PIERRE FATUMBI VERGER AS SOCIAL SCIENTIST Introduction
PIERRE FATUMBI VERGER AS SOCIAL SCIENTIST Peter F. COHEN Introduction Someone asked me very seriously the other day whether Pierre Verger really existed or if he was not just another Bahian invention. Jorge Amado (1997 : 7) Pierre Fátúmbí Verger was a Frenchman who devoted more than half of his 93-year life to the study, promotion and practice of African and Afro- Brazilian culture1. His written legacy includes some of the most original and valuable contributions to these fields. At his death in 1996, Verger left behind him some 30 books, 100 articles, over 60,000 photographic negatives, films and audio recordings and thousands of pages of unpublished ethnographic data. This massive body of work is unusual in several respects, perhaps the most striking of which is its highly eclectic nature. Verger delved into virtually any field that interested him, regardless of whether or not he had any formal training in the area. “Photographer, ethnographer and babalawo”, exclaimed ethnographer Alfred Métraux, “what a Renaissance man!” (Le Bouler 1994:256) –long before Verger’s publications in history, linguistics and ethnobotany2. Verger published historical research more than a decade 1 I would like to thank the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Ford Foundation and the Columbia University Institute of Latin American Studies for funding my fieldwork in Brazil, and the Fundação Pierre Verger for its gracious assistance in my research. Thanks to Ibéa Atondi, Marion Aubrée, Brunehilde Biebuyk, George Brandon, Barbara L. Cohen, Lee Cohen, C. Daniel Dawson, Kenneth Dossar, Henry John Drewal, Angela Lühning, Ivor Miller, Barbara Price, Dolores Shapiro and Robert Farris Thompson for their reading and encouragement.
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