(What can we learn from tribal societies about the ways in...)
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 Gluckman's 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.
(These essays are mainly concerned with the development of...)
These essays are mainly concerned with the development of some of Max Gluckman's ideas about African politics. He regarded frequent rebellions to replace incumbents of political offices (as against revolutions to alter the structure of offices) as inherent in these politics. Later he connected this situation with modes of husbandry, problems of the devolution of power, types of weapons and the law of treason. He advanced to a general theory of ritual, as well as to general propositions about the position of officials representing conflicting interests within a hierarchy, typified by the African chief under colonial rule.
Originally published in 1963.
(A distinguished British anthropologist, Max Gluckman (191...)
A distinguished British anthropologist, Max Gluckman (1911-1975) pioneered the study of traditional African legal systems. His research stressed social conflict and mechanisms for conflict resolution while studying urbanization and social change in colonial Africa.
Ideas and Procedures in African Customary Law: Studies Presented and Discussed at the Eighth International African Seminar at the Haile Sellassie I University, Addis Ababa, January 1966 (Volume 30)
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The 18 papers in this volume, originally published in 1...)
The 18 papers in this volume, originally published in 1969 in English and French, with summaries in the other language, define and analyze in their wider social contexts the fundamental ideas and procedures to be found in African traditional systems of law. They assess the needs and problems of adaptation to changing conditions. The comprehensive introduction by Allott, Epsteina nd Gluckman provides a framework of analysis. It deals with the search for a common terminology in which to analyse and compare the different systems of customary law proceedings and evidence, codification and recording, reason and the occult, the conception of legal personality, succcession and inheritance, land rights, marriage and affiliation, injuries, liability and responsibility.
Closed Systems and Open Minds: The Limits of Naivety in Social Anthropology
(Social anthropology, defined operationally in terms of wh...)
Social anthropology, defined operationally in terms of what social anthropologists have done in the last fifty years, is the study and comparison of tribal societies and of small fields of social life with emphasis on the role of custom. When a social anthropologist's research leads him into any field, which belongs to other disciplines, what line should he adopt? What use may he make of the results that other scholars have already achieved? Must he knowingly make naive assumptions concerning events, which they have regarded as complex? In each of the fascinating essays which in turn form the core of this book - V. W. Turner's on symbols in Ndembu ritual; F.G. Bailey's on disputes which occurred in two Orissa villages; A. L. Epstein's on urban communities in Africa; T. Lupton's and S. Cunnison's on the relationship between behaviour in three Manchester workshops and certain events which happened outside; and W. Watson's on social mobility and social class in a coalmining Scottish burgh-several social anthropologists attempt to answer these questions by discussing the problems of method that they have encountered in their own recent research; and in the searching discussion which sum up the results. To analyze one first has to circumscribe one's field, and then simplify within the area of circumscription. Both circumscription and simplification may involve procedures of absorbing, abridging, and making naive assumptions. The contributors draw attention to the attempt to distinguish between psychical facts (emotions, thoughts, etc.) and psychological, which we believe should apply only to statements within the science of psychology, and not to be used by the former. They similarly distinguish between social facts and sociological or social-anthropological statements. ""Psychological"" and ""sociological"" are so well established in common parlance as adjectives to categorize facts that attempts to specialize them as hopeless.
Max Gluckman was a distinguished British anthropologist.
Background
A member of the second generation of great British anthropologists, Max Gluckman was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on January 26, 1911. His parents, Russian-Jewish immigrants to South Africa, later resettled in the newly-formed state of Israel, where Gluckman died in 1975.
Education
Originally intending to study law, he chose instead to pursue a degree in anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1936 Gluckman, a lifelong scholar-sportsman, was awarded a Transvaal Rhodes Scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford. Though he attended Kaspar B. Malinowski's famous seminars at the London School of Economics, it was the structural analyses of Edward Evans-Prichard and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown that most strongly influenced him. Gluckman was trained in structural analysis of social systems as dynamic but ultimately balanced systems of conflicting forces.
Career
In 1936-1938 Gluckman carried out fieldwork in Zululand. His chief interests were the study of African legal systems and the dynamics of local conflict and its resolution. While remaining within the tradition of structural analysis, Gluckman's work had a distinct orientation. Rather than viewing African societies as closed, stable systems, Gluckman recognized the sometimes chaotic changes brought about by colonialism and race relations. He distinguished between the relatively stable forms of conflict characteristic of pre-colonial Zululand and the much more complicated and volatile colonial situation. This early work attempted to apply structural analysis to social situations much more complex and unstable than was the practice for anthropologists at that time.
In 1939 Gluckman joined the staff of the Rhodes-Livingston Institute in what was then Northern Rhodesia. From 1942 to 1947 he was the institute's director, shaping its research interests through the force of his powerful personality and through his intellectual and moral sensibilities. His links to the elegant structuralism of Evans-Prichard and Radcliffe-Brown grew weaker. Here in central Africa Gluckman developed his interests in the complexities of social and political relations that took for granted racial, political, and cultural pluralism. He encouraged research in the urbanizing areas of southern and central Africa. In addition to scholarly papers, Gluckman supported the publication of works that would be of practical help to local administrators.
Never having fully abandoned his interest in law, Gluckman produced during this period a classic treatise on the principles of jurisprudence among the Barotse of central Africa. In this detailed analysis, Gluckman examined the legal concept of the "the reasonable man" in the context of an indigenous central African legal system. Despite his interest in conflict and in culturally complex settings, Gluckman always assumed that social systems could be analyzed as integrated systems. Thus his most enduring work is on rituals of rebellion, demonstrating how ritualized forms of hostility can serve ultimately to promote social cohesion by providing controlled expression of hostility to authority.
In 1947 Gluckman returned to England to teach at Oxford but almost immediately accepted an offer to head up a new anthropology department at Manchester University. What Gluckman established, however, was more than a new department. Gradually he assembled a group of colleagues and students that collectively became known as the Manchester School of Anthropology. Most of these anthropologists continued to carry out work in sub-Saharan Africa as did many other British anthropologists of the time. Yet the work of the Manchester School was distinctive for its emphasis on detailed village studies examining various social mechanisms for dealing with conflict.
Among Gluckman's numerous distinguished students perhaps Victor Turner is the most famous. In Turner's brilliant early work in the 1960s, Schism and Continuity in an African Society, Gluckman's interest in the dynamics of structural contradictions in society was carried out with particular success. As with many of Gluckman's students, Turner retained a strong interest in cultural outlets for such conflicts and contradictions. Witchcraft accusations, disease and curing rituals, rites of status reversal, or the role of village headmen as mediators with outsiders were all cultural themes that interested Gluckman and his students at Manchester. In stressing the role of conflict in social life and in taking into account the role of colonialism and race relations in modern African societies, Gluckman moved social anthropology in Britain in a Marxist direction. Yet he never completely abandoned the more traditional British interest in societies as stable self-regulating systems. His ethnographic analyses were distinguished by the use of a detailed single case study to illustrate general structural principles. Moreover, Gluckman and his students refined the use of statistics in the analysis of social structure and the introduction of historical materials as evidence for the contrast between periods of social stability and change.
In all his work, Gluckman insisted on the highest standards of scholarship. Max Gluckman published numerous books and articles. Among the most important of his works are Custom and Conflict in Africa (1955), Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa (1963), The Ideas in Barotse Jurisprudence (1967), Essays on the Ritual of Social Relations (1962), and Closed Systems and Open Minds (1967). His Frazer lecture, "Rituals of Rebellion, " is the most famous and succinct treatment of his approach to the structural study of conflict.
Less well-known is Gluckman's longtime commitment to the development of anthropology in Israel. He cooperated in the development of joint research projects between his own university and several Israeli universities. Israeli students were encouraged in these efforts to carry out community studies of Bedouin populations in their country.
Gluckman was a political activist, openly and forcefully anti-colonial. He engaged directly with social conflicts and cultural contradictions of colonialism, with racism, urbanisation and labour migration.
Views
Quotations:
"A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation. "
"I find that when I am gossiping about my friends, as well as my enemies, I am deeply conscious of performing a social duty. But when I hear they are gossiping about me, I am rightfully filled with righteous indignation. "
Interests
Max Gluckman's prodigious energies were not restricted to his anthropological research. He remained throughout his life a strong supporter of organized sports and became an acknowledged expert on soccer and an avid soccer fan in Manchester. Perhaps such an active interest in organized sports was an understandable extension of Gluckman's lifelong interest in the delicate balance between social conflict and order.