The Village Census in the Study of Culture Contact

Opening ParagraphAny 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.