ASC Seminar: On the ethnographic work of Sjoerd Hofstra

Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra. Full title: The Upper West African Forest Frontier - an ethnographic reassessment based on the work of Sjoerd Hofstra. The first major ethnographic study of the Mende people of this region was provided by the Dutch anthropologist, Sjoerd Hofstra. For reasons to be explained Hofstra never fully wrote up his study of the Mende community of Panguma based on 21 months of fieldwork in the mid 1930s. However, he wrote extensive letters home. These letters have recently come to light and have been edited and translated into English by Hofstra's daughter, a Dutch social historian.

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