 | |
| Author | Colin Turnbull |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Anthropology |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Set in | Africa |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
Publication date | 1961 |
| ISBN | 0671266500 |
The Forest People (1961) is Colin Turnbull's ethnographic study of the Mbuti pygmies of the Ituri Forest in what was then the Belgian Congo.
In this book, the British-American anthropologist detailed his three years spent with the community in the mid 1950s. The style is informal and accessible. Turnbull contrasts his forest-living subjects' lifestyle with that of nearby town-dwelling Africans and evaluates the interactions of the two groups.
The editor for the book was Michael Korda who attended Oxford University with Turnbull. [1]
The Forest People was the version for a general readership of Turnbull's academic thesis, which was published in an expanded, more technical form by Routledge in London as Wayward Servants: The Two Worlds of the African Pygmies (1965). Turnbull wrote about his experiences with the tribe from a first person perspective. The Mbuti tribe respected him, and attempted to show him their cultural prospects as a society until a drastic change in their lifestyles occurred.[ further explanation needed ]