The Lunda-Ndembu: Style, Change, and Social Transformation in South Central Africa / Edition 1

by James A. Pritchett

Overview

Bridging history and anthropology, this richly documented account of the Lunda-Ndembu people of northwestern Zambia has at its center the paradox of continuity and change. To legitimate and justify innovations to their cultural identity and practice, the Lunda-Ndembu propose that such innovations have conceptual similarities to long-standing traditions.
     While framing the discussion around classic anthropological oppositions—the individual versus the group, old versus young, females versus males, rich versus poor, us versus them, people versus the natural environment, the physical world vs. the metaphysical world—James A. Pritchett also offers a work of historical imagination. It is at the shifting boundaries of these relationships, he argues, that change is actually confronted on a daily basis, spoken about, and negotiated into conformity with widespread and enduring traditions.
     Juxtaposing Victor Turner's ethnographic data on the Ndembu from the 1950s with his own fieldwork in the 1980s and 1990s, Pritchett demonstrates that, by restudying areas already well known, it is possible to generate richly nuanced answers about social change that more accurately reflect local sensibilities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299171544
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	06/25/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

James A. Pritchett is assistant professor of anthropology and assistant director of the African Studies Center at Boston University.

Editorial Reviews

"An outstanding interpretive effort and a timely antidote to the 'invention-of-Africa' paradigm that usually leaves preciously little analytical space for the thinking villager."—Elias Mandala, University of Rochester

From the Publisher

This absorbing book is an analytical journey into the interstices of Lunda-Ndembu, a social organization whose relations are organized around descent, gender, age, property, power, ethnicity, and the material and supernatural worlds. The Lunda-Ndembu of Zambia are famous in anthropology owing to several classic studies by the late Victor Turner. Pritchett (Boston Univ.) does not merely update Turner's work but challenges received ideas about "traditional" African societies. His ethnography evokes the works of major British anthropologists who sought to understand small-scale African societies, but unlike them, he uses a long-time perspective, particularly in interpreting the history of trade. Pritchett addresses important political, administrative, and development issues in a clear, well-documented, but somewhat loose and indirect argument. His focus on social processes may have prevented him from laying out a complete picture, but it is useful in placing the Lunda-Ndembu in a broad regional context. For its intended readership specialists with advanced knowledge of anthropology this book has the potential to become a classic in its own right. Recommended for anthropology collections. Jay H. Bernstein, Fordham Univ. Lib., Bronx, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Pritchett (anthropology, African studies, Boston U.) presents an account of the Lunda- Ndembu people of northwestern Zambia. The text is based upon archaeological data, travel accounts, colonial field reports, and the scholarly studies of others, as well as his own field research conducted intermittently over the course of 14 years. He contends that despite much cultural borrowing in recent decades, the Lunda people have an image of themselves that is essentially unchanged. He also reflects on continuity and change in Africa. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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