Vol. 8 · No. 2 · 2004
The Long Walk VI
"Lors Du Travail De Terrain, Il Faut Être Comme Un Poisson Dans L'eau": Un Entretien Avec Joseph Tubiana

Barbara Casciarri

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Joseph Tubiana is an ethnologist who initially studied linguistics. He has specialised in the study of East-African societies (Ethiopia, Chad, Sudan). After his first fieldwork in Ethiopia in the 1940s, he carried out research from the 1950s onwards among the Zaghawa nomads in Chad and Sudan. He spent an important part of his time working at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris and as a teacher of East-African languages at the INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales) where he is currently professor honoraire. In this interview he talks about his personal and ethnological experiences among nomads in northern and eastern Africa. He also speaks about his political and scientific education which took place first in colonial Algeria and then in France between the 1930s and the Second World War.