Abstract

Knowledge production in apartheid-era South Africa was a profoundly collaborative process. In particular, throughout the 1930s–1950s, the joint intellectual labor of both Africans and Europeans created a body of knowledge that codified and celebrated the notion of a distinct realm of Zulu religion. The intertwined careers of Swedish missionary to South Africa Bengt Sundkler and isiZulu-speaking Lutheran pastor-turned-ethnographer Titus Mthembu highlight the limitations of overly clear demarcations between “professional” versus “lay” anthropologists as well as between “colonial European” versus “indigenous African” knowledge. Mthembu and Sundkler’s decades-long collaboration resulted in a book called Bantu Prophets in South Africa ([1948] 1961). The work is best understood as the joint output of both men, although Sundkler scarcely acknowledged Mthembu’s role in the conceptualization, research, and writing of the book. In an era of racial segregation, the idea that African religion occupied a discrete, innately different sphere that the book advanced had significant political purchase. As one of a number of African ideologues supportive of the apartheid state, Mthembu mobilized his ethnographic findings to argue for innate racial difference and the virtues of “separate development” for South Africa’s Zulu community. His mysterious death in 1960 points to the high stakes of ethnographic research in the politically fraught climate of apartheid South Africa.

中文翻译：

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撰写种族隔离：二十世纪南非的人种学合作者与知识生产政治

摘要

种族隔离时代的南非，知识生产是一个深刻的合作过程。特别是在整个1930年代至1950年代，非洲人和欧洲人的共同智力劳动创造了一套知识体系，这些知识使Zulu宗教这一独特领域的概念得以编纂和推广。瑞典传教士到南非的职业生涯交织在一起，Bengt Sundkler和说伊祖鲁语的路德教会由牧师转为民族志的民族学家Titus Mthembu强调了“专业”与“非裔”人类学家之间以及“殖民地欧洲”与“本土”之间过分清晰的局限性。非洲的知识。Mthembu和Sundkler数十年的合作造就了一本名为《班图先知》的书（[1948] 1961）。尽管桑德克勒几乎不承认姆滕布在本书的概念化，研究和写作中的作用，但最好的理解是这是双方共同努力的成果。在种族隔离时代，非洲宗教占据了书中所提到的一个离散的，与生俱来的不同领域的观念具有重要的政治意义。作为支持种族隔离国家的许多非洲思想家之一，姆特姆比（Mthembu）动员了他的人种学研究结果，主张与生俱来的种族差异和南非祖鲁族人“独立发展”的优点。他于1960年神秘去世，这表明在种族隔离的南非充满政治色彩的气候中，人种学研究占有举足轻重的地位。