No one working in Africa today or studying Africa in any discipline whatever can afford to ignore the anthropological literature. It has long been the foundational background for a variety of African studies. However, there has never been a succinct historical description of the way the Africanist field has evolved in anthropology, together with a broad bibliographical guide. This book supplies that basic information. But it does more It reviews the field as a controversial history of ideas. African studies in anthropology throw light on the way Anglo-Europeans and Americans have conceived of the rest of the world and the way academic disciplines have changed in this century.