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David Lewis-Williams
James David Lewis-Williams (born 1934) is a South African archaeologist. He is best known for his research on southern African San (Bushmen) rock art, of which it can be said that he found a 'Rosetta Stone'. He is the founder and previous director of the Rock Art Research Institute and is currently professor emeritus of cognitive archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS). Lewis-Williams is recognised by the National Research Foundation (South Africa), National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa as a leading international researcher, with an A1 rating. Theoretical influences Lewis-Williams was exposed to social anthropology as an undergraduate at UCT. During this time he received lectures from renowned social anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (who started the department of social anthropology at UCT in 1920 but later returned as a visiting lecturer) and Monica Wilson, a student of Bronislaw Malinowski. Malinowski’s ideas specifically concerning the ass ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest (after Johannesburg). Colloquially named the ''Mother City'', it is the largest city of the Western Cape province, and is managed by the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The other two capitals are Pretoria, the executive capital, located in Gauteng, where the Presidency is based, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital in the Free State, where the Supreme Court of Appeal is located. Cape Town is ranked as a Beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. The city is known for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Cape Town is home to 66% of the Western Cape's population. In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patricia Vinnicombe
Patricia Joan Vinnicombe (17 March 1932 – 30 March 2003) was a South African archaeologist and artist, known for identifying and copying San rock paintings in the valleys and foothills of the Drakensberg. Her work transformed the study of rock art into a science. She was also active in the preservation of Aboriginal art in Western Australia. Early life and career Vinnicombe was born in the Mount Currie District, East Griqualand, Cape Province, South Africa and grew up on the farm West Ilsey in the Underberg district, KwaZulu-Natal surrounded by rock art paintings in the Drakensberg mountains. She made her first copies of these paintings at the age of 13. She went to school in Underberg and Pietermaritzburg. She studied at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) and qualified as an occupational therapist in 1954 and later worked as a therapist in London. However, contact with the paleoanatomists Raymond Dart and Philip Tobias at WITS led her to concentrate on t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Orpen
Joseph Millerd Orpen (5 November 1828 – 17 December 1923) was an influential colonial administrator for the British empire in southern Africa, as well as a local member of the Cape Parliament and the Orange Free State Volksraad. In addition, he was a self-taught anthropologist and a student of indigenous southern African cultures. Early life and politics in the Orange Free State Orpen was born in 1828 in Dublin, Ireland and emigrated in 1846 to the Cape, as a land surveyor, with three of his brothers. With his brother he moved to the Orange River Sovereignty for surveying work, and was elected in 1853 to stand against the departure of British control over the sovereignty. He then became a citizen (or "burgher") of the resulting Orange Free State. He was elected as a representative in the Volksraad (parliament) of the Orange Free State and wrote the country's constitution, influenced a great deal by that of the United States. He served on the Free State Supreme Court and in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorothea Bleek
Dorothea Frances Bleek (later Dorothy F. Bleek; born 26 March 1873, Mowbray, Cape Town – died 27 June 1948, Newlands, Cape Town) was a South African-born German anthropologist and philologist known for her research on the Bushmen (the San people) of southern Africa. Life and work Dorothea Bleek was the fifth daughter of Wilhelm Bleek, a pioneering philologist studying the languages and cultures of southern Africa in the late 1800s. Much of his work was done in partnership with his sister-in-law (Dorothy Bleek's aunt, Lucy Lloyd). The work of Dorothy Bleek was largely a continuation of her father and aunt's research, but she also made numerous notable contributions of her own to the field. Her culminating work, published after death, was the book ''A Bushman Dictionary'', still referenced today. Laurens van der Post, who liked to think of himself as "a white Bushman", credited her book ''Mantis and His Hunter'' (along with ''Specimens of Bushman Folklore'' by her father and au ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucy Lloyd
Lucy Catherine Lloyd (7 November 1834 – 31 August 1914) was the creator, along with Wilhelm Bleek, of the 19th-century archive of ǀXam and !Kung texts. Early life Lucy Catherine Lloyd was born in Norbury in England on 7 November 1834. Her father, William H.C. Lloyd, Archdeacon of Durban, was the rector of Norbury and vicar of Ranton, two villages in western England in Staffordshire. He was also chaplain to the Earl of Lichfield, to whom he was related through his mother. Lucy Lloyd's mother was Lucy Anne Jeffreys, also a minister's daughter, who died in 1842 when Lucy was eight. Lucy Lloyd was the second of four daughters. Her father remarried in 1844 and had 13 additional children with his new wife. After her mother's death, Lucy and her sisters lived with their maternal uncle and his wife, Sir John and Caroline Dundas, from whom they received a private and apparently liberal education. In 1847 Robert Gray was consecrated Bishop of Cape Town. William Lloyd was sent to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilhelm Bleek
Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek (8 March 1827 – 17 August 1875) was a German linguist. His work included ''A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages'' and his great project jointly executed with Lucy Lloyd: The Bleek and Lloyd Archive of ǀxam and !kun texts. A short form of this eventually reached press with ''Specimens of Bushman Folklore'', which Laurens van der Post drew on heavily. Biography Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek was born in Berlin on 8 March 1827. He was the eldest son of Friedrich Bleek, Professor of Theology at Berlin University and then at the University of Bonn, and Augusta Charlotte Marianne Henriette Sethe. He graduated from the University of Bonn in 1851 with a doctorate in linguistics, after a period in Berlin where he went to study Hebrew and where he first became interested in African languages. Bleek's thesis featured an attempt to link North African and Khoikhoi (or what were then called Hottentot) languages – the thinking at the time bei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac Schapera
Isaac Schapera FBA FRAI (23 June 1905 Garies, Cape Colony – 26 June 2003 London, England), was a social anthropologist at the London School of Economics specialising in South Africa. He was notable for his contributions of ethnographic and typological studies of the indigenous peoples of Botswana and South Africa. Additionally, he was one of the founders of the group that would develop British social anthropology. Not only did Schapera write numerous publications of his extensive research done in South Africa and Botswana, he published his work throughout his career (1923–1969), and even after he retired. As an anthropologist he focused on the lives and customs of the indigenous peoples of South Africa and was considered to be a specialist in the topic. Early in his career he would focus on studies of the Khoisan of South Africa until the 1930s, when he would begin to focus on Tswana of Botswana. Schapera also received many honours and titles, such as being the presiden ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethnography
Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior. Ethnography in simple terms is a type of qualitative research where a person puts themselves in a specific community or organization in attempt to learn about their cultures from a first person point-of-view. As a form of inquiry, ethnography relies heavily on participant observation—on the researcher participating in the setting or with the people being studied, at least in some marginal role, and seeking to document, in detail, patterns of social interaction and the perspectives of participants, and to understand these i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maurice Godelier
Maurice Godelier (born February 28, 1934) is a French anthropologist who works as a Director of Studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. He is one of the most influential French anthropologists and is best known as one of the earliest advocates of Marxism's incorporation into anthropology. He is also known for his field work among the Baruya in Papua New Guinea from the 1960s to the 1980s.Niko Besnier and Alan Howard. (April 1997) . Newsletter of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania. Early life and education Godelier was born to a poor family in provincial France in the commune Cambrai. In 1955, Godelier received an associate degree in philosophy, a degree in psychology, and a degree in modern literature. During his early education, he was especially interested in the works of Husserl. He attended the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud from 1955 to 1959 and received an agrégation in philosophy. Godelier developed a specific int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shaman
Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into the physical world for the purpose of healing, divination, or to aid human beings in some other way. Beliefs and practices categorized as "shamanic" have attracted the interest of scholars from a variety of disciplines, including anthropologists, archeologists, historians, religious studies scholars, philosophers and psychologists. Hundreds of books and academic papers on the subject have been produced, with a peer-reviewed academic journal being devoted to the study of shamanism. In the 20th century, non-Indigenous Westerners involved in countercultural movements, such as hippies and the New Age created modern magicoreligious practices influenced by their ideas of various Indigenous religions, creating what has been ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand Social class, class relations and social conflict and a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, no single, definitive Marxist philosophy, Marxist theory exists. In addition to the schools of thought which emphasize or modify elements of classical Marxism, various Marxian concepts have been incorporated and adapted into a diverse array of Social theory, social theories leading to widely varying conclusions. Alongside Marx's critique of political economy, the defining characteristics of Marxism have often been described using the terms dialectical mater ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
