Routledge Revivals
The Tswana
First published in 1953 (this edition in 1991), this book was created in association with the International African Institute. Since its first publication, anthropology and African Studies have changed a great deal, but the bedrock of both remains unchanged: solid, sensitive ethnographic and historical accounts of the peoples and cultures of the continent.
Part One is by Isaac Schapera whose documentation of life and times in the Bechuanaland Protectorate stands as a starkly detailed chronical of an African population in a rapidly changing world. Schapera was one of the few anthropologists who spoke frankly of the rural predicament of rural Africans under colonialism. Far from describing the Tswana as a closed or timeless society, he locates the people in their political and economic context, and in so doing, has left behind an extraordinary record.
This edition of The Tswana consists of the original text to which has been added a second part by John L. Comaroff, which covers the transformation of Tswana life in Botswana and South Africa 195385, plus a much enlarged bibliography. Together, the parts of the book make a valuable summary of an exceedingly rich and ethnographic and historical record that will continue to serve as an indispensable tool in research and teaching.
First published in 1953, this edition in 1991
by KPI Limited in association with the International African Institute
This edition first published in 2015 by Routledge
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1953, 1968, 1976, 1984, 1991 International African Institute
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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 90045923
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-92490-1 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-68409-3 (ebk)
THE TSWANA
Revised edition
I. Schapera and John L. Comaroff
First published in 1953, as part of the Ethnographic Survey of Africa
edited by Daryll Forde
This revised edition published in 1991 by Kegan Paul International Ltd
PO Box 256, London WC1B 3SW, England
Distributed by
John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Southern Cross Trading Estate
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Routledge, Chapman & Hall Inc
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New York, NY 10001, USA
International African Institute 1953, 1968, 1976, 1984, 1991
Set in Linotron Plantin 9 on 10pt
by Intype, London
Printed in Great Britain by
TJ Press (Padstow) Ltd
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism.
BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Schapera, Isaac
The Tswana. Rev. ed.
1. Africa. Southern Africa. Tswana. Cultural processes
I Title. II Comaroff, John L. (John Lionel) 1945- III. 306.09688
ISBN 0-7103-0421-8
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Schapera, Isaac, 1905-
The Tswana / by I. Schapera. - Rev. ed. / by John L. Comaroff.
110 pp. 216 cm.
ISBN 0-7103-0421-8
1. Tswana (African people) I. Comaroff, John L., 1945- . II. Title.
DT1058.T78S33 1991
968. 0049639775dc20
90-45923
CIP
Social anthropology has changed a good deal since The Tswana was first published in 1953. So too have many of the concerns of African studies. None the less, the bedrock of both remains unchanged: solid, sensitive ethnographic and historical accounts of the peoples and cultures of the continent. In this respect, Professor Schaperas work has few equals and, in the recent renaissance of southern Africa anthropology, its importance has been rediscovered anew. Even where British African anthropology has been most heavily criticizedfor its promiscuous relationship with colonialismSchaperas personal and scholarly integrity has never been called into doubt. Quite the opposite, it is now well recognized that his documentation of life and times in the Bechuanaland Protectorate stands as a starkly detailed chronicle of an African population in a rapidly changing world. In fact Claude Meillassoux (Maidens, Meal and Money, 1981, pp.viif) and Maurice Bloch (Marxism and Anthropolgy, 1983, pp. 144, 160) have commented recently that Schapera was among the very few anthropologists who, from the first, spoke frankly of the predicament of rural Africans under colonialism. As this suggests, he has taken pains to avoid the so-called ethnographic present: far from describing the Tswana as a closed or timeless society, Schapera has always located these peoples in their proper political and economic contexts. And, in so doing, he has left behind an extraordinarily rich recordthe kind of record, he believes, that will endure amidst the shifting sands of theoretical fashion.
Perhaps this is why The Tswana has long been one of the most widely read monographs in the Ethnographic Survey of Africa, the series, published by the International African Institute from 1945 onward, for which it was written. In his Foreword to the original edition, the Director of the Institute, Daryll Forde, explained that these monographs were intended to provide a brief and readily comprehensible summary of available information concerning the different peoples of Africa (p. v.) This echoed a comfortable anthropological assumption of the time: that Africa might be summarily captured in a collection of ethnographic vignettes of discrete societies, each portrayed under such topic headings as natural environment, economy and crafts, social structure, political organization, religious beliefs and cults (ibid.). Schapera, however, did not stop with these conventional topics. Unlike many who wrote ethnographic surveys, and who did not question the image of a virgin Africa made up of autonomous cultures and communities, he covered such contemporary issues as wage labour, European control over local political and administrative processes, and the impact of Christianity. These themes had been treated before in his writings, always with painstaking care. Indeed, along with the work of Monica Hunter (Wilson), Max Gluckman, and a few others, his writings gave unusual breadth and historical immediacy to the anthropology of southern Africa. The present edition of
