Inside African Anthropology: Monica Wilson and Her Interpreters

Inside African Anthropology: Monica Wilson and Her Interpreters. Edited by Andrew Bank and Leslie J. Bank. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xv, 354; figures, notes, bibliography. $99.95.This deftly organized, meticulously researched, and thoughtful volume places Monica Hunter Wilson at its core. Yet, its editors and authors are striving for more than a retrospective about a prodigious and important scholar. This volume focuses on Wilson s mode of intellectual production: the ideas present within her work, but also the relationships between Wilson and her research assistants in field sites throughout Southern Africa that were essential to the construction of her data. The progression of chapters documents Wilson's maturation as a person and scholar. She writes that an interpreter's "'primary function is communication, and secondary function negotiation.' His concern is 'to mediate ideas, law, custom, symbolism' and, in her opinion, anthropologists and missionaries are interpreters" (p. 308). Many of the chapter authors add one more "interpreter" to this list: research assistants. Given the copious evidence presented in this volume, much of it archival and unpublished, it seems very likely that Wilson would have agreed with this addition.This volume is not as much festschrift as devotional analysis of Wilson's life as an anthropologist and scholar, and the relationships with her research assistants, informants, and colleagues. The authors discuss Wilson as fieldworker, scholar, wife, mentor, and teacher for generations of, especially, anthropologically inclined black South Africans. Andrew Bank, one of the editors and author of multiple chapters, suggests that due to Wilson's career-long commitment to South Africa, her students, and African anthropology from "the inside" (p. 3), she played a strong role in institutionalizing anthropology in Southern Africa.In order to argue for Wilson's work as being inside African anthropology, the authors in this volume construct an "unofficial" history of anthropology. Borrowing from Louise Lamphere, A. Bank suggests that such a history recognizes the otherwise overlooked contributions of women and minorities (p. 12-13). While clearly this volume focuses on the official academic production of one woman, it also takes pains to tease out the fieldwork methods and interpersonal relationships essential to the unofficial creation of Wilson's work.Part 2 (Chapters 3, 4, and 5) highlights Monica Hunter Wilson's early commitment to field-based (so-called, "off the verandah") participant-observation and her work with, beside, and for her husband, Godfrey Wilson in Bunyakyusa. Here we learn about challenges and opportunities available to men and women in the field and how her lack of access to the social activities of men forced Monica Wilson toward a broad collection approach that sustained her for the rest of her career. …