Melville J. Herskovits

Cultural Differences in the Perception of Geometric Illusions

Data from 15 societies are presented showing substantial intersocietal differences of two types in susceptibility to geometric optical illusions. The pattern of response differences suggests the existence of different habits of perceptual inference which relate to cultural and ecological factors in the visual environment.

The Negro in Bahia, Brazil: A Problem in Method

The description of Negro family life in Bahia, Brazil, as given by E. F. Frazier is reviewed. The disintegration of African patterns held to have resulted from white contact, when analyzed in terms of aboriginal tribal family organization, particularly with reference to underlying sanctions, is found to exist to a very slight degree. The Afro-Bahian family manifests traits peculiar to it, but these are the results of accommodation to an acculturative situation, and are not a sign of demoralization.

The American Negro : a study in racial crossing

An anthropomorphic study of the black population in the United States, based on a study conducted in 1920.

The Hypothetical Situation: A Technique of Field Research

THE PRESENT PAPER will describe a technique in ethnographic investigation that has been developed during research on the cultures of the Negro peoples of West Africa and various parts of the Caribbean area and South America. It consists, in essence, of devising, ad hoc, situations in the life of a people in terms of hypothetical persons, relationships, and events, which, being in accord with the prevalent patterns of the culture, are used to direct and give form to discussions with informants and other members of a group being studied. it will be of aid in considering the nature and utility of this technique to indicate

A note on woman marriage in Dahomey.

Reports of the occurrence of women marriage in parts of Africa as far distant from one another as northern and southern Nigeria the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and the Union of South Africa indicate the possibility that there may be other instances of this institution that have gone unrecorded. The purpose of this paper is therefore to call attention to this striking phase of social organization by describing the form which woman marriage takes in Dahomey presenting data collected in the field in 1931. In doing this attention will be paid to such aspects of the social setting in which this kind of marriage is lodged as may be needed to allow it best to be understood while some of the attitudes which arise from it will also be indicated. (excerpt)

The Culture Areas of Africa

The origin and development of cultures have long been matters of dispute. From the days of the classical school of anthropology, with its insistence on the universal inventiveness of humanity, to the kulturhistorische Schule of the present day and its doctrine of the poverty of mans ability to devise new means of meeting his environment, the pendulum has swung more and more towards a realization of the importance of cultural borrowing. There is little doubt now but that man is an imitative creature, and that human culture is essentially contagious. But how contagious it is is a problem yet to be solved. Between the extremes which have been mentioned there lies much room for difference, and differences of opinion have not been lacking.

The Significance of West Africa for Negro Research

In two recent papers2 I have presented a portion of the evidence which, based on the study of historical documents and anthropological field research, indicates the preponderantly West African origin of the Negroes of the New World. In considering the significance of this region for research on the Negro, I may, at the outset, add certain further testimony on this point, gathered by myself in the field, or which has appeared in recent historical publications, not included in these previous discussions of the subject. I

The Present Status and Needs of Afroamerican Research

The field of Afroamerican studies has had an extraordinarily rapid development during the past decade. In fact, the field, as such, did not exist in recognizable form as recently as twenty years ago. A review of the publications of this period makes clear that the years 1930-40 were occupied with the basic task of delimiting the scientific problem that gave work in this field its reason for being. Once this was accomplished, it was possible during the following decade to devise the conceptual and methodological tools essential for the adequate analysis of the data. Today, these requirements are well in hand. The work of consolidating gains and gathering additional data, filling in lacunae in our information and prosecuting the study of more specialized research problems can go forward. No discussion of this development would be accurate if it did not recognize the role played by the Jouriwl of Negro History and its late editor, Dr. Carter G. Woodson. The

The Cultural Approach to Sociology

There is developing in the United States a definite challenge to the older sociological systems. The anthropological school has, through study of exotic peoples, gathered material wich makes evident the essentially philosophical nature of much sociological writing. The anthropologists are attacking the premises upon which the earlier social systems were erected. Neglect of the element of culture in society is advanced as the reason for sociological shorthcomings. What is culture, and how does it operate? A sound, and methodologically secure sociology, must in the future include a consideration of the cultural material that the anthropologists have brought to attention.

Anthropology and Africa - a wider perspective

Anthropological research in Africa has been characterized by an intensive, microethnographic approach, which has stressed the understanding of institutional arrangements and their functioning within a given society; and, exceptionally, the analysis of custom in depth. Comparisons have been eschewed, while the broader distributional studies that played an important role in the earlier researches of anthropologists in North America and Polynesia, in Africa have been all but lacking in the scientific literature. The result has typically been the ethnographic monograph rather than the ethnological or ethnohistorical study.