Research Catalog

Title

The spiritual in the secular : missionaries and knowledge about Africa / edited by Patrick Harries & David Maxwell.

Publication

Grand Rapids, Mich. : W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2012.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Harries, Patrick
• Maxwell, David, 1963-

Description

xvi, 341 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

"David Livingstone's visit to Cambridge in 1857 was seen as much as a scientific event as a religious one. But he was by no means alone among missionaries in integrating mission with science and other fields of research. Rather, many missionaries were remarkable, pioneering polymaths. This collection of essays explores the ways in which late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century missionaries to Africa contributed to various academic disciplines, such as linguistics, ethnography, social anthropology, zoology, medicine, and many more. This volume includes an introductory chapter by the editors and eleven chapters that analyze missionary research and its impact on knowledge about African contexts. Several themes emerge, including many missionaries' positive views of indigenous discourses and the complicated relationship between missionaries and professional anthropologists." -- Publisher's description.

Series Statement

Studies in the history of Christian missions

Uniform Title

Studies in the history of Christian missions

Subjects

• Professional Role
• Missions, Medical > Africa
• Missions > Anthropological aspects
• Missions > Africa
• History, 19th Century
• History, 20th Century
• Knowledge
• Professional Role > history
• Africa
• Religious Missions > history

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Natural science and Naturvölker : missionary entomology and botany / Patrick Harries -- Missionary linguistics on the Gold Coast : wrestling with language / Erika Eichholzer -- Of fetishism and totemism : missionary ethnology and academic social science in early-twentieth-century Gabon / John Cinnamon -- Missionary ethnographers and the history of anthropology : the case of G.T. Basden / Dmitri van den Bersselaar -- From iconoclasm to preservation : W.F.P. Burton, missionary ethnography, and Belgian colonial science / David Maxwell -- Dora Earthy's Mozambique research and the early years of professional anthropology in South Africa / Deborah Gaitskell -- Ideology in missionary scholarly knowledge in Belgian Congo : Aequatoria, Centre de recherches africanistes; The mission station of Bamanya (RDC), 1937-2007 / Honoré Vinck -- Christian medical discourse and praxis on the imperial frontier : explaining the popularity of missionary medicine in Mwinilunga District, Zambia, 1906-1935 / Walima T. Kalusa -- Strange bedfellows : the International Missionary Council, the International African Institute, and research into African marriage and family / Natasha Erlank -- Dorothea Lehmann and John V. Taylor : researching church and society in late colonial Africa / John Stuart -- Mission, clinic, and laboratory : curing leprosy in Nigeria, 1945-67 / John Manton.

ISBN

• 9780802866349 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 0802866344 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2012004738

OCLC

774490026

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library