 Paperback edition | |
| Author | Mary Douglas |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Ethnography |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press for International African Institute |
Publication date | 1963 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 0-415-29104-6 |
| Preceded by | Peoples of the Lake Nyasa Region |
| Followed by | Purity and Danger |
The Lele of the Kasai (1963) was the second book by the influential British anthropologist Mary Douglas and the first under her married name.[1] In it she reported on her anthropological fieldwork among the Lele people on the western bank of the Kasai River in the Basongo area of what had at the time been south-western Belgian Congo. The changes subsequent to the ending of Belgian colonial rule in 1960 brought her to abandon the usual practice in anthropological field reports of writing in the present tense.[2] The book describes the social, economic and religious life of a large Lele village as she had observed it a decade previously.
- ^ Douglas's Peoples of the Lake Nyasa Region appeared under her maiden name, Tew, in 1950.
- ^ Richard Fardon, Mary Douglas: An Intellectual Biography (Routledge, 1999), pp. 54, 66-67.