John David Yeadon Peel, 1941–2015

Erin ti wó, kò le dìdeErin ti wó, kò le dìdeÀjànàkú sùn bí òkèErin ti wó kò le dìde

The elephant fell, unable to stand on its feetThe elephant fell, unable to stand on its feetThe humongous mammal is downThe elephant fell, unable to stand on its feet.

On 2 November 2015, sociologist John David Yeadon Peel’s illustrious career came to an end, marking the end of an era. Now, the discipline of sociology will miss the service of a pioneer who single-handedly gave a new dimension to the studies of Yoruba culture and religion. For those of us who have been influenced and inspired for years by his profound insight, John’s demise has created a vacuum of unparalleled scale. However, John left with us an oeuvre that stands as a vast repository of knowledge waiting to be rediscovered in the future. His mastery of many disciplines is impressive, from the very core of sociology and anthropology to that of history and literature. His knowledge of group behaviour and social institutions is profound. His patience and ability to collect empirical data are phenomenal. His writings are never geared towards policy or advocacy – he does not belong to that tradition – but rather to a large set of coordinated knowledge on the fragmentation of society into its sociological fragments of social change, and the disturbing but crucial issues of social disorder and order. I think about how he first proceeded with the study of a new order organized by the Aladura movement of the colonial and postcolonial era before moving backward in time to the disorder of the nineteenth century, and how the social processes of the chaotic period enable us to understand one sub-ethnic community, the Ijesa.

As we commemorate J. D. Y. Peel’s magnificent presence in the academy we must go back to the early 1960s, when he was still a young PhD scholar at the London School of Economics. It was during this time that he entered West Africa and began serious engagements with the Yoruba ways of being and belonging. His gaze was on the independent churches among the Yoruba community in south-west Nigeria. In 1966, based on his extensive fieldwork, he completed his dissertation entitled ‘A sociological study of two independent churches among the Yoruba’. Thereafter, he grew very rapidly in the academic world with a prolific publishing record. As part of his academic engagements, Peel taught at numerous prestigious institutions across the globe, including at Nottingham University and the LSE (1966–73), the University of Ife, Nigeria (1973–75), Liverpool University (1975–89), the University of Chicago (1982–83), and SOAS, University of London (since 1989). At SOAS in London, he also served as the Dean of Undergraduate Studies from 1990 to 1994 and as a member of the governing body (from 1996). Peel was a former President of the African Studies Association in the UK (1996–98), and the Chair of the Social Anthropology and Human Geography Section of the British Academy (1997–2000).

During his illustrious teaching and research career, Peel emerged as an extremely influential scholar in the field of sociology of religion. His early published work explored the ideas of syncretism and religious change in Yorubaland. In 1968, he published his PhD dissertation in the form of a book, Aladura: a religious movement among the Yoruba. Aladura is a classic work of historical sociology on West Africa in which Peel used a wide range of vernacular historical sources, especially the private papers and the endless small publications of local intellectual guilds as well as the oral traditions of the Yoruba religious order. Aladura also included fascinating aspects of social history concerning the interrelations of the first generation of Christians and young elites in Yorubaland with the ideological contours of the Anglican Church. Peel carefully crafted a brilliant analysis of the discourse on religious transformation among Ijebu and Egba families. In many ways, Aladura also ushered in an epistemological shift in the way sociologists had understood Yoruba religious traditions until then. No wonder that...