Review published in The Australian Journal of Anthropology (December 2012 Volume 23, Issue 3, pages 423–424)

Review of AN AFRICAN WORLDVIEW: THE MUSLIM AMACINGA YAWO OF SOUTHERN MALAWI by Ian D. Dicks. Zomba: Kachere Monographs No.32. 2012. ISBN 978-99908-8751-9

Ian Dicks has written an important book. The publication of this monograph, a revised version of his PhD thesis, is a significant moment for African studies and Australian anthropology. It is the first major ethnographic study of the Yawo of southern Malawi since the monumental contributions of J. Clyde Mitchell and as such it is a major new resource for anthropologists interested in the societies of east central Africa and in the interaction of Islam with African religious systems on the continent. It is important days for Australian anthropology because it marks the arrival of a new player who I dare say will go on to make an outstanding contribution to the anthropology of religion in this country.

The book opens up a much anticipated conversation between social anthropology and theological anthropology. The tentative steps that anthropologists have been making to bridge the gap between faith and science or reason and religion have just been given a firm and carefully constructed platform on which to meet. Ian Dicks is an Australian anthropologist (and Fellow of the Australian Anthropology Society) who has lived and worked in a remote rural area of Malawi for more than a decade. Working as a Language and Culture Consultant he has learned to speak Ciyawo fluently and has already published a book of Yawo folklore and proverbs with English translation and interpretations. He is currently working on a bilingual learner dictionary in the Yawo language and English – an immense and time-consuming labour of love. His immersion among the Yawo in the very area where Clyde Mitchell began his fieldwork (Namwera in Mangochi District) is such that Yawo friends have told me that if they spoke to Dr Dicks on the telephone they could not tell that he had not been born a Yawo!

The monograph is a magnificent combination of detailed ethnography and textual analysis of songs, myths, proverbs and prayers. It is an excellent source of information about the beliefs, rituals and practices of the Yawo in the twenty-first century. However, it also develops an interesting and sophisticated theoretical thrust framed around the idea of worldview. This theoretical and conceptual framework is what makes the monograph unusually valuable as it really opens up the debate about spirituality, representation and ethnographic truth. In this respect it is a must-read for all anthropologists that are interested in religion and in non-reductionist analysis of religious belief systems. Dr Dicks, in the tradition of Evans-Pritchard, Victor Turner, and Monica Wilson takes the beliefs and views of his Muslim informants seriously. He treats them with respect and shows them the courtesy of trying to believe with them instead of doing the usual anthropological trick of conjuring their beliefs away and reducing them to functionalist, structuralist or postmodernist tropes. He does not bring a heavy-handed sense of irony to his analysis of beliefs in God, ancestors or witchcraft. He can do this because he is himself is one of the members of what Robin Horton dubbed the ‘Devout Opposition’.

I have only one objection to this book. Dr Dicks uses the form Yawo to describe the people that Clyde Mitchell (and I) prefers to describe as the Yao. In fact, any number of forms of the ethnonym has been used over the years. Dr Dicks explains his choice by suggesting that it clears up the confusion between the Chinese and African Yao and conforms to the spelling adopted by the African linguistic unit at the University of Malawi. Fair enough. I asked some Yao friends which spelling they believe is the most accurate representation of the word (which means the mountain or place of origin of the tribe) and they all preferred YAO.  This however is a small quibble about what is in the end a very important and finely crafted monograph.