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The Village Census in the Study of Culture Contact

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Audrey I. Richards
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Any anthropologist working in Africa at the moment is really experimenting with a new technique. Anthropological theory was evolved very largely in Oceania, where the relative isolation of small island communities provided something like ‘typical’ primitive social groups. Most of Rivers's hypotheses were based on Melanesian material, and Malinowski's functional method, the inspiration of most modern field work in all parts of the world, originated on an island off New Guinea with only 8,000 inhabitants. The anthropologist who embarks for Africa has obviously to modify and adapt the guiding principles of field work from the start. He has probably to work in a much larger and more scattered tribal area, and with a people that are increasing in numbers rather than diminishing. He has to exchange his remote island for a territory where the natives are in constant contact with other tribes and races. More important still, he has arrived at a moment of dramatic and unprecedented change in tribal history. Melanesian societies, it is true, are having to adapt themselves slowly to contact with white civilization, but most of the tribes in Africa are facing a social situation which is, in effect, a revolution. In fact, the whole picture of African society has altered more rapidly than the anthropologist's technique.

Résumé

MÉTHODES D'ÉTUDIER LES CHANGEMENTS DANS LES SOCIÉTÉS INDIGÈNES

Cet article est le troisième d'une série consacrée à l'étude du problème posé par le contact des civilisations, c'est-à-dire qu'il s'occupe de l'étude des changements motivés dans la société indigène par le contact avec la civilisation blanche. Des difficultes d'ordre méthodique et pratique pour estimer ces changements ont été exposées dans différentes zones typiques en même temps que les solutions d'ordre expérimental adoptées par Dr. Mair dans l'Ouganda, le Prof. Schapera au Bechuana, Miss Monica Hunter parmi les Fingo et les Xosa.

Miss Richards décrit ce qu'elle a pu observer elle-même dans ce sens chez les Babemba de la Rhodésie du Nord-est en 1930–1, 1933–4; elle insiste sur le fait que là où le changement de civilisation a été rapide et récent, lorsqu'aucune fusion n'est intervenue entre les anciens et les nouveaux éléments, l'anthropologiste doit observer le phénomène d'évolution à une série de stages différents:

1° En reconstituant aussi bien que possible l'état de la société indigène avant l'arrivée des Européens d'après les renseignements fournis par les anciens de tribu.

2° En étudiant plusieurs communautés exposées au contact européen à différents degrés.

3° En réunissant un nombre important de cas individuels permettant d'illustrer la nature et l'étendue des changements manifestés.

Type
Articles
Information
Africa , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , January 1935 , pp. 20 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1935

References

Note. This article is the third of the series of articles on Methods of Study of Culture Contact which Dr. L. P. Mair is editing.

page 20 note 1 Malinowski, B., ‘Practical Anthropology’, Africa, vol. ii, no. 1.Google Scholar

page 21 note 1 Hunter, Monica, ‘Study of Culture Contact’, Africa, vol. vii, no. 3.Google Scholar

page 21 note 2 Vide Mair, L. P., ’The Study of Culture Contact as a Practical Problem’, Africa, vol. vii, no. 4; also An African People in the Twentieth Century, London: Routledge, 1934Google Scholar.

page 22 note 1 South African Journal of Science, vol. xxx, October 1933.

page 24 note 1 Richards, A. I., ‘Anthropological Problems in N.E. Rhodesia’, Africa, vol. v, no. 2.Google Scholar

page 26 note 1 Of practical interest, since the shifting village is one of the great bugbears of the educationist. Cf. Davis, J. Merle, Modern Industry and the African, Macmillan, 1933, Rec. 21, p. 380.Google Scholar

page 26 note 2 Villages of the Babemba number on an average forty huts.

page 27 note 1 As distinct from the more summary questions asked in the village notes described above.

page 28 note 1 The examples given have been necessarily abbreviated. The letters F and M stand for ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’ respectively: ♂ and ♀ for male and female child.

page 31 note 1 In the collection of these, as with many other branches of my work, I was much helped by Miss H. Eastland, Government Welfare Officer at Kasama at that time.