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People in the history of Anthropology Southern Africa

1870s to 1920s

Henri-Alexandre Junod, 1863 to 1934

A Swiss missionary turned ethnographer whose study of the Tsonga and Ronga peoples culminated in The Life of a South African Tribe, 1912.


Winifred Hoernlé, 1885 to 1960, and Radcliffe-Brown

1921 to 1923

Founded social anthropology as a university discipline at UCT and Wits, bringing a rigorous sociological approach built on kinship and social system.

1926 to 1936

Werner Eiselen, 1899 to 1977

Founded a separate volkekunde tradition at Stellenbosch, rooted in racially structured classification, later shaping apartheid policy.

From 1929

Monica Wilson, 1908 to 1982, and Hoernle's women scholars
 

Hellmann, Kuper and Krige produced internationally acclaimed ethnographies combining tradition with social change, reshaping South African anthropology.

1949 Onward

Archie Mafeje, 1936 to 2007, and the exile years
 

Apartheid forced Schapera, Gluckman and African ethnographers like Mafeje into exile, though his Langa study with Wilson remained a landmark on urban township life.

Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology


Room 424/429, 4th Floor


Arts and Social Sciences Building


Corner of Merriman Avenue and Ryneveld Street
Stellenbosch

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