Butterflies & Barbarians: Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780821417775)

Swiss missionaries played a primary and little-known role in explaining Africa to the literate world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book emphasizes how these European intellectuals, brought to the deep rural areas of southern Africa by their vocation, formulated and ordered knowledge about the continent.

Central to this group was Junod, who became a pioneering collector in the fields of entomology and botany. He would later examine African society with the methodology, theories, and confidence of the natural sciences. On the way he came to depend on the skills of African observers and collectors. Out of this work emerged, in three stages between 1898 and 1927, an influential classic in the field of South African anthropology, Life of a South African Tribe.

Author: Patrick Harries
ISBN-10: 0821417770
ISBN-13: 9780821417775
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/08/2007
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.07lbs
Size: 9.22h x 6.36w x 0.62d

Review Citation(s):
Books & Culture 01/01/2009 pg. 16