Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-01T13:23:56.409Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Study of ‘Social Change’ in British West Africa1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Kenneth Little
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A visitor to West Africa today will find most of the conventional trappings of a western civilization. He can travel on trains and in motor-cars and airplanes, and stay at rest-houses equipped with electric light and a flushed toilet. He can visit African homes furnished in the latest western style in which there is refrigeration and cooking is done by electricity. He will see Africans working in shops, offices, and factories, growing crops for foreign consumption, and leasing and renting land. He will visit churches and schools, play outdoor games, attend dances, performances of amateur dramatics, baby shows, and buy a flag for charity—all these activities being organized by Africans. On the other hand, he will also see a majority of Africans living in huts of wattle and daub and of grass, herding cattle, and cultivating their farms and plots with home-made implements, pounding their food in mortars, crossing rivers in dug-out canoes, dancing to the music of wooden drums, and worshipping ancient gods and spirits.

Résumé

L'ÉTUDE DE LA ‘TRANSFORMATION SOCIALE’ DANS L'AFRIQUE OCCIDENTALE BRITANNIQUE

L'introduction d'un système d'économie monétaire, l'evolution du nationalisme africain et les changements rapides dans la technologie, ont donné lieu à un mode d'existence ‘urbanisé’, qui a été répandu dans une grande partie de l'Afrique Occidentale. Une spécialisation croissante se manifeste, non seulement dans les activités économiques, mais dans toutes les activités principales de la vie communale. Le conflit entre les valeurs sociales traditionnelles et celles de l'Occident a soulevé beaucoup de problèmes pratiques dans la famille et dans l'organisation politique et économique. Dans les villes, et dans les régions avoisinantes, une nouvelle forme d'organisation sociale a pris naissance, dont la base est l'association, principalement par métiers et par tribus. Cette organisation exerce un grand nombre de fonctions qui étaient remplies traditionnellement par les families et autres groupes de parenté. Ces associations nouvelles comprennent divers genres de sociétés de secours mutuel et ‘d'associations tribales’, dont les buts sont aussi politiques, dans une certaine mesure. II existe, également, des formes d'association entre tribus et des groupements sociaux établis sur la base des intérêts culturels et sociaux en commun.

Cette situation en Afrique Occidentale implique l'existence de deux régimes culturels et sociaux, qui sont assez différents. Néanmoins, leurs rapports mutuels sont évidents et les ethnologues doivent élaborer un système conceptuel au moyen duquel ces rapports peuvent être étudiés d'une façon satisfaisante. De l'avis de l'auteur, le problème devrait être abordé du point de vue de la méthodologie, suivant le concept de ‘changement social’ plutôt que d'après l'idée générale des rapports entre cultures, et la fusion actuelle de phénomènes sociaux, tant ‘traditionnels’ que ‘modernes’, devrait être envisagée suivant les termes d'un seul champ d'action social réciproque. Cela signifie une acceptation absolue de la ‘realite sociale’ dans sa forme actuelle, et la nécessité qui en résulte d'entreprendre, dans des régions sélectionnées, une série d'études dans le but d'une élaboration et une systématisation nouvelles de nos connaissances actuelles de la société dans l'Afrique Occidentale. Des innovations dans les techniques d'enquête sont aussi nécessaires et il est suggéré que ceux qui ont l'intention d'entreprendre des recherches sur les lieux devraient se familiariser avec les méthodes de statistique et autres techniques qui sont exigées, et se préparer pour étudier les conditions urbanisées en Afrique par une enquête sur des cornmunautés rurales ou semi-industrialisées dans un pays européen.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , October 1953 , pp. 274 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1953

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 274 note 2 For example, in the Sierra Leone hinterland a ‘bar’ of tobacco was equivalent to forty leaves of tobacco; a ‘bar’ of soap to 2 lb., &c. Cf. Rankin, F. H., The White Man's Grape, vol. i, 1836.Google Scholar

page 275 note 1 Cf. Little, K. L., The Mende of Sierra Leone, 1951, passim.Google Scholar

page 275 note 2 Ibid.

page 276 note 1 Fortes, M., ‘Ashanti Survey, 1945-46: An Experiment in Social Research’, Geographical Journal, vol. cx, 1947, pp. 149–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 276 note 2 Cf. Forde, D. and Scott, R.The Native Economies of Nigeria, 1946.Google Scholar

page 276 note 3 Cf. Gamble, D. P., Contributions to a Socio-Economic Survey of the Gambia (Research Department, Colonial Office), 1949.Google Scholar

page 276 note 4 Cf. Fortes, M., ‘The Impact of the War on British West Africa’, International Affairs, vol. xxi No. 2, 1945, pp. 205–19.Google Scholar

page 276 note 5 Some idea of the recent rate of economic development can be gathered from the fact that the value of Nigerian exports in 1949 was nearly six times as great as in 1939, and the Nigerian railway carried nearly double the tonnage of pre-war years.

page 277 note 1 Cf. Fortes, , ‘Ashanti Survey’, p. 164.Google Scholar

page 277 note 2 Report on a Social Survey of Takoradi-Sekondi, 1950.Google Scholar

page 278 note 1 Busia, K. A., op. cit.Google Scholar

page 278 note 2 Cf. Coleman, James S., ‘The Role of Tribal Associations in Nigeria’, paper read at a conference of the West African Institute of Social and Economic Research, April 1952.Google Scholar

page 279 note 1 Cf. Little, K. L., op. cit.,Google Scholar chap, xiii, ‘The Modern Social Trend’.

page 279 note 2 The latter point is exemplified most strikingly by various ‘inter-racial’ groups, semi-officially inspired, or organized under the auspices of the British Council in some of the principal towns of the Coast.

page 279 note 3 Describing how the strength of kinship organization among the Yakö of South-Eastern Nigeria had been weakened, Forde pointed out before the war that the development of external trading had provided opportunities for enterprising and self-reliant persons to evade obligations to their kinsmen, ‘Men who devote their entire time to trading, are tending in fact to become socially as well as economically divorced from the community and to acquire an independent and commercial outlook.’ Forde, Daryll, ‘Government in Umor’, Africa, vol. xii, No. 2, 1939, pp. 129–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 280 note 1 Lloyd, Peter, ‘Craft Organization in Yoruba Towns’, Africa, vol. xxiii, No. i, 1953, pp. 30–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 280 note 2 Cf. A. W. Hoernlé and Ellen Hellman, ‘The Analysis of Social Change and its Bearing on Education’, reprinted in The Colonial Review, vol. vii, No. 8, 1952.Google Scholar ‘Because the term “social change” is generally used to describe change within a modern Western culture, and the term “culture contact” to describe the changes due to the juxtaposition of two entirely different cultures, it has become common to regard the two processes as different in kind. There appears to us to be no justification for this. Culture contact is one type of social change, different not in kind, but in degree. …' See also Gluckman's, Maxcriticism of Malinowski's theory of cultural change, The Rhodes-Livingstone Papers, No. 16, 1949.Google Scholar

page 281 note 1 Op. cit., pp. 13–14.

page 281 note 2 Discussing the difficulties of reconciling agricultural development with the traditional attitude of regarding farming as a way of life, Fortes has suggested that kin and community, the paramount factors in African farming life, have become to some extent an impediment to progress. ‘The Social Effects of Agricultural Development in Africa’, London Calling, 10 Jan. 1952.Google Scholar

page 281 note 3 Writing of the boy who leaves school at Standard IV, Mrs. Helen Judd points out that he has not learned enough to handle his environment, and the labour market is not organized to offer him employment. ‘The official theory is that he should return to his village at about the age of fourteen… and become an instrument of progress there, suggesting new farming methods and participating in literacy drives. Yet he left the village to make good in the towns and to provide in his turn for younger relatives. He will not go back, and he remains an incubus’ (West Africa, 24 May 1952)Google Scholar. See also Faulkner, Donald, Social Welfare and Juvenile Delinquency in Lagos, Nigeria.Google Scholar

page 282 note 1 Cf. Rev. Charles, Pierre, ‘Tribal Society and Labour Legislation’, International Labour Review, lxv, No. 4Google Scholar. for a very thoughtful discussion of this matter.

page 282 note 2 Firth, Raymond, ‘Social Problems and Research in British West Africa’, Africa, vol. xvii, 1947, pp. 77-91, 170–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 282 note 3 Cf. Little, K. L., op. cit. and ‘Social Change and Social Class in the Sierra Leone Protectorate’, American Journal of Sociology, July 1948CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I note Voget has employed a somewhat similar method of conceptualizing acculturation among the Crow Indians of Montana. He distinguished four such ‘socio-cultural’ groupings, labelled ‘native’, ‘native-modified’, ‘American-modified’, and ‘American-marginal’, on the basis of the cultural orientations of the individuals studied. Voget, Fred, ‘Acculturation at Caughnawaga: A Note on the Native-Modified Group’, American Anthropologist, vol. liii, No. 2, 1951.Google Scholar

page 282 note 4 ‘Ashanti Survey’.

page 283 note 1 Ibid.

page 283 note 2 Cf. Vallee, F. G., ‘A Study of a Hebridean Community’. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar

page 283 note 3 According to Fortes, numerical support for anthropological generalizations is now ‘an indispensable part of sociological research’. Op. cit., p. 166.