Ethnography And The Historical Imagination

Politics & Social Sciences

Comaroff, John

Comaroff, Jean

Anthropology

Routledge

This book focuses on 'imaginative sociology,' demonstrating the techniques by which social science may capture the contexts that human beings construct and inhabit. It argues for the continuing value of a historical anthropology in which ethnography and culture remain vital.

“Sol Plaatje’s Mafeking Diary is a document of enduring importance and fascination. The product of a young black South African court interpreter, just turned 23 years old when he started writing, it opens an entirely new vista on the famous Siege of Mafeking. By shedding light on the part played by the African population of the town, Plaatje explodes the myth, maintained by belligerents, and long perpetuated by both historians and the popular imagination, this this was a white man’s affair. One of the great epics of British imperial history, and perhaps the best remembered episode of the Anglo-Boer war of 1899–1902, is presented from a wholly novel perspective.“At the same time, the diary provides an intriguing insight into the character of a young man who was to play a key role in South African political and literary history during the first three decades of this century. It reveals much of the perceptions and motives that shaped his own attitudes and intellectual development and, indeed, those of an early generation of African leaders who sought to build a society which did not determine the place of its citizens by the colour of their skin. The diary therefore illuminates the origins of a struggle which continues to this day.”— John L. Comaroff (ed.) in his preface

The Mafeking Diary of Sol T. Plaatje

History

Willan, Brian

Reed, Andrew

Molema, Soloman

Africa

New Africa Books

The “Global South” is rarely seen as a source of theory and explanation for world historical events. But as many nation-states of the Northern Hemisphere experience increasing fiscal meltdown, state privatization, corruption, ethnic conflict, and other crises, it seems as though they are evolving southward, so to speak, in both positive and problematic ways . . .

Theory from the South: How Euro-America is evolving toward Africa (STIAS)

Philosophy

Sun Press

In this book, authors Jean and John Comaroff investigate why it is that crime statistics have become a pervasive public passion in the South African postcolony. They explore what exactly those crime statistics make real, how they take on public life, by what means they convert the abstract into the intimate and tertiary knowledge into primary experience. Why is it that they have become deeply inscribed in narratives of personal being, so vital to the construction of moral publics, so integral to debates about the meaning of democracy, freedom and security? Conventionally framed as value-free information, these numbers appear to be taking on ever more political weight as the modernist state deregulates the functions of governance, as sovereignty is parsed and privatized, as control over the means of violence is rendered ambiguous, as a culture of "popular punitiveness" gains credence, as race is criminalized and crime racialized. As they do, modes of producing and deploying crime statistics themselves proliferate. This sets in train processes whose effects are deeply implicated in remaking the nation-state, its governance, and citizenship within it.

An Excursion into the Criminal: Anthropology of the Brave Neo South Africa (1) (Carl Schlettwein Lectures)

LIT Verlag

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Books by Comaroff, John