Narrative Ethnography in Africa, 1850-1920: The Creation and Capture of an Appropriate Domain for Anthropology

The ethnographic monograph has its roots in two traditions. While its format and rhetoric are strongly influenced by the natural science monograph, its content derives largely from genres of travelogue and missionary letters and bulletins. In the period I850-I900, ethnographic writing was addressed to two audiences, but by the turn of the century it had been 'captured' by theoretical social scientists and became the appropriate and legitimate domain of the new academic discipline of anthropology. Academic anthropology could not claim small-scale societies, but could claim the ethnographic description of small-scale societies, as its professional domain.