Contents
Collection Access
Leo Kuper (1908-1994) papers
Descriptive Summary
- Title
- Leo Kuper (1908-1994) papers
- Identifier
- BMRC.NU.KUPER
- Repository
- Northwestern University, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies
- Language
- English
- Size
- 8.76 Linear feet
- Dates
- 1952-1966
- Creator
- Kuper, Leo
Biographical note
Leo Kuper was a South African born sociologist. In 1961 Kuper was appointed Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he remained until his retirement in 1976. While at U.C.L.A., he served for four years as the Director of the African Studies Center and also as a member of the Board of Directors of the African Studies Association. In 1965 Kuper published An African Bourgeoisie (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965). Based upon research and interviews conducted in South Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this study of the black professional and mercantile classes won the Melville Herskovits Award.
Scope and Contents note
The collection is comprised of materials relating to the research conducted between 1957 and 1963 for Leo Kuper's study of An African Bourgeoisie (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965). Kuper, assisted by two research assistants at the University of Natal, Anthony Ngubo and Bernard Magubane, conducted interviews with more than one hundred members of South Africa's black professional class, including doctors, lawyers, civil servants, teachers, ministers, nurses, and businessmen, whom Kuper identifies as “traders.” These interviews, and the more general reading notes and newspaper files, comprise the basic document collection upon which Kuper's sociological analysis of South Africa's black middle class rested. The transcriptions of the interviews suggest that Kuper was primarily interested in the issues of mobility, freedom, and perceived social status and the relation of these concepts to South Africa's apartheid racial system.
Processing Information note
This collection was surveyed as part of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium's Survey Initiative on 2010 March 22 by Lauren Kalal and Andrew Steadham.