Schapera, Isaac
SCHAPERA, ISAAC
SCHAPERA, ISAAC (1905–2003), South African anthropologist. Born in South Africa, Schapera taught at the London School of Economics as assistant in anthropology (1928–29), served as lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1930), and at the University of Cape Town as senior lecturer and professor (1930–50). In 1950 he was appointed professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. Schapera conducted several anthropological field expeditions to the Bechuanaland Protectorate between 1929 and 1950. He contributed to the discipline of applied anthropology by his study of labor migration in Bechuanaland – its causes and effects both positive and negative – and so served as a guide for colonial policy. From 1961 to 1963 he was president of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
He wrote Government and Politics in Tribal Societies (1956), Handbook of Tswana Law and Custom (1938, 19552), Migrant Labour and Tribal Life (1947), and edited Bantu-Speaking Tribes of South Africa (1937), and David Livingstone's Letters and Journals.
add. bibliography:
S. Heald, "The Legacy of Isaac Schapira (1905–2003)," in: Anthropology Today, (Dec. 19, 2003), 18–19.
[Ephraim Fischoff]