Itinéraires de Kamba Simango : dialogue entre un Mozambicain apprenti ethnographe et Franz Boas

Abstract

This paper explores the dialogue between anthropologist Franz Boas and Kamba Simango. Simango was born in 1890, in Machanga District, on the coast of present-day Mozambique. In 1914, under the auspices of missionaries of the American Board of Missions, he was sent to the United States to study at the Hampton Institute. Kamba Simango and Franz Boas met for the first time in 1919 at Columbia University. Boas did not want Simango to become a mere “informant,” but a native ethnographer. Based on an exchange of unpublished letters and a series of documents published mainly by missionaries, this article analyzes the ethnographic relationship between Boas and Simango as well as his cosmopolitan trajectory. Kamba Simango’s life and career help us to understand the colonial experience par le bas, and to understand the construction of subjectivities and specific historicities from a less natio-centered natio-centered perspective.