contemporary anthropologists, by demonstrating that these groups owe their existence not to some adaptive need conceived of in functionalist terms, but to the creative practice of individual agents who are constantly reinterpreting the significance of home and therefore of the past. A shift in the terms of the anthropology/history relationship is now making it possible for the two disciplines in combination to provide insights into these groups which neither could yield on its own. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |