A Nerve Centre of the Discipline on the Periphery of the Empire: South Africa and Anthropology in the Twentieth Century

In the first decades of the twentieth century, in important South African universities, professorships and chairs related to anthropological studies were created. The academic field of the discipline reflected the socio-political framework of the country: on the one side Afrikaans ethnology (volkekunde), on the other side Anglophone social anthropology. The latter, starting with the valuable presence of Radcliffe-Brown in Cape Town and its connections with prestigious British universities, distinguished itself not only locally, but also internationally, with leading South African anthropologists such as Isaac Shapera, Monica Wilson, Hilda Kuper and Max Glukmann playing significant roles. The difficult “racial” coexistence, the segregation policies and the context of strong change led to theoretical debates, political confrontations and conceptual reworkings of great importance in the history of world anthropology. With the end of apartheid, anthropology in South Africa found a new identity, moving between post-colonial criticism and a renewed heuristic and applicative impetus.