The Forest People

Colin Turnbull

Simon and Schuster, 1968 - History - 295 pages

The bestselling, classic text on one anthropologist’s incredible experience living among the African Mbuti Pygmies, and what he learned from their culture, customs, and love of life.

In this bestselling book, Colin Turnbull, a British cultural anthropologist, details the incredible Mbuti pygmy people and their love of the forest, and each other. Turnbull lived among the Mbuti people for three years as an observer, not a researcher, so he offers a charming and intimate firsthand account of the people and their culture, and especially the individuals and their personalities. The Forest People is a timeless work of academic and humanitarian significance, sure to delight readers as they take a trip into a foreign culture and learn to appreciate the joys of life through the eyes of the Mbuti people.

Contents

• THE WORLD OF THE FOREST II: 11
• THE GOOD DEATH OF BALEKIMITO: 27
• THE MAKING OF CAMP LELO: 52
• THE SONG OF THE FOREST: 73
• THE CRIME OF CEPHU THE BAD HUNTER: 94
• THE GIVER OF THE LAW: 109

About the author

Colin M. Turnbull was born in London, and now lives in Connecticut. He was educated at Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied philosophy and politics. After serving in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War II, he held a research grant for two years in the Department of Indian Religion and Philosophy at Banaras Hindu University, in India, and then returned to Oxford, where he studied anthropology, specializing in the African field. He has made five extended field trips to Africa, the last of which was spent mainly in the Republic of Zaïre. From these trips he drew the material for his first book, The Forest People, an account of the three years he spent with the Pygmies of Zaïre. Mr. Turnbull was a Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and a Corresponding Member of Le Musée Royal d'Afrique Centrale.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Forest People; A Clarion book; A Touchstone book
• Author: Colin Turnbull
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 1968
• ISBN: 0671640992, 9780671640996
• Length: 295 pages
• Subjects: History / Africa / General; Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social; Social Science / Customs & Traditions; Social Science / Indigenous Studies; Social Science / Native American Studies; Social Science / Sociology / General