Evans-Pritchard, E. E.

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1902-1973

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. E. Evans-Pritchard was one of the world’s leading social anthropologists from the 1940s to the 1960s, his work marking a transition from structural-functionalism to cultural interpretation and history. His theoretical statements on the aims of anthropology and his ethnographic writings on African societies were equally influential.

As an undergraduate, Evans-Pritchard studied history at Oxford University. For his postgraduate studies in anthropology, he moved to the London School of Economics (LSE) to work with the English ethnologist Charles G. Seligman (1873–1940). Another strong influence on Evans-Pritchard during his LSE years was the British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, despite an intense mutual dislike between them. Evans-Pritchard received his Ph.D. in 1927 for a thesis on the Azande. Along with Raymond Firth, Isaac Schapera, Audrey Richards, Siegfried Frederick Nadel, and others, Evans-Pritchard was part of a group of students trained by Malinowski who came to occupy key positions in social anthropology from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. Evans-Pritchard did extensive ethnographic fieldwork among several African societies, most notably among the Azande and Nuer (both in the southern Sudan). He stayed in Africa during World War II to fight for Britain against Italian troops. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1944, and his religiosity subtly colored his writings on belief systems. After World War II, Evans-Pritchard settled down as professor at Oxford University (1946–1970) where he attracted a large number of students from around the world. He was president of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1949–1951), co-founder of the Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA), and was knighted in 1971.

Evans-Pritchard was a prolific writer, with more than 400 publications to his credit. In Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937), he developed an ethnographic perspective on apparently irrational modes of thought. This work on the internal coherence of witchcraft beliefs fascinated philosophers such as Robin George Collingwood and Michael Polanyi, and remains one of anthropology’s most acclaimed monographs. In The Nuer (1940), the first of several books on this cattle-farming society, Evans-Pritchard pioneered an approach to social ecology. His analysis of how the Nuer derive their modes of time-reckoning from kinship relations and economic activities is a classic reading in the anthropology of time. The edited volume African Political Systems (1940) develops a comparative perspective on African political traditions, with a view to facilitating British colonial governance. Evans-Pritchard often acknowledged Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown as his main inspiration, but his BBC lectures on Social Anthropology (1951) make a noticeable shift from structural-functionalism to ethnohistorical interpretation. Placing anthropology among the humanities, he argued that “social anthropology is best regarded as an art and not as a natural science” (1951, p. 84) and that the “translation” of cultural concepts is at the core of the discipline. A fruitful combination of anthropology and history informs many of his works. In The Sanusi of Cyrenaica (1949), he retraced the history of this North African Sufi order from 1837 to 1942 and provided a grim assessment of Italian colonialism in the region. Later works, such as The Azande: History and Political Institutions (1971), further confirm his rejection of synchronic perspectives (typical of both structural-functionalism and structuralism) toward interpreting historical change.

Evans-Pritchard’s early works were always widely acclaimed. His later turn to history and interpretation initially received hostile reactions, but laid the groundwork for many developments in anthropology since the 1980s. In the early twenty-first century Evans-Pritchard’s status as a classic of social anthropology is undisputed.

SEE ALSO Anthropology; Malinowski, Bronislaw

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY WORKS

Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. 1940. African Political Systems. Ed. M. Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard. London: Humphrey Milford (for Oxford University Press).

Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. 1940. The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. 1949. The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. 1951. Social Anthropology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. 1956. Nuer Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. 1971. The Azande: History and Political Institutions. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. 1974. A Bibliography of the Writings of E. E. Evans-Pritchard. Comp. E. E. Evans-Pritchard. Amended and corrected by T. O. Beidelman. London: Tavistock Publications.

Stefan Ecks