Missionaries and Anthropology: the Case of the Scots of Northern Malawi

Abstract

It might be anticipated initially that Social Anthropology, with its Enlightenment origins, would mix uneasily with missionary work. Rationalist commitments have been very common among anthropologists; traditional religion might be admitted to have a social function, but the same would not be likely to be said of Christianity imported from the West. Yet there has been evidence of individuals such as Edwin Smith,2 who have successfully spanned the anthropological and missionary tradition; moreover the journal Africa was partly a missionary foundation. Missionaries became increasingly interested in anthropology in the 1920s;3 this was particularly evident at the International Conference on the Christian Mission in Africa at Le Zoute (Het Zoute) in Belgium in 1926. By this time conversions were becoming more numerous, but missions still saw church discipline as problematic, and anthropology was seen as a source of possible preventative measures; moreover, adaptation to African tradition was to become the watch-word for the future.