Experience-rich anthropology
Experience-rich anthropology
| Title | Relevant to | CD or WWW |
| Pitt Rivers, anthropology and ethnography in the nineteenth century, the history of museums, field collection and the iconography of shields. | History of Anthropology/Material Culture/Museum Studies/Visual anthropology | CD in part |
| 'Peasant Social Worlds and their Transformation' (Mexico and Brazil). | South American Societies (Brazil and Mexcio)/Field methods/Economic Anthropology | WWW |
| 'Venda Girls' Initiation' | African Societies/Ethnomusicology/Religion Initiation | WWW and CD |
| 'Working Notes on the Chiefdom of Bum': identity and ethnicity and colonial ethnography. | African Societies/Ethnicity/History of Anthropology | WWW |
| The Ascoli Project - a Puglian town and its hinterland | European Anthropology/Historical Anthropology/ Kinship Family structure and inheritance | WWW |
| African Ancestors | Religion/African Societies/ | WWW |
| Mambila Riddles | African Societies/Sociolinguistics | WWW |
| Mambila spider divination | Religion/African Societies/Rationality | WWW |
| Archival sources from Farnham Rehfisch's work on the Mambila (1953). | African Societies/History of Anthropology | WWW |
| 'Ritual spirit possession in the Mina Nago of Northern Brazil'. | Religion/Brazilian Societies/ | CD |
| Notes for evaluation |
You can use the material here to explore a number of different things, from a number of different angles, in a number of different ways. Possible avenues of exploration include the history of anthropology and ethnography; shields and weapons; ethnographic museums (specifically the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford), and types of museum display; the anthropology of art; and collecting, particularly field collecting.
The material presented here grew out from consideration of a group of shields, gathered together by Lieutenant-General Pitt Rivers, and displayed in Bethnal Green Museum in 1874. Thinking about these shields, and about what lay behind the way in which they were displayed, leads us into some very interesting areas.
At present this material is available for Pilot testing only upon prior agreement. It will be distributed in HTML format via CD but can then be made available over a local network for access by staff and students.
This interactive learning project explores the transformation of rural societies
in the Twentieth Century. You will learn about theoretical debates and can explore
issues in more depth through case studies based on anthropological fieldwork.
In contrast to a printed book, you can choose how much detail and contextual information
you want at any moment in the presentation, and you can use the various indexing
and search facilities built into the package to find information, list the contents
of the different sections of the presentation, and gain suggestions for further reading
in a traditional library. Each page except this one has buttons at the top left-hand
corner so that you can move forwards or backwards through the presentation in a linear
way, or come back to this page, which is always the button marked "home".
You can also jump between different sections and obtain more detailed information
by clicking on the blue hypertext links embedded in the pages.
In addition to pictures, the case study sections offer you video and sound clips
to enrich your learning experience.
'Peasant Social Worlds and their Transformation' (Mexico and Brazil).<http://nt2.ec.man.ac.uk/multimedia/>
Between May 1956 and December 1958, John Blacking lived amongst the Venda of the
Sibasa district of the Northern Transvaal, a lush, mountainous part of South Africa,
directly south of Zimbabwe, which was then still called Rhodesia. During this period
he documented the three phases of initiation for Venda girls: vhusha, tshikanda and
domba. Though Blacking never produced a monograph based on this material, a four-part
study he published in 1969, "Songs, Dance, Mimes and Symbolism of Venda Girls'
Initiation Schools," and several other independent articles of the same period
provide detailed ethnographic descriptions of these institutions and of the expressive
repertoire used in them. While his analyses hint at some of the directions his later
research would take, these early publications are more akin to highly systematised
inventories of primary field data. Few ethnomusicologists have left such a wealth
of accessible material at the disposal of subsequent generations.
Throughout his life Blacking drew upon his original research to formulate many of
his ideas about the crucial role of music and dance in human society. Based upon
this material he participated in practically every debate that emerged in the field
of ethomusicological theory and method, from formal analyses of Venda musical systems
to such issues as the biological foundations of music, the anthropology of the body,
the study of affect and emotion in music and dance, the political implications of
musical performance, music education and many other themes. The aim of this CD-Rom
is not so much to outline the way in which the Venda material marked John Blacking's
work as it is to re-present it in the spirit in which it was originally published:
as an invitation for further analytical readings.
We enter the Venda girls' initiation schools through the general overview Blacking
(1985:80-87) provided of them in his article "Movement, Dance, Music, and Venda
Girls' Initiation Cycle." This texts does not only furnish the most concise
and vivid overall description of the initiation process in Blacking's publications,
it also highlights many of the themes that came to dominate his work on music and
dance. This text leads into the early ethnographies, in which each stage of the cycle
is described in detail. These sections of the CD-Rom are all richly illustrated with
the wealth of recordings, photographs and film footage Blacking made during his field-work.
'Venda Girls' Initiation' John Blacking<<http://sapir.ukc.ac.uk/QUB/Introduction/I_Frame.html>
This project represents a remarkable coalescence of markedly divergent visions. Sally Chilver was born the year that the Great War in Europe began. One year on, in 1915, the German colonial occupation of Kamerun was brought to an end and the 'Kamerun' state effectively partitioned and separately administered by British and French colonial administrations for almost half a century prior to independence. Shortly on, in 1918, an especially virulent strain of influenza swept the globe leaving further millions dead in its wake.
The region of West-central Africa, the Cameroon Grassfields, that Sally Chilver was later to bring to world scholarly attention was untouched by neither war nor disease. In 1918 the influenza pandemic left its morbid imprint on the Grassfields where both the local population and the young and inexperienced British colonial administration were seriously depleted. These historical antecedents underlie the conditions and complexity of Grassfields culture and society which, in turn, have been the on-going forensic focus of the keen ethnographic and historical gaze of Sally Chilver over much of this century.
Sally Chilver's work in and on the Grassfields of Cameroon is inextricably tied in with that of her late colleague and close friend, the renowned anthropologist, Phyllis Kaberry. Sally, herself, brought, what was at the time, an innovative and broad historical methodology and perspective to the investigation of the ethnography of the Grassfields. In both their collaborative efforts and in Sally Chilver's and later reworking and recensions of their fieldnotes and in her ongoing correspondence with local informants we see an emergent 'anthropology' which retains greater currency today than the more methodologically narrow functionalism of the time. This methodologically broad approach to the Grassfields explicitly included the views of explorers, missionaries and colonial administrators such voices which were more usually eschewed in contemporary functionalist anthropology. These materials and voices are repeated here in these pages.
While methodologically Sally Chilver was ahead of her time there are also theoretical implications which arise from that methodology which have particular and apposite resonance with our own recent concerns with issues to do with identity and ethnicity. Exploratory, missiological and colonial administrative (and ethnographic!) writings all bear directly on these issues. And the bearing these things have goes beyond simply recording observations of existing conditions. Enquiry itself may in part be generative of the states it seeks to uncover. Sally Chilver's meticulous and ongoing enquiry into the ethnography of the wider Grassfields is reproduced here in microcosm in the form of her 'Working Notes on the Bum' which exemplifies both the quality and depth of that enquiry as well as the breadth and systematicity of her methodology.
In this project I have sought to marry up Sally Chilver's particular historical and ethnographic vision with an equally, albeit technologically, innovative approach to the representation and delivery of these scholarly materials. I refer to Mike Fischer's work on computing and anthropology at the University of Kent and the development of the ERA project of which this project forms one element. That work, supported by David Zeitlyn and Alan Bicker, derives from an extraordinarily innovative approach to the use of Information Technology, electronic communications and multimedia in representing ethnography and anthropological ideas.
Hence I wish to acknowledge my deep gratitude to Mike Fischer and Sally Chilver for giving me this opportunity to marry up their extraordinary visions of what anthropology is and what anthropology might be. I wish to pay particular thanks to Sally Chilver both for her great courage in allowing her material to be used in this way and also for her time and patience in assisting, explaining and, with her usual good heart, generally jollying things along.
Ian Fowler July 1998
Ascoli Satriano is a small 'city' in Puglia, located on the south-western fringes of the Tavoliere, south Italy's largest plain. During the period 1700 - 1990 this area was subject to rapid, often turbulent economic change - from transhumant pastoralism, to large estates and later land reform. Against this background, this project examines changes in kinship and family forms and in marriage and inheritance strategies.
In recent years, by far the most innovative analysis of Italian kinship and marriage systems has come from annales and micro-historians. This project seeks to offer a new synthesis of historical and anthropological materials, using a combination of archival material and ethnographic fieldwork. Ascoli was chosen partly for its fairly manageable size (pop. 2,000 : 1700; 6,800: 1994), but more especially for the high quality of its historical records. Using these archival sources, we constructed a database linking the different types of records through individuals mentioned in the texts.
Mainly, although not exclusively, aimed at anthropologists,
this teaching package explores the main documentary research resources available
to historically-inclined anthropologists in the notarially rich cultures of
south-west Europe. Moreover, in focusing on the forms, time-spread, limitations
and circumstances of production of these sources, implicitly at least, it calls
for a more critical and sensitive analysis, of greater time depth, than is commonly
found in existing historical-anthropological studies of south Italy that, only too
often, have taken historical sources too much at face value, and have over-privileged
a recent, much foreshortened, past.
The first section is based upon an article on kinship and neighbourhood in 18th and
20th century Ascoli. It introduces the main types of population and property sources
- State of Souls, cadastral and hearth-tax records, parish registers - and seeks
to illustrate the range of information they contain, and the ways they can be used
in both family and wider kinship reconstruction.
The second section focuses on changes over time in inheritance, marriage and dowry patterns and, more specifically, seeks to illustrate how notarial contracts can be used to document these processes.
The final two sections are more concerned with the visual and ritual representation of urban and rural space, with the rise and fall of a southern European peasant society, and with long-term agricultural and urban change.
Throughout, we have provided specimens of both original
texts and rough translations of their contents. Our main aim, here, is to show that
commonly asserted anthropological fears about the palaeographic difficulties associated
with the use of 16th - 18th century records are greatly over-stated. The most significant
problems in employing historical materials are in understanding the context and methods
of their creation.
prepared by David Zeitlyn
Preface and summary
The status of ancestors in African anthropology has been much discussed over the
course of the 20th century. Some of the classic texts are presented below along with
some of the correspondence that has resulted in the columns of the professional journal
Man (now JRAI). These discussions provide an analytic framework which may be used
to assess the Mambila case material that follows. Mambila is an interesting case
to consider since it remains unclear whether or not the Mambila can meaningfully
be said to have ancestors. The readings and case material allow the readers, to make
their own minds up.
This collection was developed as part of an exploration of the process of teaching
and learning anthropology. It has been prepared as part of a project funded by the
UK Higher Education Funding Council . Its intended audience is undergraduate students
of anthropology, although I should say that I have learnt a lot myself in the process
of its preparation. The exercise of teaching is itself a learning experience! What
follows is a case study that provides some material with which to answer the question
of whether the Mambila of Nigeria and Cameroon have an ancestor cult. In order to
attempt an answer we must have a clear understanding of what ancestors are, and since
the very meaning of the term is contested, a collection of some of the key articles
on the subject forms the opening chapters. These are complemented by some of the
correspondence they occasioned in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
(then called Man) which serve to emphasise the points of controversy.
From the theoretical background we turn to a case in point. For Mambila, as I understand
them, the dead are not of as critical importance as is the case for the Tallensi
or the Suga. To justify this claim I summarize the evidence and produce case material
relevant to attitudes to the dead. Since this is a case study rather than a monograph
I have tried as best I can to produce all the evidence available to me, so that readers
can argue the opposite case. I believe that whatever conclusion one comes to
about Mambila ancestors, they fail to fit comfortably with the terms of the major
theories about
ancestors in general. The struggle to make sense of both the theory and the data
illuminates the one
as much as the other.
African Ancestors <http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Fdtl/Ancestors/>
Introduction to Mambila Riddles
The riddles which follow were collected in the course of ongoing fieldwork in the
village of Somié Adamaoua Province, Cameroon. Most of them were collected in
the late 1980s by Ndinuaga Salomon who was then a school boy c. 15 years of age.
Most riddling is done between children in their teens but they then form a backdrop
to adult interactions. This may be seen most clearly in the use of one riddle as
a rebuff to those who enter houses without asking permission (Challenge for the reader:
idenitify which one it is). As such they shade towards proverbs, but are seen by
most Mambila as distinct. They are games (vogo) of children and lack a proper name
- they may be refered to by the formulaic question answer pair which introduces a
riddle: the riddler says "Ngengge" and those who will play the game answer
with "Nang go". The riddle is then put.
If no one can guess the correct answer they give up, but before being told the answer
they must pay a forfeight. This is verbal only but those giving up are asked to "surrender"
either a village (i.e. the population of a village) or some of their kin. If the
questioner wishes to emphasise their superiority they can say that the offering is
not enough and insists that more is offered.
Mambila Riddles <http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/ERA/Riddle/riddle.html>
This page leads to links about the anthropological study of divination. There are many WWW pages about divination and oracles (see links on the page). Here we concentrate on anthropological studies of two different sorts of divination.
The simulations allow students to gain some impression of the process of actually doing divination which can be used to help their understanding of the online readings. This provides means of appproaching anthropological classics such as Evans-Pritchard, E. 1937. Witchcraft Oracles and Magic among the Azande). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Studies of African divination <http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/ERA/Divination>
Like many African groups that are neither coastal nor have had long contact with
Islam, documentary sources on the Mambila go back little more than a century dating
from the European 'scramble for Africa'. The early sources are sketchy to say the
least. To all intents and purposes the written record begins when the Germans were
expelled from Kamerun by the Franco-British expeditionary force of 1916/17. Banyo
fell in 1916, the Germans only establishing it as a base in 1902.
Since the German colony was subsequently administered by Britain and France under
mandates from the League of Nations (which became the United Nations after the 2WW)
the documentation is somewhat better than for full colonies - reports had to be filed
with the League so there are repeated reports from the late 1920s until independence
in 1960/61.
There are several reasons why one might choose to read the early documents on
the Mambila. One is as a resource for the Twentieth Century History of the Mambila,
to complement and provide depth to oral historical research. Another is to use them
to provide a context for the reading of later documents. There are relationships
between documents - later ones have been written in response to the earlier ones,
so they can best be understood with reference to their immediate documentary contexts.
One of the advantages about the Mambila in this vein is that the quantity of documentation
is relatively small making it possible to collate all the sources and present a fairly
comprehensive collection for the reader. So the colonial reports formed some of the
context for Farnham Rehfisch, whose own work provided a context for my own research
and writings on the Mambila. The collection thus allows the reader to trace the changing
interests of the writers. The colonial officers were concerned with patterns of political
power and allegiance mainly because they wanted to simplify the process of tax collection.
Patterns of power and the organisation of social relationships were central concerns
of British University departments such as University College London where Farnham
Rehfisch studied in the early 1950s (see Kuper 1973 for background). By the time
I began my studies in Cambridge in the 1980s the role of language and religion had
gained far greater prominence - Rehfisch hardly mentions religion in his thesis although
there is quite a lot of relevant data in his field notes.
The essential challenge posed by all texts to any serious reader is how to read the
bias. For bias there surely is, and the critical reader must identify it and take
it into account when working with the text. Early documents are often easier to deal
with in this regard than contemporary ones for some of the bias gets exposed by shifts
in fashion and political process. We can see the effects of colonial administration
in the documents produced by colonial officers just as the influence of structural
functionalism is evident in the choices made by students in the 1950s. The existence
of bias in a text does not mean it is useless and must be rejected. It means that
we can only use it with caution, and must be careful about what inferences we make
on the basis of its authority. But that is true of all texts no matter what their
provenance. In this respect documents on the Mambila provide an example of a general
point about the exercise of critical reading.
This application explores the possibilities offered by multimedia technology in the
ethnographic description and analysis of ritual activity. The main principle that
has guided this experiment is the methodological advantages resulting from the juxtaposition
of audio-visual documents and text, as opposed to the conventional cinematographic
narrative and argumentative strategies used in the documentary genre. The substantive
focus of this application deals with religious performance in the Tambor de Mina
of north Brazil. It is derived from chapters 2 and 3 of my PhD thesis 'The Phenomenology
of Spirit Possession in the Tambor de Mina' (Nicolau, 1997). However, the same modular
interactive design could be applied for the description and analysis of other kinds
of ritual activity. This application is just a first step in that direction and,
in the future, I hope to improve any deficiencies resulting from this exploratory
stage.
I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to the people of the Casa de Nagô
(So Luis, Maranho) who have allowed me to video record their public ceremonies, and
who have generously given of their time enabling me to better understand their religious
activities.