Lewis, I.M.
LEWIS, I.M.
LEWIS, I.M. (1930– ), social anthropologist. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Ioan Myrddin Lewis was educated at the University of Glasgow and at Oxford University, where he received a diploma in social anthropology in 1952, a B.Litt. in 1953, and a D.Phil. in 1957. He worked as a research assistant at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London in 1954 and 1955, then as a lecturer in African Studies at the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now the University of Zimbabwe), from 1957 to 1960. Lewis returned to the University of Glasgow as a lecturer in social anthropology from 1960 to 1963, and he became a lecturer in anthropology at the University of London in 1963. From 1982 Lewis was professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science and served as honorary director of the International African Institute, eventually becoming professor emeritus of anthropology at the London School of Economics.
Lewis wrote many significant works on African religious and cultural systems, including Peoples of the Horn of Africa: Somali, Afar, and Saho (1955); Pastoral Democracy: A Study of Pastoralism and Politics among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa (1961); A Modern History of Somalia (1988); Blood and Bone: The Call of Kinship in Somali Society (1994); and Saints and Somalis: Popular Islam in a Clan-Based Society (1998).
Lewis's 1971 work, Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism, became a classic text in university departments of anthropology, sociology, religion, and psychology. Lewis explored in this work the social functions of the notion of spirit possession, as well as the psychological foundations of ecstatic experience, suggesting connections between shamanism and psychoanalysis.
Lewis served as a member of numerous professional organizations, including the International African Institute, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Anglo-Somali Society, and the Association of Social Anthropologists of the British Commonwealth. He was a Colonial Social Science research fellow in the Somaliland Protectorate from 1955 to 1957, a Carnegie visiting fellow in the Republic of Somalia in 1962, and a British Academy fellow in 1986. In addition to his many books, he contributed to numerous publications, including the Journal of Modern African Studies, and he served as the editor of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (formerly published as Man) from 1968 to 1972.
[Dorothy Bauhoff (2nd ed.)]