Nigel Barley

When local contacts tipped off Nigel Barley that the Dowayo circumcision ceremony was about to take place, he immediately left London for the village in northern Cameroon where he had lived as a field anthropologist for 18 months. The Dowayos are a mountain people that perform their elaborate, fascinating and fearsome ceremony at six or seven-year intervals. It was an...

Not a Hazardous Sport by Nigel Barley takes readers on an adventurous journey to the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, where Barley immerses himself among the Torajan people. Known for their spectacular buildings and elaborate ancestor cults, the Torajan society offers a perfect setting for anthropological fieldwork, aligning with Barley's own advice to his students to choose a location where...