Max Gluckman

Politics, law and ritual in tribal society

What can we learn from tribal societies about the ways in which, in a variety of social settings, groups of men resolve their conflicts with other men? In order to answer this question, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society compares nearly forty case study societies, most of them in Africa, in their reconstructed pre-colonial tribal condition, comparing their small-scale social relations to their large-scale social context. At the outset Gluckman explains to the reader that custom is the focus of interest of all types of anthropology. Yet his approach manifests a strong interest in economy, politics, and social relationships. In the volume, Max Gluckman offers a succinct version of a lifetime of opinionated analysis. This material is organized by theme and the ethnographic examples appear as brief illustrations of theoretical questions. Discussed here also is the relation between disputes and struggles for power within the context of mechanisms of social control and stability. In addition, Gluckman presents a step-by-step survey of the cumulative development of the anthropological analysis of tribal institutions, from the nineteenth century to the present, and supports the argument that anthropology is a science rather than an art. The new masterful introduction by Sally Falk Moore, along with a new postscript of Gluckmans professional activities and publications, provides newcomers to the work of Gluckman with deep insights into the contents as well as contexts within which the great anthropologist worked.

Ethnographic Data in British Social Anthropology

In this paper I discuss changes in the use of ethnographic field data in social anthropological analyses in Britain. I begin with two caveats. First, I do not in any way imply that the developments I discuss represent the only fruitful new methods of analysis in the subject: social anthropologyj like all sciences, has to proceed by exploiting many theories and lines of analysis. Secondly, because of limitation of space, I cannot touch on many of the influences vihich have produced this particular development, or on the stimulating work of scholars in countries of Europe other than Britain, in America, and elsewhere. My purpose is to deal with Britain alone. Modem British anthropology was dominated for many years by Bronislaw Malinowski and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown. Radcliffe-Brown supplied the more fruitful theoretical approach, though British anthropologists have proceeded far beyond the point he reached. Yet I regard Malinowski as the real father of modem British anthropology. Theory is but one side of a science: the other equally important side is the type of data which are subjected to theoretical analysis. Here Malinowski produced a revolutionary change in the subjea, though scholars in other countries were working on the same lines as he. Malinowskis long residence in the Trobriands and the faa that he worked through the Trobriand language enabled him to make observations on social life which were quite different in quality from the observations made by the casual travellers who had passed through colonial countries, and even from those made by missionaries and administrators working among particular colonial peoples. The change in the nature of his data had a profound effect on his own thinking, and hence on the subjea. I can illustrate this briefly by comparing two of his books with a work which is still a great classic of ethnography, Henri A. Junods The Life of a South African Tribe, about the Tsonga of Mozambique. In this book, in his description of the life-cycle of a man, Junod devotes 151 pages

The Village Headman in British Central Africa

The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute is attempting a comparative study of the tribes of British Central Africa and of the processes of change affecting their lives to-day. Social anthropologists have been sent to tribes selected both for the variety of forms in their indigenous social organization and for the different ways in which they have been absorbed in the modern world-system. Though we, of the Institutes staff, are spread over thousands of square miles, and have had very different trainings, we have tried to collect our data on comparable bases and to study similar problems. This short symposium, which opens what we have come to consider a crucial problem, is the first-fruits of our collaboration.