Edwin W. Smith and his "raw material" - Texts of a missionary and ethnographer in context

The paper analyzes the ethnographic writings of the missionary Edwin W. Smith (1876-1957) in order to contextualize ethnographic knowledge of the religious system of the Ila, the religious "Other." This knowledge was written down in the ethnography "The Ila-Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia" (1920). In this ethnography, Edwin W. Smith formulated his concept of African religion which proved to be an authoritative source for later Western and African scholars of religion. Making use of contributions of the author to his missionary home front, the paper problematizes the ethnography as a "true representation of the religious Other." The ethnography reveals different layers of the development of thinking of the main author, Edwin W. Smith, thereby questioning the notion of ethnographic authority.