Anthropology on the Scrap‐heap?
| Date | 01 January 1961 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1961.tb01252.x |
| Author | A. I. Richards |
| Published date | 01 January 1961 |
Anthropology
on
the
Scrap-heap?
by A. I.
RICHARDS,
Neumham
College,
Cambridge
ANTHROPOLOGISTS
are
sometimes asked,
with
varying degrees of directness,
whether
they really
think
their
science
can
be
of
any
further
use in Africa.
It
is obvious
why
such questions
are
asked.
The
anthropologist
of
tradition
studied African 'tribes'.
He
learnt
one language, lived in one
cultural
area
and
described one
tribal
society -
the
political system
of
the
X's,
their
kinship
and
family organization,
their
economic life,
their
religious
and
magic
beliefs
and
their values
and
attitudes.
The
tribe
might
certainly be
of
mixed origin,
and
hence there
might
be considerable variation in custom from district to district,
but
the
unit
was still generally small
enough
to be studied as a whole.
The
microcosm in which
the
anthropologist worked
might
be a small
tribe
of
30,000,
as
are
the
Amba
of
Uganda,
or one of
150,000
like
the
Bemba
of
Northern
Rhodesia, or even apolitical
unit
as large as
the
kingdoms of Ashanti or
of
the
Ganda,
hoth
with
populations
of
roughly amillion
people;
but
it
was still a small world into which
the
field-worker
disappeared
for a
year
or
eighteen months
and
to
which
he usually
returned
for a further spell
of
work.
It
was by means of a
study
of
the
structure
and
major
institutions
of
asingle
tribe
that
the
young anthropologist gained his first
training
in social analysis
and
there
is
probably
no
better
foundation for
the
work
of
asociologist
than
the
direct
observation
of
asociety small
enough
to be studied in all its aspects
by one person. Similarly
an
administrator
or
an
educationalist
meaning
to
spend his life working in Africa could have no
better
beginning
than
this process
of
complete immersion for
many
months in
one
small
culture
if this were
practical
politics.
On
the
basis of such experience asenior anthropologist
can
of course shorten his time of study in
the
field or tackle a
particular
problem
more
quickly
but
there
is, to
my
mind,
no substitute for
the
first outline
study
of
a
tribe
during
which
the
mechanics
of
research
are
perfected
and
attitudes
of
mind
are
revolutionized by
the
attempt
to look
at
every aspect
oflife
through
the
spectacles of
another
culture.
It
was on
the
basis
of
such a
tribal
study
that
the
anthropologist framed his generalizations as to
the
nature
of
social processes,
whether
he
applied
these to all societies, to
the
simpler, pre-literate or
'under-
developed' societies, to
the
particular
group
of
tribes in which he was
working
or to
the
chosen
tribe
itself.
Anthropology is essentially a
comparative
science -
'comparative
sociology'
Radcliffe Brown once called it -
and
here
again
when
anthropologists
started
to
compare
one social
structure
with
another
it was the tribe
which
formed
the
basis of comparison.
The
classifications of different types of African societies
which
have
been
made
during
the
last twenty years
have
been
based on
tribal
structures, or
rather
on tribal political systems.
The
division
of
African tribes
into
centralized 'states' as against acephalous, segmentary societies
made
by
Evans-Pritchard
and
Fortes in
1940
is one such classification,
but
there
have
been
a
number
of others
such
as
Middleton
and
Tait's
recent
division
of
3
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