Culture Contact as a Dynamic Process an Investigation in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast

Africa ◽  
1936 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Fortes
Keyword(s):  
Zero Point ◽  
Culture Contact ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Northern Territories ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Social Anthropologist ◽  
European Civilization

Opening ParagraphIn considering the effects of the contact between African societies and European civilization, one is apt to forget that the exploitation of Africa by Europeans began more than five centuries ago. To trace the consequences of this long intercourse between Africa and Europe is a legitimate and worthwhile task. But is it a task for the social anthropologist? Previous contributors to the present symposium have emphasized the necessity of historical reconstruction in order to understand the effects of contact with European civilization upon a particular culture. They have been fortunate in dealing with cultures where the initial impact of the white man is recent enough to be within living memory. On the West Coast of Africa no feat of skill or imagination would suffice to establish a reliable zero point of culture contact. One would presumably have to be content with the construction of an ‘ideal type’ based on the scanty literature and on descriptions of cognate cultures. But must we therefore abandon every hope of investigating the influence of European civilization in these areas, and confine ourselves to the regions of recent contact where the procedure sponsored by Dr. Hunter and Dr. Mair can be successfully employed? I do not think so; and I shall endeavour to describe an approach which is, I believe, equally applicable both in societies which have recently come under the influence of culture contact, and those which have reached an advanced stage of Europeanization.

Culture Contact on the Fringe of Civilization

Africa ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. T. ◽  
G. M. Culwick
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
Culture Contact ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Social ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Coil Method ◽  
Incomplete Picture ◽  
Careful Investigation

Opening ParagraphIt is natural that the urgent need for systematic study of culture contact should first and most forcibly be felt with regard to areas where the process of ‘civilization’ or modernization is already comparatively far advanced, whether it be in the form of detribalization in urban and industrial districts or of the adaptation of the tribal system among an important and powerful people like the Baganda. In the first place, those areas present the most pressing practical problems and exhibit the most acute symptoms of social, economic, and political strain. In the second place, as a corollary of their accessibility to exotic influences, they are the areas most easily accessible to observers trained and untrained, and their troubles often force themselves on the attention of the civilized world. They have, however, certain disadvantages from the point of view of the student of culture contact, in that, as Miss Mair has shown, the opportunity to study the stages in their development has gone for ever. By careful investigation a useful and reliable, if incomplete, picture can be drawn of the working of the social order just before the torrent of modern civilization broke in upon it, and the comparison between past and present which such a reconstruction makes possible provides us with knowledge which is both necessary for the explanation of existing phenomena and also of the greatest practical value. But just as one cannot tell by looking at the finished product whether a pot has been fashioned from the lump or by the coil method, so, in the absence of proper observation at the time, we cannot reconstruct a picture of the intermediate stages in the creation of the present situation, or ever know the details of the processes whereby native society adjusted itself to some innovations and was dislocated by others.

The West African Students' Union: A Study in Culture Contact

Africa ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Garigue
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Geographical Origin ◽  
Culture Contact ◽  
West African ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
The West ◽  
African Students ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Large Groups

Opening ParagraphThis study of a specific instance of culture contact, that provided by the situation of West African students in Britain, is limited to a discussion and analysis of their association in the West African Students' Union. The fact of common geographical origin partly explains the formation of such a Union, for the same reason as United States, Canadian, South African, and other large groups of students living in Britain have become so organized. But this would ignore the situation of colour prejudice facing coloured students in Britain, and also their colonial status in relation to Britain. Because of this determining characteristic of being an association of coloured colonial students, the West African Students' Union has developed, throughout its history, certain features not normally found among students' unions, and which are reminiscent of ‘protest movements’. The analysis which is presented here seeks to determine the reasons why West African students organized themselves into the West African Students' Union from 1926 onwards. It is unfortunately not possible to do more here than touch briefly upon the major changes which took place during that time, but as most of the data here presented have not hitherto been published, enough details have been included to give an idea of the manner in which members of the West African Students' Union responded to the situation of culture contact. The paper is divided into two parts: first, an historical account of the type of ideas held by the members of the Union; and, secondly, a discussion of the reasons why West African students join the Union.

Social Problems and Research in British West Africa

Africa ◽  
1947 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Firth
Keyword(s):  
Economic Structure ◽  
West African ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
The West ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
The Social ◽  
British Commonwealth ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThe broad characteristics of the British West African colonies and their main social and economic problems are already fairly familiar from the relevant sections of Lord Hailey's African Survey (1938), and Professor Hancock's Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs (1942). A recent article by Dr. M. Fortes (1945) helps to bring the analysis up to date and makes very clear how great and rapid are the changes taking place in the social and economic structure. In this present contribution, the result of a very brief study, I attempt only to underline some of the salient features as they appear to one new to the West African scene, and to estimate the problems from the point of view of sociological research.

Right and Left Hand among the Kaguru: A Note on Symbolic Classification

Africa ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 250-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. O. Beidelman
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
East Central ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Social Anthropologist ◽  
Right And Left Hand

Opening ParagraphThis paper presents the general features of dualistic symbolic classification among the Kaguru, a Bantu people of east-central Tanganyika, East Africa.It has been written as a result of my reading Needham's stimulating article, ‘The Left Hand of the Mugwe’, which recently appeared in Africa. Using Bernardi's ethnographic data on the Meru, Needham isolates a dualistic symbolic classification of those people. The result is a very striking illustration of the order and understanding gained by the social anthropologist once this important feature of Meru ideology is shown. Needham then goes on to indicate some of the relations which such a symbolic classification may have to certain structural divisions of a society.

The Establishment of the Medina in Dakar, Senegal, 1914

Africa ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond F. Betts
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Residential Segregation ◽  
The West ◽  
Administrative Policy ◽  
Urban Problem ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The City ◽  
European Populations

Opening ParagraphWhile the social history of Dakar, Senegal, exhibits many of the characteristics common to most Eurafrican cities on the West coast, the rather abrupt manner in which the policy of residential segregation replaced the earlier pattern of co-existence, if not integration, of the African and European populations merits particular attention. The establishment of the Medina—the ‘native quarter’, to employ the colonial idiom of the day—was the most decisive and significant action taken by the French authorities in the history of the city. Yet this decision resulted from no carefully considered change in administrative policy, which had been somewhat laissez-faire in residential matters, but rather was hastily urged after the outbreak of a severe epidemic of bubonic plague in 1914. What began medically was to become, however, a major social and urban problem.

An Experiment in Public-opinion Polling among Preliterate People

Africa ◽  
1956 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. G. Marwick
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Public Opinion Survey ◽  
Opinion Polling ◽  
The Social ◽  
Development Policies ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Social Anthropologist

Opening ParagraphTowards the end of 1947 I carried out a public-opinion survey among the Cewa tribe of Fort Jameson district, Northern Rhodesia. Although the survey was a failure, judged by the rigorous standards of public-opinion polling, it nevertheless threw light on some of the problems that arise when public-opinion-polling techniques are adapted for use among preliterate peoples. Research of this kind has a place in assessing general morale, in gauging people's reactions to administrative and development policies, and in supplementing the more intensive, but highly selective, observations of the social anthropologist. Because this is an important but almost untouched field, I am recording the lessons that are to be learned from my experiment.

Our Most Troubling Madness

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Defeat ◽  
Social World ◽  
Epidemiological Evidence ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Brain Alteration ◽  
Benign Course ◽  
Cultural Features ◽  
The Way

This book examines the way schizophrenia is shaped by its social context: how life is lived with this madness in different settings, and what it is about those settings that alters the course of the illness, its outcome, and even the structure of its symptoms. Until recently, schizophrenia was perhaps our best example—our poster child—for the “bio-bio-bio” model of psychiatric illness: genetic cause, brain alteration, pharmacologic treatment. We now have direct epidemiological evidence that people are more likely to fall ill with schizophrenia in some social settings than in others, and more likely to recover in some social settings than in others. Something about the social world gets under the skin. This book presents twelve case studies written by psychiatric anthropologists that help to illustrate some of the variability in the social experience of schizophrenia and that illustrate the main hypotheses about the different experience of schizophrenia in the west and outside the west--and in particular, why schizophrenia seems to have a more benign course and outcome in India. We argue that above all it is the experience of “social defeat” that increases the risk and burden of schizophrenia, and that opportunities for social defeat are more abundant in the modern west. There is a new role for anthropology in the science of schizophrenia. Psychiatric science has learned—epidemiologically, empirically, quantitatively—that our social world makes a difference. But the highly structured, specific-variable analytic methods of standard psychiatric science cannot tell us what it is about culture that has that impact. The careful observation enabled by rich ethnography allows us to see in more detail what kinds of social and cultural features may make a difference to a life lived with schizophrenia. And if we understand culture’s impact more deeply, we believe that we may improve the way we reach out to help those who struggle with our most troubling madness.

Women break down the barriers to the Vietnamese social sciences and humanities

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan-Hoang Vuong
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Middle Income Country ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Income Country ◽  
The West ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Low And Middle Income

Valian rightly made a case for better recognition of women in science during the Nobel week in October 2018 (Valian, 2018). However, it seems most published views about gender inequality in Nature focused on the West. This correspondence shifts the focus to women in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in a low- and middle-income country (LMIC).

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