Rhodes-Livingstone Institute

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The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (RLI) was the first local anthropological research facility in Africa; it was founded in 1937 under the initial directorship of Godfrey Wilson.[1][2] It is located a few miles outside Lusaka.[3] Designed to allow for easier study of the local cultures of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, it became the base of operations for a number of leading anthropologists of the time.

The RLI anthropologists have been lauded by some[who?] as liberal, anti-racists, furthering the cause of African independence[citation needed]. Among the participating anthropologists at the RLI, In addition to Wilson, were Monica Hunter Wilson, Max Gluckman, J. Desmond Clark, Elizabeth Colson, E.L. Epstein, J. Clyde Mitchell, and William Watson[citation needed].

Others have called attention to what they regard as misguidedness on the part of the RLI anthropologists, stemming from the fact that they were embedded in the colonial system and blind to its reality as a component in dialectic study.[4][5] Contrasting views are presented in a study by Lyn Schumaker (2001) and a chapter by Richard Brown (1973).[6][7]

  1. ^ Crehan, Kate (1997). "Max Gluckman and the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute". The Fractured Community: Landscapes of Power and Gender in Rural Zambia. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.
  2. ^ Schumaker, Lynette Louise, "The lion in the path: Fieldwork and culture in the history of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, 1937-1964" (1994). Dissertations available from ProQuest. AAI9521118. https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI9521118
  3. ^ Heron, Alastair (March 1964). "Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, Lusaka". The Journal of Modern African Studies. 2 (1): 112–113. doi:10.1017/S0022278X00003724. S2CID 155082162.
  4. ^ Ferguson, James. 1999, Expectations of Modernity, Berkeley, LA, London. University of California Press
  5. ^ Magubane, Bernard. 1971, "A Critical Look at the Indices Used in the Study of Social Change in Colonial Africa". Current Anthropology. 12(4/5): 419-445
  6. ^ Schumaker, Lyn. 2001, Africanizing Anthropology: Fieldwork, Networks, and the Making of Cultural Knowledge In Central Africa. Durham, London. Duke University Press.
  7. ^ Brown, Richard, 1973, "Anthropology and Colonial Rule: Godfrey Wilson and the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute". In Talal Asad, ed. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. New York, Humanities Press.