Andrew Bank
Biographic Data
| ID | 141440 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrew Bank |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrew |
| FAMILY NAME | Bank |
| SIGNATURE | BANK A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Western Cape |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 72 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Gluckman's exceptionalism
A tribute to Priscilla Hall (27 March 1939-11 July 2017)
Bridging the gap between the intellectual and the human
This article tracks the coming together of anti-apartheid activism, feminism and humanism in the life and work of the social anthropologist and scholar-activist Iona Simon Mayer (1923-). The article seeks to balance a recognition of the creative work that Iona achieved with her much-loved husband across decades of joint fieldwork, analysis and writing with her hitherto entirely unacknowledged independent contributions to African ethnography, clos…
Biography in post-apartheid South Africa
Biography (with autobiography) has become the most popular type of non-fiction in South Africa, but the recent expansion of works has not inspired commentary. Here we describe four 'constellations' of biographies: political biographies of the individual-as-leader; social history biographies of the individual-as-exemplar; literary biographies of the individual-as-vessel-of-self; and critical studies biographies of the individual-as-fragmented-subj…
Conclusion
Pioneers of the Field
Focusing on the crucial contributions of women researchers, Andrew Bank demonstrates that the modern school of social anthropology in South Africa was uniquely female-dominated. The book traces the personal and intellectual histories of six remarkable women through the use of a rich cocktail of new archival sources, including family photographs, private and professional correspondence, field-notes and field diaries, published and other public wri…
Fatheringvolkekunde
Werner Willi Max Eiselen (1899–1977) has been celebrated for having consolidated the liberal functionalist school of social anthropology in South Africa. In the standard androcentric narrative, David Hammond-Tooke (1997) argues that during his decade-long tenure as head of “Bantology” at Stellenbosch University between 1926 and 1936, and in close collaboration with Isaac Schapera (1905–2003), Werner Eiselen developed the tradition of social anthr…
"Broederbande" [brotherly bonds]
The importance of Willi Werner Max Eiselen (1899–1977) as the lecturer, supervisor and mentor of the first generation of volkekundiges at Stellenbosch University has been greatly underestimated. He supervised no fewer than 11 MA and doctoral theses in this field between 1930 and 1936, texts which are remarkable for the coherence of the backgrounds of their authors — male, rural, Christian, right-wing — and for the uniformity of their ethnological…
‘Speaking from Inside’
Inside African Anthropology
Inside African Anthropology offers an incisive biography of the life and work of South Africa's foremost social anthropologist, Monica Hunter Wilson. By exploring her main fieldwork and intellectual projects in southern Africa between the 1920s and 1960s, the book offers insights into her personal and intellectual life. Beginning with her origins in the remote Eastern Cape, the authors follow Wilson to the University of Cambridge and back into th…
Untangling the Lion's Tale
Donald Card (1928–) is a former policeman in South Africa who became the subject of international media attention on 21 September 2004. In a highly publicised and symbolic ceremony of reconciliation inaugurating the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory Project, he handed back to Mandela two notebooks containing 78 hitherto unknown letters written by Mandela on Robben Island. A starkly contrasting image of Card as a torturer had, however, come to light…
The Making of a Woman Anthropologist
This article is based on an approach towards the history of anthropology that privileges the personal and that recognises the decisive contribution of women social anthropologists in the interwar years in particular. Monica Hunter Wilson was one of the leading women ethnographers of this Golden Age (to use Hammond-Tooke's term) and this article explores the background to her anthropological career. That background has usually been associated with…
The 'Intimate Politics' of Fieldwork
Monica Hunter's Reaction to Conquest (1936) is a celebrated example of interwar anthropology that has long influenced the conception of African societies and is today still widely recognised as a precocious and pioneering study. This article explores the human story behind the book by returning to the sites where Hunter collected her ethnographic data during her two years of fieldwork in 1931 and 1932. At each of these sites of knowledge producti…
Evolution and Racial Theory
The Politics of Mythology
Political myths have played a crucial role in legitimising apartheid and white domination in South Africa. This article explores the history of one such political myth: the mythology surrounding the nineteenth century missionary leader John Philip. I foreground the links between the Philip myth and the changing political and ideological contexts within which it was mobilised over the course of 150 years. While the roots of the Philip myth lie in …
The Return of the Noble Savage
The Great Debate and the Origins of South African Historiography
The fundamental preoccupation with race in later historical writing in South Africa has its origins in the Great Debate between liberals and their enemies in the early nineteenth century. Standard overviews of South African historiography date the emergence of racially structured histories to the second half of the nineteenth century. For Saunders, the making of the South African past and its thematic ordering in terms of race only began in the 1…
Of 'native skulls' and 'noble caucasians
This article traces the origins of racial science in South Africa back to the first half of the nineteenth century. Metropolitan racial theory attracted a substantial following among white settlers in British colonies and the Cape was no exception. Local scientific thinking about race focussed on phrenology, a popular science of character analysis based on the configurations of the brain and skull. But phrenology had differential appeal for Briti…
Slavery Without Slaves
(1995). Slavery Without Slaves: Robert Shell's Social History of Cape Slave Society. South African Historical Journal: Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 182-193
The Great Debate and the Origins of South African Historiography
The fundamental preoccupation with race in later historical writing in South Africa has its origins in the Great Debate between liberals and their enemies in the early nineteenth century. Standard overviews of South African historiography date the emergence of racially structured histories to the second half of the nineteenth century. For Saunders, the making of the South African past and its thematic ordering in terms of race only began in the 1…
The 'Intimate Politics' of Fieldwork
Monica Hunter's Reaction to Conquest (1936) is a celebrated example of interwar anthropology that has long influenced the conception of African societies and is today still widely recognised as a precocious and pioneering study. This article explores the human story behind the book by returning to the sites where Hunter collected her ethnographic data during her two years of fieldwork in 1931 and 1932. At each of these sites of knowledge producti…
Of 'native skulls' and 'noble caucasians
This article traces the origins of racial science in South Africa back to the first half of the nineteenth century. Metropolitan racial theory attracted a substantial following among white settlers in British colonies and the Cape was no exception. Local scientific thinking about race focussed on phrenology, a popular science of character analysis based on the configurations of the brain and skull. But phrenology had differential appeal for Briti…
Fatheringvolkekunde
Werner Willi Max Eiselen (1899–1977) has been celebrated for having consolidated the liberal functionalist school of social anthropology in South Africa. In the standard androcentric narrative, David Hammond-Tooke (1997) argues that during his decade-long tenure as head of “Bantology” at Stellenbosch University between 1926 and 1936, and in close collaboration with Isaac Schapera (1905–2003), Werner Eiselen developed the tradition of social anthr…
Evolution and Racial Theory
Biography in post-apartheid South Africa
Biography (with autobiography) has become the most popular type of non-fiction in South Africa, but the recent expansion of works has not inspired commentary. Here we describe four 'constellations' of biographies: political biographies of the individual-as-leader; social history biographies of the individual-as-exemplar; literary biographies of the individual-as-vessel-of-self; and critical studies biographies of the individual-as-fragmented-subj…
"Broederbande" [brotherly bonds]
The importance of Willi Werner Max Eiselen (1899–1977) as the lecturer, supervisor and mentor of the first generation of volkekundiges at Stellenbosch University has been greatly underestimated. He supervised no fewer than 11 MA and doctoral theses in this field between 1930 and 1936, texts which are remarkable for the coherence of the backgrounds of their authors — male, rural, Christian, right-wing — and for the uniformity of their ethnological…
The Return of the Noble Savage
Untangling the Lion's Tale
Donald Card (1928–) is a former policeman in South Africa who became the subject of international media attention on 21 September 2004. In a highly publicised and symbolic ceremony of reconciliation inaugurating the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory Project, he handed back to Mandela two notebooks containing 78 hitherto unknown letters written by Mandela on Robben Island. A starkly contrasting image of Card as a torturer had, however, come to light…
Gluckman's exceptionalism
The Making of a Woman Anthropologist
This article is based on an approach towards the history of anthropology that privileges the personal and that recognises the decisive contribution of women social anthropologists in the interwar years in particular. Monica Hunter Wilson was one of the leading women ethnographers of this Golden Age (to use Hammond-Tooke's term) and this article explores the background to her anthropological career. That background has usually been associated with…
The Politics of Mythology
Political myths have played a crucial role in legitimising apartheid and white domination in South Africa. This article explores the history of one such political myth: the mythology surrounding the nineteenth century missionary leader John Philip. I foreground the links between the Philip myth and the changing political and ideological contexts within which it was mobilised over the course of 150 years. While the roots of the Philip myth lie in …
Slavery Without Slaves
(1995). Slavery Without Slaves: Robert Shell's Social History of Cape Slave Society. South African Historical Journal: Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 182-193
Of 'native skulls' and 'noble caucasians
This article traces the origins of racial science in South Africa back to the first half of the nineteenth century. Metropolitan racial theory attracted a substantial following among white settlers in British colonies and the Cape was no exception. Local scientific thinking about race focussed on phrenology, a popular science of character analysis based on the configurations of the brain and skull. But phrenology had differential appeal for Briti…
The Great Debate and the Origins of South African Historiography
The fundamental preoccupation with race in later historical writing in South Africa has its origins in the Great Debate between liberals and their enemies in the early nineteenth century. Standard overviews of South African historiography date the emergence of racially structured histories to the second half of the nineteenth century. For Saunders, the making of the South African past and its thematic ordering in terms of race only began in the 1…
The Return of the Noble Savage
The Politics of Mythology
Political myths have played a crucial role in legitimising apartheid and white domination in South Africa. This article explores the history of one such political myth: the mythology surrounding the nineteenth century missionary leader John Philip. I foreground the links between the Philip myth and the changing political and ideological contexts within which it was mobilised over the course of 150 years. While the roots of the Philip myth lie in …
Evolution and Racial Theory
The 'Intimate Politics' of Fieldwork
Monica Hunter's Reaction to Conquest (1936) is a celebrated example of interwar anthropology that has long influenced the conception of African societies and is today still widely recognised as a precocious and pioneering study. This article explores the human story behind the book by returning to the sites where Hunter collected her ethnographic data during her two years of fieldwork in 1931 and 1932. At each of these sites of knowledge producti…
The Making of a Woman Anthropologist
This article is based on an approach towards the history of anthropology that privileges the personal and that recognises the decisive contribution of women social anthropologists in the interwar years in particular. Monica Hunter Wilson was one of the leading women ethnographers of this Golden Age (to use Hammond-Tooke's term) and this article explores the background to her anthropological career. That background has usually been associated with…
‘Speaking from Inside’
Inside African Anthropology
Inside African Anthropology offers an incisive biography of the life and work of South Africa's foremost social anthropologist, Monica Hunter Wilson. By exploring her main fieldwork and intellectual projects in southern Africa between the 1920s and 1960s, the book offers insights into her personal and intellectual life. Beginning with her origins in the remote Eastern Cape, the authors follow Wilson to the University of Cambridge and back into th…
Untangling the Lion's Tale
Donald Card (1928–) is a former policeman in South Africa who became the subject of international media attention on 21 September 2004. In a highly publicised and symbolic ceremony of reconciliation inaugurating the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory Project, he handed back to Mandela two notebooks containing 78 hitherto unknown letters written by Mandela on Robben Island. A starkly contrasting image of Card as a torturer had, however, come to light…
Fatheringvolkekunde
Werner Willi Max Eiselen (1899–1977) has been celebrated for having consolidated the liberal functionalist school of social anthropology in South Africa. In the standard androcentric narrative, David Hammond-Tooke (1997) argues that during his decade-long tenure as head of “Bantology” at Stellenbosch University between 1926 and 1936, and in close collaboration with Isaac Schapera (1905–2003), Werner Eiselen developed the tradition of social anthr…
"Broederbande" [brotherly bonds]
The importance of Willi Werner Max Eiselen (1899–1977) as the lecturer, supervisor and mentor of the first generation of volkekundiges at Stellenbosch University has been greatly underestimated. He supervised no fewer than 11 MA and doctoral theses in this field between 1930 and 1936, texts which are remarkable for the coherence of the backgrounds of their authors — male, rural, Christian, right-wing — and for the uniformity of their ethnological…
Conclusion
Pioneers of the Field
Focusing on the crucial contributions of women researchers, Andrew Bank demonstrates that the modern school of social anthropology in South Africa was uniquely female-dominated. The book traces the personal and intellectual histories of six remarkable women through the use of a rich cocktail of new archival sources, including family photographs, private and professional correspondence, field-notes and field diaries, published and other public wri…
A tribute to Priscilla Hall (27 March 1939-11 July 2017)
Bridging the gap between the intellectual and the human
This article tracks the coming together of anti-apartheid activism, feminism and humanism in the life and work of the social anthropologist and scholar-activist Iona Simon Mayer (1923-). The article seeks to balance a recognition of the creative work that Iona achieved with her much-loved husband across decades of joint fieldwork, analysis and writing with her hitherto entirely unacknowledged independent contributions to African ethnography, clos…
Biography in post-apartheid South Africa
Biography (with autobiography) has become the most popular type of non-fiction in South Africa, but the recent expansion of works has not inspired commentary. Here we describe four 'constellations' of biographies: political biographies of the individual-as-leader; social history biographies of the individual-as-exemplar; literary biographies of the individual-as-vessel-of-self; and critical studies biographies of the individual-as-fragmented-subj…
Gluckman's exceptionalism
History (16 works) · Sociology (14 works) · South African History and Culture (11 works) · Archaeology (10 works) · History (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Anthropology (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Politics (8 works)