Greet Kershaw – författare

John Lonsdale says in his introduction:"This is the oral evidence of the Kikuyu villagers with whom Greet Kershaw lived as an aid worker during the Mau Mau 'Emergency' in the 1950s, and which is now totally irrecoverable in any form save in her own field notes.Professor Kershaw has uncovered long local histories of social tension which could have been revealed by no other means than patient enquiry, of both her neighbour's memory and government archives…Nobody, whether Kikuyu participant, Kenyan or European scholar, has provided such startlingly authoritative ethnographic insights into the values, fears and expectations of Kikuyu society and thus of the motivation of Kikuyu action…Her data suggests, as other scholars have also accepted, that there never was a single such movement and that none of its members, even those who supposed themselves to be its leaders, ever saw it whole, not because they did not have a political aim, but because that agenda was contested within different political circles over which they had no control and of which they may scarcely have had any knowledge.And why is this finding important? It is because others, including almost all the movement's enemies, did see Mau Mau whole in order to try to comprehend it, a first step towards defeating it."

A unique study of the movement based on fieldwork done at the time of the Mau Mau emergency.This text is based on the oral evidence of the Kikuyu villagers with whom the author lived as an aid worker during the Mau Mau emergency in the 1950s. The data suggests that there was never a single Mau Mau movement, and that noneof its members ever saw it as such, not because they did not have a political aim, but because that agenda was contested within different political circles over which they had no control and of which they may scarcely have had any knowledge. The importance of this is that almost all the enemies of the Mau Mau did see it as a whole movement, in order to try and comprehend it and defeat it.North America: Ohio U Press; Kenya: EAEP

Routledge is proud to be re-issuing this landmark series in association with the International African Institute. The series, originally published between 1950 and 1977, collected ethnographic information on the peoples of Africa, using all available sources: archives, memoirs and reports as well as anthropological research which, in 1945, had only just begun. Concise, critical and (for its time) accurate, the Ethnographic Survey contains sections as follows: Physical Environment Linguistic Data Demography History & Traditions of Origin Nomenclature Grouping Cultural Features: Religion, Witchcraft, Birth, Initiation, Burial Social & Political Organization: Kinship, Marriage, Inheritance, Slavery, Land Tenure, Warfare & Justice Economy & Trade Domestic ArchitectureEach of the 50 volumes will be available to buy individually, and these are organized into regional sub-groups: East Central Africa, North-Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, West Central Africa, Western Africa, and Central Africa Belgian Congo. The volumes are supplemented with maps, available to view on routledge.com or available as a pdf from the publishers.