DOCSLIB.ORG

Eastern Rwanda)1

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Eastern Rwanda)1 Diffuse Power as a Commodity: A Case Study from Gisaka (Eastern Rwanda)1 PIERRE BETTEZ GRAVEL Northern Illinois University, U.S.A. TO obtain the best possible results from an analysis of power in a primitive society, it is best to define power broadly. The idea of diffuse power is not a new one. It has had intermittent currency fromJohn Locke to Bertrand Russell. But the philosophers have not necessarily circumscribed the concept in the way that I wish to convey. Moreover, since the definition is a simple one, it is surely better to define the concept than to review the literature. First, we should exclude the sense given it by Meyer Fortes and Evans-Pritchard in the introduction of their book, African Political Systems ( 1940, xxiii), 2 in which they see power as the ability of individuals to control and regulate the use of physical force. This, incidentally, is the sense most often used in reference to primitive data, and is the meaning given to the word by H. Codere in her article on "Power in Rwanda."3 We should also exclude the definitions of the political scientists having to do with decision making. Power as used here will mean the ability to do, i.e. the faculty possessed by things, events, institutions, and men, of having the potential to move and alter. Although I want to use the definition of power as a modal proposition, nevertheless, in order to have the meaning of power grasped more firmly, it is best to think of it as a substance rather than as an activity. Such a concept will not be much different from the concept of power found in primitive society. Power seems to be conceived in the way we-in our modern society­ think of energy: as imponderable force that is inevitably associated with matter. It is universal and pervasive. It is diffuse but can occur in various degrees of concentration. It can, therefore, be accumulated. It can be released, but must The fieldwork upon which this article is based was carried out in 1960--61. It was made possible through a grant from Ford Foundation's Behavioral Science Fund of the De­ partment of Anthropology of the University of Michigan; a grant from the Institut pour la Recherche Scientifique en Afrique Centrale, Brussels, Belgium; and a grant-in-aid of the Sigma Xi. The Ford Foundation furnished a Fellowship for library research and write-up. The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research aided the latter with a Fellowship also. 2 Fortes, Meyer and E. E. Evans-Pritchard, African Political Systems. Oxford University Press, London, 1940. 3 Codere, Helen, "Power in Rwanda," Anthropologica, n.s., IV, I, Ottawa, 1962. 164 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE SOCIOLOGY always be under control or else it destroys, in the same manner that uncon­ trolled energy destroys. Control is not necessarily willful and it may be sufficient that each form of power has its own locus. A rock, for instance, may have, in its own way, power; words have power and so has an individual man. The power of an individual, however, must be kept distinct from that of his status1 in the community. That is, as an individual, he has a certain personality and he may have certain skills perculiar to himself. This distinguishes him from other individuals in the society, but as head of a lineage, for example, a man has the power of his status (or position in the corporate group) which he would not have if he did not occupy that position. He then represents power that goes much beyond the sum total of the personal power of each individual that compose the lineage. The power of this group is governed by a logic of its own, quite distinct from that of the individuals comprising the corporation. Although the use of such a diffuse concept yields satisfying results when applied, for analysis, to primitive society, there is nothing in it that should prevent us from trying out the concept on data from modern industrial society. The results here too may be surprisingly fruitful. Without attributing any moral value to the word, it may be said that political power in primitive society, even if not always physically coercive, is, nevertheless, harsh. Primitive life, in general, is obviously precarious when one thinks of the personal safety of individuals who are-to varying degrees-at the mercy of the elements, sickness, competition for food, and wild animals. They must constantly be on their guard against the evil wishes of other men {e.g. when sickness strikes), and against enemies in general. The tenor of conver­ sations shows a great awareness of this. This constant vigilance is reflected in the stance of men at home, among their own people and their neighbors, where every action, every move might be a test of power. The Case of Rwanda Rwanda has been an independent Central African republic since July 1962. As a kingdom, Rwanda had been under Belgian Trusteeship since 1921. The country, however, being difficult of access, Rwandese society had remained relatively unchanged, even as late as the early 1960's. This means that essenti­ ally, it was a stratified, hierarchic society, with a king at its head. There are several works one might consult for a general description of the kingdom. One is Jacques]. Maquet's The Premise of Inequality (Maquet, 1961).2 Others are Pages' Un Royaume Hamite, 3 de Lacger's Ruanda (de Laeger, 1940 I am using the term status in the legal sense used also by Ralph Linton in his book, The Study of Man, p. 113. "A status is a position in a particular pattern" (notice that there is no connotation of prestige). 2 Maquet,Jacquesj., The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda. Oxford University Press, London, 1961. 3 Pages, Albert, Un Royaume Hamite au Centre de l' Afrique Centrale: Au Ruanda, sur Les bords du lac Kivu. Institut Royal Colonial Beige, section des sciences morales et politiques. Memoires, Vol. I. Brussels, 1933. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 1 American Anthropology in Africa and Afro-America
    1 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGY IN AFRICA AND AFRO-AMERICA: THE EARLY DAYS OF NORTHWESTERN’S PROGRAM OF AFRICAN STUDIES Simon Ottenberg PAS Working Papers Number 16 ISSN Print 1949-0283 ISSN Online 1949-0291 Edited by David Easterbrook, George and Mary LeCron Foster Curator Melville J Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University Program of African Studies Northwestern University 620 Library Place Evanston, Illinois 60208-4110 U.S.A © 2009 by Simon Ottenberg. All Rights Reserved. 2 © 2009 Simon Ottenberg All rights reserved. No part of the following papers may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the Program of African Studies, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles & reviews. 3 American Anthropology in Africa and Afro-America: The Early Days of Northwestern’s Program of African Studies Simon Ottenberg1 As a world power after World War II, some U.S. government officials and private foundations realized how little we knew of Africa, though allied troops had been engaged in North Africa and transported through West Africa. And the Cold War was leading to growing USSR influence in Africa. “It was sometimes said in the 1940s that the few African experts in the United States could hold a convention in a telephone booth.”2 Through funding from the Carnegie and Ford foundations and later from Fulbright awards and other government agencies, in 1948, Northwestern University became the first major African Studies Program, in the United States with support from the Carnegie Foundation. Multiple reasons for the choice were the pre-war research in Dahomey of Melville J.
    [Show full text]
  • Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski
    Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski Gunter Senft Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen 1. Biographical sketch "...he had an artists power to create with great integrative capacity a world of his own ... and he had the true scientist's intuitive discrimination between relevant and adventitious fundamental and secondary issues", this kind epitaph, which Malinowski formulated in his obituary for Sir James George Frazer a year before he himself died, could equally apply to Malinowski, as Raymond Firth (1981: 137) so rightly empha­ sized in one of his articles on his teacher and colleague. Bronislaw Malinowski, one of the most important anthropologists of the 20th century, is generally recognized as one of the founders of social anthropology, transforming 19th century speculative anthro­ pology into a field-oriented science that is based on empirical research. Malinowski is principally associated with his field research of the Mailu and especially of the Tro- briand Islanders in what is now Papua New Guinea, and his masterpieces on Trobri- and ethnography continue "to enthrall each generation of anthropologists through its intensity, rich detail, and penetrating revelations" (Weiner 1987: xiv). Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski (nicknamed Bronek & Bronio) was born in Cracow (then Austrian Galicia, now Poland) on 7 April 1884 as the only child of Jozefa (nee Lacka) and Lucjan Malinowski. His father (1839-1898) was professor of Slavonic philology at the Jagiellonian University of Cracow and was well known not only as a philologist but also as an ethnographer specialized in Polish dialects and Silesian folklore and ethnol­ ogy. He died of a heart attack at the age of 58 when his son (who was to die in the same way at the same age) was only 14.
    [Show full text]
  • Man and Culture : an Evaluation of the Work of Bronislaw Malinowski
    <r\ MAN AND CULTURE Contributors J. R. FIRTH RAYMOND FIRTH MEYER FORTES H. IAN HOGBIN PHYLLIS KABERRY E. R. LEACH LUCY MAIR S. F. NADEL TALCOTT PARSONS RALPH PIDDINGTON AUDREY I. RICHARDS I. SCHAPERA At the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in 1939 at Chicago Photograph by Leslie A. White Man and Culture AN EVALUATION OF THE WORK OF BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI EDITED BY RAYMOND FIRTH Routledge & Kegan Paul LONDON First published ig^y by Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited Broadway House, 68-y4 Carter Lane London, E.C.4 (g) Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited ig^y Printed in Great Britain by Lowe & Brydone {Printers) Limited London, N.W.io Second impression ip3g Second impression with corrections ig6o GN msLFsi Contents EDITOR S NOTE VII ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viii REFERENCES viii Introduction: Malinowski as Scientist and as Man i RAYMOND FIRTH The Concept of Culture in Malinowski's Work 15 AUDREY I. RICHARDS MalinowskVs Theory of Needs 33 RALPH PIDDINGTON Malinowski and the Theory of Social Systems 53 TALCOTT PARSONS Malinowski's Contribution to Field-work Methods and the Writing of Ethnography 71 PHYLLIS KABERRY Ethnographic Analysis and Language with Reference to Malinowski's Views 93 J. R. FIRTH The Epistemological Background to MalinowskVs Empiricism 119 E. R. LEACH MalinowskVs Theories of Law 139 I, SCHAPERA Malinowski and the Study of Kinship 157 MEYER FORTES Malinowski on Magic and Religion 189 S. F. NADEL The Place of Malinowski in the History of Economic Anthro- pology 209 RAYMOND FIRTH Malinowski and the Study of Social Change 229 LUCY MAIR Anthropology as Public Service and MalinowskVs Contribution to it 245 H.
    [Show full text]
  • Intellectual Roots of Key Anthropologists
    SELECTIONS FROM ASSESSING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY Robert Borofsky, editor (1994) New York: McGraw-Hill FREDRIK BARTH is currently Research Fellow under the Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Professor of Anthropology at Emory University. He has previously taught at the universities of Oslo and Bergen, and as a visitor at various American departments of anthropology. He has carried out research in a number of areas, starting in the Middle East with a focus on tribal politics and ecology. His best known works from this period are: Political Leadership among Swat Pathans (1959), Nomads of South Persia (1961), Models of Social Organization (1964), and the edited work Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969). Later, he has also done fieldwork in New Guinea and Southeast Asia, and among his publications are Ritual and Knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea (1975) and Cosmologies in the Making (1987). A monograph entitled Balinese Worlds will appear in 1993. "After a wartime childhood in Norway, I started at the University of Chicago with an interest in paleontology and human evolution. But the active and rich teaching program of Fred Eggan, Sol Tax, Robert Redfield and others broadened my intellectual horizon and led, after an interlude on a dig in Iraq with Bob Braidwood, to my choice of social anthropology as the focus of my work. My foundations derived indirectly from Radcliffe-Brown, who had taught my teachers during the 1930s. "Like many of my Chicago cohort, I went on to further studies in England. I chose the L.S.E. Autobiographies: 2 and developed a life-long association with Raymond Firth and, even more importantly, with Edmund Leach, whom I later followed to Cambridge for my Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • The Politics of Disciplinary Professionalisation
    Chapter 4 THE POLITICS OF DISCIPLINARY PROFESSIONALISATION Introduction Social anthropology’s rise to post-war intellectual favour was a triumph of methodological and analytical innovation. Yet it was a triumph that depended on finding organisations prepared and willing to fund this new approach to anthropological research. Up till the 1930s, the search had been relatively fruitless, even though anthropologists had been employed by the Colonial Office and by individual colonial governments. Malinowski’s breakthrough came from his skill at cloaking his vision in the rhetoric of ‘practical anthropology’. His success in getting the US-based Rockefeller Foundation to support the work at the LSE transformed the discipline’s fortunes. This chapter explores these early attempts at applying anthropology and the way in which struggles over the place of this work within the discipline were played out in the professional association. Radcliffe- Brown’s stormy tenure as President of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) in the late 1930s provoked a major rift within the Institute. The affair led E.E. Evans-Pritchard, who was Radcliffe- Brown’s replacement in the Oxford Professorship, to found a new professional body after the war. The Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA) was launched in July 1946. The ASA was memorably described by Raymond Firth as a ‘band of brothers’ (Firth 1986, 5). An aura of intimacy and clubbishness "Difficult Folk? A Political History of Social Anthropology" by David Mills is available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. This edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. OA ISBN: 978-1-78533-663-8.
    [Show full text]
  • Pitt-Rivers Omnibus Front Matter+Introduction
    introduction A perfect host Julian Pitt-Rivers and the anthropology of grace Andrew Shryock and Giovanni da Col Mary Douglas begins her appreciation of Julian Pitt-Rivers’ Andalusian eth- nography with a vivid recollection of how he appeared to her when they frst met at Oxford, in the late 1940s. He stood out from the other anthropology students in many ways. It was partly because of his striking good looks, partly his elegance, which would have distin- guished him anywhere, and partly because of his princely good manners. Debo- nair—I think everyone who remembers him would agree that debonair was the word. (2004: 43, emphasis added) In a similar vein, Jonathan Benthall describes Pitt-Rivers as “the most cosmo- politan British social anthropologist of his generation,” and “everywhere, the odd man out.”1 Allusions to his patrician habitus are pervasive among colleagues who knew Pitt-Rivers well, and this way of portraying him is never simply 1. Te words are from Benthall’s obituary for Pitt-Rivers, which appeared in Te Independent, August 24, 2001 (www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor- julian-pitt-rivers-9153369.html). xiv ANDREW SHRYOCK AND GIOVANNI DA COL personal. Instead, it would seem to relate directly to his professional life, and it says important things about his approach to social analysis, in which hospitality and grace fgure centrally as both objects and methods of study. Julian Pitt-Rivers (1919–2001) was a leading fgure in twentieth-century social anthropology, known best for his writings on Mediterranean societies, yet his intellectual profle resists easy characterization.
    [Show full text]
  • Unit 3 Social Organisation and Dynamic Theories of Structure
    UNIT 3 SOCIAL ORGANISATION AND DYNAMIC THEORIES OF STRUCTURE Contents 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Social Organisation and Social Structure 3.3 Dynamic Theories of Structure 3.3.1 Social Structure is a Reality: A.R. Radcliffe-Brown’s Contribution 3.3.2 George Peter Murdock’s view on Social Structure 3.3.3 Social Structure is a Model: Contribution of Claude Lévi-Strauss 3.3.4 A Synthesis of Structural Functionalism: Contribution of S.F Nadel 3.3.5 Edmund Leach on Social Structure 3.3.6 Raymond Firth on Social Structure 3.3.7 Contribution of Meyer Fortes 3.3.8 Social Structure Refers to Relations between Groups: The Contribution of E.E. Evans-Pritchard 3.3.9 Talcott Parsons on Social Structure 3.3.10 Emile Durkheim on Social Structure 3.3.11 Rodney Needham on Social Structure 3.4 Summary References Suggested Reading Sample Questions Learning Objectives After going through this unit, you will be able to: define Social Organisation and Social Structure; describe about the dynamic theories of social structure; and indicate the importance underlying these theories from an anthropological perspective. 3.1 INTRODUCTION In this lesson we are going to try and understand about ‘Social Organisation and Dynamic Theories of Structure.’ The term ‘structure’ (Latin structura from struere, to construct) has been applied to human societies since the 19th century. Before that time, its use was more common in other fields such as construction or biology. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1999) gives three meanings of the 33 Anthropological Theories-I term structure: (i) the way in which something is organised, built, or put together (e.g., the structure of the human body); (ii) a particular system, pattern, procedure, or institution (e.g., class structure, salary structure); and (iii) a thing made up of several parts put together in a particular way (e.g., a single-storey structure).
    [Show full text]
  • Downloaded From: Ebooks.Adelaide.Edu.Au/D/Descartes/Rene/D44dm/Part2.Html, Sept
    A History of Anthropology Eriksen HOA3 00 pre 1 16/04/2013 16:04 Anthropology, Culture and Society Series Editors: Professor Vered Amit, Concordia University and Dr Jon P. Mitchell, University of Sussex Published titles include: Claiming Individuality: Discordant Development: The Aid Effect: The Cultural Politics of Global Capitalism and the Giving and Governing in Distinction Struggle for Connection in International Development EDITED BY VERED AMIT AND Bangladesh EDITED BY DavID MOSSE AND NOEL DYCK KATY GARDNER DavID LEWIS Community, Cosmopolitanism Anthropology, Development Cultivating Development: and the Problem of Human and the Post-Modern An Ethnography of Aid Policy Commonality Challenge and Practice VERED AMIT AND KATY GARDNER AND DavID MOSSE NIGEL RAPPORT DavID LEWIS Contesting Publics Home Spaces, Street Styles: Border Watch: Feminism, Activism, Contesting Power and Identity Cultures of Immigration, Ethnography in a South African City Detention and Control LYNNE PHILLIPS AND SALLY COLE LESLIE J. BANK ALEXANDRA HALL Terror and Violence: In Foreign Fields: Corruption: Imagination and the The Politics and Experiences Anthropological Perspectives Unimaginable of Transnational Sport EDITED BY DIETER HALLER AND EDITED BY ANDREW STRATHERN, Migration CRIS SHORE PAMELA J. STEWART AND THOMAS F. CARTER Anthropology’s World: NEIL L. WHITEHEAD On the Game: Life in a Twenty-First Century Anthropology, Art and Women and Sex Work Discipline Cultural Production SOPHIE DAY ULF HANNERZ MAruškA SvašEK Slave of Allah: Humans and Other Animals Race
    [Show full text]
  • Radcliffe-Brown During and After World War II
    History of Anthropology Newsletter Volume 12 Issue 2 December 1985 Article 4 January 1985 "Yours Affectionately, Rex": Radcliffe-Brown During and After World War II George W. Stocking Jr. Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/han Part of the Anthropology Commons, and the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons Recommended Citation Stocking, George W. Jr. and Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald (1985) ""Yours Affectionately, Rex": Radcliffe- Brown During and After World War II," History of Anthropology Newsletter: Vol. 12 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/han/vol12/iss2/4 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/han/vol12/iss2/4 For more information, please contact [email protected]. SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY I. Creation o£ the Archives de l'ethnologie, MuseeI de !'Homme In March o£ 1985, it- was decided to £orm a new section o£ the Laboratoire d'Ethnologie du MuseeI de l'Homme, Paris, entitled the Department d'Archives de l'ethnologie. Directed by Jean Jamin, the Archives will have the task o£ inventorying manuscripts relating to the ethnographic collections o£ the Laboratoire; constituting an archive £or the history o£ the and more generally, of French ethnology; encouraging rerearch on the epistemo·logy and history of ethnology; and organizing a seminar devoted to the history o£ museological theories and practices in ethnology. FOOTNOTES FOR THE HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY 'Yours Af£ectionately. Rex'-- Radcli£fe-Brown During and A£ter World War II. A. R. Radcli££e-Brown £irst met Lloyd Warner in 1926 when he was in transit between two of the many academic appointments he held during the course of his peripatetic career as the Jonathan Appleseed o£ social anthropology.
    [Show full text]
  • Are Stateless Societies More Unstable Than State Ones?
    Douglas Ayling Are stateless societies more unstable than state ones? In the absence of a state system, one might expect a stateless society to be liable to instability and collapse on three counts. Firstly since the non-state society has no formalised structure for resolving disputes – which could otherwise both confer legitimacy on the resolution and physically enforce the decision – that therefore internal conflicts over relationships, resources, etc are more likely than under the state to escalate from vendetta to blood feud to civil war, disrupting the stability qua physical integrity of the community. Secondly, one might expect that without the mechanisms of a state, a community would suffer instability because an inability to muster the symbolic systems of statecraft to inculcate an internal allegiance and solidarity would expose the community to internal factionalism. Without the “ideological rewards”1 and sense of representation that a state can sustain, divisive discourses and identity-based claims may fragment group identity and raise transaction costs. This is instability qua identity. A third expectation one might have of stateless societies is that compared with state societies, they may be more vulnerable to encroachment or domination from external forces since, as a corollary to their underutilisation of ideological state apparatuses, their less stratified 1 Henri J.M. Claessen, ‘State’, The Encyclopaedia of Cultural Anthropology, ed. David Levinson, Melvin Ember (New York, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1996) p.1255 page 1 Douglas Ayling labour and their less systematised taxation, it is relatively difficult for them to maintain a trained standing army to defend their territorial integrity and fight for physical resources.
    [Show full text]
  • Travels Through Anthropology-Land
    Travels through anthropology-land Alan Macfarlane, March 2006 (originally written as part of a talk for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Association of Social Anthropologists, Keele, April 2006) * I first heard of the existence of a new subject and its practitioners, a strange, exotic and exciting tribe that I wanted to learn more about, in Oxford in early 1964 when I was just 22. I had read history as an undergraduate in Oxford and after a false start on my D.Phil. had decided to choose between myth, sex or witchcraft in seventeenth century England as possible topics for my research. I went to see Keith Thomas, not knowing that he had already started to investigate the relations between anthropology and history, having given a talk to Peter Burke’s seminar on this subject (see Burke interview) in the previous year. This which was to be published as ‘History and Anthropology’ in the influential journal Past and Present in 1964 and would be my guide for a number of years. Keith had also started to collect materials for the work he would publish in 1970 as Religion and the Decline of Magic. He generously suggested that I choose witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England on my list. He told me that I should attend lectures in the Institute of Social Anthropology in Oxford and, if possible, meet Evans-Pritchard. I followed his advice and suddenly a whole world opened out in front of me, a previously never guessed land which seemed to offer answers or at least discussion of many of the questions I was then asking.
    [Show full text]
  • Meyer Fortes- the Prologue Family Studies.Pdf
    THE PROLOGUE FAMILY STUDIES IN GHANA 1920-1970 PROFESSOR MEYER FORTES* When I was invited to review the development of Family Research in Ghana for the past fifty years, I realised that it was an impossible task. I was compelled gloomily to reflect that it is just some ten years short of the length of that time, that I myself have been engaged in these and related studies. I am not acquainted with all the recent voluminous literature on family law, systems of land tenure, chiefship, etc* of post independence Ghana, but a quick glance suggests that the bulk of attention is given to the relevant social institu­ tions of Akan Ghana. One reason I suppose is that the historical and scholarly literature on Akan Ghana is larger and is more sophisticated than almost any similar body of material on any African society outside the Republic of South Africa, certainly more than any other group in Ghana. Of course the beginnings of social research, in the widest sense, on the general topic of The Family in Ghana go back to the early attention paid to the Akan peoples, mainly because they were the first to be exposed to the intrusion of external, western, cultural, political and economic forces and to be brought together in due course into the general framework of the colonial era. Leaving aside a number of early contributions, by Government official missionaries and local scholars, (many of which are well summarised in J.G. Frazer's Totemism and Exogamy Vol.l 1910,) the first major contribution, during the past fifty years, to the body of knowledge we are adding to at this conference must surely be regarded ^Professor Fortes is William Wyse Professgr of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge.
    [Show full text]