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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Missionaries and the ethnographic imagination: reflections on the legacy of Henri-Alexandre Junod (1863-1934)
Author:Macagno, LorenzoISNI
Year:2009
Periodical:Social Sciences and Missions = Sciences sociales et missions
Volume:22
Issue:1
Pages:55-88
Language:English
Geographic terms:Mozambique
South Africa
Subjects:missions
anthropology
colonial period
About person:Henri Alexandre Junod (1863-1934)ISNI
External link:https://doi.org/10.1163/187489409X434063
Abstract:This article reflects on the ethnographic and political legacy of the Protestant missionary Henri-Alexandre Junod (1863-1934). A member of the Swiss Mission, Junod was one of the few missionaries to enjoy the recognition of 'professional' anthropologists in his time (among them, Malinowski himself, who praised his pioneering ethnography on the Thonga of southern Africa). But beyond his important ethnographic legacy, his work as a missionary brought him into contact with many perplexities and paradoxes. Besides living and working in the Union of South Africa - present-day South Africa - he lived for many years in Mozambique, where at certain times, his presence - and that of the Protestant missionaries in general - was not well accepted by the Portuguese colonial regime. Today, the policies on bilingual education, the process of reinvention of the Shangaan identity, the multicultural dilemmas of post-socialist Mozambique and the role of the Protestant churches in the formation of civil society, cannot be understood without a systematic and renewed reflection on the legacy of Henri-Alexandre Junod. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]
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