AFRICAN SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT GENERAL EDITORS Charles S. Bird Ivan Karp CONTRIBUTING EDITORS James W. Fernandez Lue de Heusch John Middleton Roy Willis AFRICAN MaTeRtAL CULTURE EDITED BY MARY JO ARNOLDI, RISTRAUD M. GEARY, & KRIS L. HARDIN INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington and Indianapolis‘The National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. has provided partial support for the Publication of this book. Indiana University Press gratefully acknowledges this assistance. © 1996 by Indiana University Press All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only ‘exception to this prohibition. ‘The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ‘American National Standard for Information Scierices—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1984, Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data African material culture / edited by Mary Jo Arnoldi, Christraud M. Geary, and Kris L, Hardin, P. cm. — (African systems of thought) ‘Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-253-33000-9 (cloth : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-253-21037-2 (pbk. + alk. paper) 1. Material culture—Altica. 2. Art objects, African. 3. Philosophy, African. 4. Africa—Social life and customs. | Amoldi, Mary Jo. Il. Geary, Christraud M. Il, Hardin, Kris L. IV. Series, GN645.A364 1996 306.096—de20 123.45 01 00 99 98 97 96 95-40501 CONTENTS GN PREFACE ix bens: A364 INTRODUCTION 1996 Efficacy and Objects by Kris L. Hardin and Mary Jo Arnoldi 1 PART + TECHNOLOGY AND THE PRODUCTION OF FORM 1 ‘TECHNOLOGICAL STYLE AND THE MAKING OF CULTURE ‘Three Kono Contexts of Production Kris L, Hardin 31 a |AGICAL IRON TECHNOLOGY IN THE CAMEROON GRASSFIELDS ‘Michael Rowlands and Jean-Pierre Warnier 31 3 WHEN NOMADS SETTLE Janging Technologies of Building and Transport and the Production Architectural Form among the Gabra, the Rendille, and the Somalis Labelle Prussin 73 4 CERAMICS FROM THE UPEMBA DEPRESSION A Diachronic Study Kanimba Misago 103 5 OBJECTS AND PEOPLE Relationships and Transformations in the Culture of the Bambala Kazadi Ntole 130‘African Peoples and Countries Mentioned in the Text — INTRODUCTION —— EFFICACY AND OBJECTS BY KRIS L. HARDIN AND MARY JO ARNOLDI 1917 a young Luo woman decides to wear a nanga at the urging of eign missionaries (Hay, below). Shortly after a 1935 exhibit, a Musée de Trocadero employee relegates Bamum throne to the African storage area, where it sits in disarray until the 1980s (Geary, below). When a Somali nomad settles outside of Isiolo, his wives leave a life fof continuous movement through space and reassemble their houses in bis compound. His mother commissions a carpenter to build her house ‘nearby (Prussin, below). Each of these vignettes involves choices. Some are relatively com- ‘monplace and everyday. others appear monumental. Each situation also implicates the use of objects in some way and when explored fully draws attention to the complex ways in which humans shape the mate- Hal world as they are simultaneously shaped by that world. We contend that the production and use of objects have the capacity to transform situations as well as people. This capacity is not inherent in material form per se, but is mediated by or realized through human agency.? ‘Objects are one means, then, by which humans shape their world, and their actions have both intended and unintended consequences. The essays in this volume explore African material culture and the process of shaping or fashioning from a number of different perspec- Aives. Most contributions share the emphasis on the constructive aspects of material culture. This emphasis places these essays at the forefront of recent developments in social theory that focus on the importance of agency and practice in the construction and reconstruction of social and cultural forms. The work collected here reflects two particular historical moments in the study of material culture. First, it clearly demonstrates that the classic dichotomy between “form*-based and “context"-based analyses needs to be rethought. While scholars have tended to perceive this dichotomy as a difference between art historical and anthropological analyses, these essays show ways that anthropologists have dealt with form, art historians have dealt with context, and other scholars have used both to great advantage. Thus they suggest ways of bridging disci-2 & Kris L, Hardin and Mary Jo Arnoldi plinary boundaries, perhaps even suggesting that disciplinary boundaries are largely artificial. Second, these essays emerge from an era that recog- nized the influence that changing modes of representing Africa and Afri- cans in the West have had on the ways African objects have been ap- proached in scholarly study. While such influence is an underlying assumption of most intellectual ponderings, this volume tries to illumi- nate local categories and definitions and the ways they shift and change over time, whether they are African or European. As recent research on museums and representation has demonstrated, outsiders have long used African objects to construct ideas and images of Africa? Work by numerous scholars has revealed that the politics of defining or representing African objects often has more to do with the interests of those with the power to represent than it does with under- standing those being represented. In other words, definitions of African objects, and by extension Aftica and Africans, have often been tied to the political, economic, and intellectual interests of non-Africans in sig- nificant ways. Much of the history of African material culture studies must be viewed through the lens of national interests, economics, and the scientific and theoretical concems of the day. This complex provided much of the rationale for research, collection, and display by defining which articles would be collected as well as how they would be seen. The result was a particular shaping or construction of Africa, but always in European terms. Several recent studies have documented the relationship between changing interests in material culture and changing ideas or conceptions of Africa or other non-Euro-American settings. Nicholas Thomas corre- lates the changing nature of collecting in Fiji with the changing interests of early settlers and later colonial administrators. While early settlers collected objects that signified cannibalism and savagery as a means of Justifying their “civilizing” presence, later colonial interests turned to a more ethnographic approach through which adininistravors were able 10 ‘categorize Fijians by the kinds of objects they produced. In this way they were able to “construct and rigidify ‘Fijian society’ as a totality to be acted upon” (Thomas 1989:41). In a slightly different vein John Mack discusses how Emil Torday’s ethnographic and collecting interests in Central Africa were shaped by A. C. Haddon’s work on design and evo- lutionary theory (Mack 1991:19). He also documents the ways in which European collecting in general was stimulated by rivalry between Euro- pean colonial powers. Mack cites Northcote Thomas, who wrote, in 1906, In twenty-five years the Berlin Museum has accumulated ethno: Introduction # 3 British Museum. ... 1, one hundred years hence, English anthro- pologists have to go to Germany to study the remains of those who Were once our subject races, we shall owe this humiliation to the supineness of England at the end of the nineteenth and early twen~ ‘eth century. (quoted in Mack 1991:28) ‘What these and other studies make clear is that many of our percep- tions of other societies have been shaped by the interests of those who sollected or wrote about material culture and that the shaping of per- ception is always tied to relations of power. Only as analyses of repre- sentation and social history become more sophisticated, as more cre- dence is given to local categories, definitions, and patterns of use (in all their variety), and as more African scholars enter into the debates and dialogues about African materia! culture, will the power of outsiders to dominate representations of Africa and Africans be curtailed. Early European and American definitions of Africa were forged, for the most part, in contexts related to trade and colonialism. The role played by African objects in these constructions has been discussed in numerous places (see, for example, Gerbrands 1990, Newion 1978, Pau- drat 1984, Price 1989, Stocking 1985) Suffice it to say that as European Imerests changed, so did the ways African objects were viewed, col- lected, and used. In early European contact, African objects served as the focus of musings and fantasies about the world beyond European shores. By the late nineteenth century, African objects, particularly those with ornamented surfaces, were assigned a role in the construc- tion and application of theories such as evolutionism * and, in German- speaking scholarly circles, diffusionism (Gerbrands 1990:15). In addition to providing an empirical base for evolutionary theory, the interpreta- tion of African objects as less developed than European counterparts, helped rationalize European expansion into Africa (Gerbrands 1990, Newton 1978, Paudrat 1984, Stocking 1985). In essence, the display of objecis {rom colonized lands supported threc intersecting justifications for settlement and colonization: commerce, civilization, and Chris- tianity.? In reference to other uses of African objects in the colonial period, ‘Adrian Gerbrands describes the ways that discontent within Europe in the early twentieth century led to viewing non-European lifestyles and the objects associated with them as representative of a more natural way of life (Gerbrands 1990). In this way. exotic images of Africa became a kind of subversive commentary on European norms. Strains of this romanticizing and exoticizing of African life are still prevalent today. Slightly earlier, the appropriation of African forms at the tum of the century by a small cadre of German and French avant garde artists fos- CT ae iia aa1984; see also Gerbrands 1990). At the same time, these artists also cre- ated a new market for African objects. While dealers In ethnographic objects had flourished in Europe in the late nineteenth century by sup- plying muscums and private collectors with a whole range of African objects. a small group of art dealers now emerged who bought and sold African and Oceanic sculptures and promoted them as fine arts within the framework of a “modernist” aesthetic (Paudrat 1984), and the seeds for the eventual redefinition of select African objects—mainly masks and figurative sculptures—from artifact to fine art were planted.® The use of African objects to construct images of Africa did not end with the colonial period. A major factor in the ways African objects have been used to define Africa and Africans can be traced to the early twen- tieth century split between ethnographic and aesthetic approaches 0 African art recently discussed by Gerbrands (1990). Since that time, eth- nological approaches to material culture have tended to emphasize con- text and the meaning of objects within a society, while the aesthetic approach has been primarily concerned with the study and appreciation of the formal qualities of objects (Gerbrands 1990) and the contempla- tion of things for their own sake (Ben-Amos 1989). Extreme positions have been taken on both sides of this divide, with some early scholars refusing to recognize the existence of art or aesthetics in Africa and some aesthetes claiming that knowing the meaning of a sculpture in its original context actually hindered one’s aesthetic appreciation of the object.” For a variety of reasons, the aesthetes have tended to dominate the field of material culture studies in Aftica for much of this century in the English- and French-speaking realms. The basic emphasis on formal qualities of objects implicitly stresses Western elite categories and leads away from an understanding of objects, their use, or their appreciation in culture-specific terms. At the same time, emphasizing formal qualities constructs a series of ideas and expectations for Africa and Africans and thus continues the nineteenth-century tradition of defining others in outsider’s terms, but in slightly new ways. The reasons for the domination of formal approaches in studies of material culture are multiple and complex. Simon Ottenberg suggests that the enormous difficulties of fieldwork make understanding another culture's aesthetic expressions on their own terms extremely difficult (Ottenberg 1971). Paula Ben-Amos (Girshick) attributes the domination of formal approaches in part to the fact that early scholars in anthropol- ogy, such as Franz Boas, Melville Herskovits, and Warren d’Azevedo, “approach art from the viewpoint of aesthetic experience, that is, con- templations of things for their own sake and the heightened awareness that this brings” (Ben-Amos 1989:33). She goes on to suggest, citing Introduction @ 3 Harold Osborne, a noted theorist in aesthetics, that this approach is pre- ively what has shaped the formalistic theories of art that have domi- nated the West for the last fifty to one hundred years. Given this similar marting point, it is not surprising that an overwhelming emphasis on form has crept into both anthropological and art historical investigations (Ben-Amos 1989:33; see also Osbome 1970:50). In discussing the relative importance of ethnographic and art or his~ tory museums, Ivan Karp suggests several additional elements that have Played into the continuing importance of aesthete and formal ap- proaches to African material culture. First, he writes that because ethno- graphic museums have fared relatively badly finandally in the post— World War U1 period when art and history museums have tended to flourish, ethnographic museums exist in relative poverty today. As a result, their exhibition styles have been unable to keep pace with those Oo their wealthier counterparts. The inability to change and update exhi- bitions more regularly makes the content of ethnographic museums ap- pear less important than that in art or history museums (Karp 1991:379; see also Haraway 1984-85). Second, Karp suggests that the presentation of universal aesthetics that underlies formal approaches to objects dis- played in art settings is more in tune with the public’s interests than is, the enterprise of presenting cultural specificity (Karp 1991:379). In other words, if formalism and universal categories are what the public wants, exhibitions and, more importantly, research also move in this, direction. The power implications of this stance are obvious and lead to a continued emphasis on outsider knowledge and definitions at the ex- pense of understanding African cultural realities. While all of these factors are important and must serve as partial ex- planations for the continuing importance of formal approaches to Afri- can material culture, there are several additional points that must be ‘considered that illustrate the ways that African objects continue to be used in the construction of definitions of Africa rather than as vehicles for understanding African material experience in new ways. These have to do with exhibition strategies that have increasingly emphasized Afri can objects as art; changing interests in anthropology after about 1930; and the timing of the entry of African objects into the ar: market on @ large scale, especially during the late 1960s and 1970s. While most fine aris museums began actively collecting African objects only in the post= World War Il period, this was preceded by a series of exhibitions that laid the groundwork for viewing African objects as art." As a result of this flurry of exhibitions of African materials as art, ethnographic muse- ums in the United States began to reevaluate their collections and ex- hibits and give more prominence to non-Western sculptures in their dis-6 © Kets L. Hardin and Mary Jo Arnold! plays. In some primarily ethnographic institutions this resulted in both, decontextualizing and aestheticizing African objects by installing indi- vidual cases, like those at the Chicago Field Museum, which began to display African sculptures as artworks (Newton 1978:46).” After 1954, several fine arts museums established departments of “Primitive Ar and began more actively to make collections or augment their existing collections of African and other non-Westem sculpture. In 1964 the ‘Museum of Altican Art was founded as a small private institution in Washington, D.C, In 1979 this collection became part of the Smithson- fan Institution and in 1981 it became the National Museum of African Art, giving further credence to the idea that some African objects had ‘entered the competitive—and lucrative—world of Euro-American art. As African objects were increasingly defined in formal terms as art, the field of anthropology, which might have been the natural home for investigating African material experience, was becoming less interested in material culture. By the 1930s the institutional homeland of anthro- ology had shifted from the museum to the academy in much of Europe and America as evolutionary paradigms, with their focus on objects, decoration, and technology, were replaced by interests that were more difficult to illustrate in material form (Schlereth 1985). As a result, in English- and French-speaking countries interest in material culture was gradually superseded by the study of nonmaterial aspects of culture and society. German anthropology, however, maintained the focus on mate- sial culture, and to this day German colleagues have been very active in this field. Jt is also important to point out that while a minority of French- and English-speaking ethnographers working in Africa after the 1930s con- tinued to observe and write about material culture, its study came to be seen as an initial research strategy for gaining entree into other, more esoteric and nonmaterial aspects of social and cultural Ife rather than as an end in itself. In a recent reminiscence, Warren d’Azevedo nutes that while he was first intrigued by anthropology’s “latent yet frequently ‘manifest theme of human inventiveness and intractable creativity, ... the historical moment of anthropology in the 1950s turned out 10 be less than congenial to special orientations perceived to be humanistic in Purpose or tone. The emphasis was on a standard ethnological format and the functional analysis of crucial institutions” (d’Azevedo 1991:102- 103). In this milieu, studies of art or material culture played a relatively unimportant role. Material culture studies in general (outside of Africa) hhave also tended to follow the way of the aesthetes in Gerbrands's di- chotomy by also focusing, until the last twenty years, on studying the object in formal terms. In this vein, collection, connoisseurship, and re- slonal studies were the primary driving forces behind not just African material culture studies, but most material culture research until about 1970 (Schlereth 1985, Ames 1985). We will return to this point in a moment. ‘As anthropology was losing its interest in material culture, museum activities in the field of African art and a growing interest in African sculptural forms by collectors and dealers combined in ways that led to the emergence of Aftican art as a field of study within art history. Equally important, growing academic, museological, and popular inter- esis in Africa and African art can be tied to much larger political events that also emphasized the importance of form. Particularly relevant was the end of the colonial period, From 1957 onward African nations de- clared their independence from colonial powers. The establishment of newly independent African nations fostered a new awareness of Africa. On the American scene specifically, the Civil Rights and Black Con- sciousness movernents in the late 1950s and 1960s created an arena in which African Americans began looking toward Africa for symbols, themes, and other tools in the construction of African American iden- tity. In this atmosphere there is no question that defining African objects in formal terms as “high art” made new and important statements about the cultural heritage of African Americans at a time when African ‘American claims to identity, and, more importantly, to capabilities, were being negotiated and contested on all sides. Even this process, however, demonstrates another example of the complex ways in which African objects continue to be used by outsiders to define Africa in ways related more to subjective interests than to knowledge of Africa per se. Within a milieu that increasingly defined African sculpture as art, that saw markets for African objects expand dramatically, and that celebrated the political consequences of admitting an “African aesthetic” into the discourse of art history, some scholars cunti+ued to explore the context and use of African objects in ways distinctively different from the pre- dominant emphasis on form, Quoting again from ’Azevedo: Almost two years of immersion in the energy of an African society had highlighted the absurdity of a concept of art that focused atten~ tion on the material objects of artistry and implied a distinction be- tween “arts and crafts” and “primitive and civilized.” I felt that I had witnessed the omnipresent expression of artistry in a wide range of individual behaviors in another culture. ... Art could not be con: things, but resided in the thinking, feeling, and les of the members of a culture. (d’Azevedo 1991:103)8 Kris L. Hardin and Mary Jo Arnold! Other scholars continued to emphasize that many of the African sod- ties In which they did research did not have a category of art that coincided with Western categories (see, for example, d’Azevedo 1973, Merriam 1964, Schneider 1971, and Warren and Andrews 1977). Al- though a group of scholars continued to approach material culture, art, and expressive culture from local definitions and criteria, because of the ig emphasis on form in both art history and anthropology the full import of much of this work has yet to be evaluated. This necessarily brief history of the changing interests in African ma- terial culture studies suggests that the shift from viewing African objects as artifacts to viewing them as art, which begen in the early twenticth century, has had important consequences for the direction which the field of African material culture studies has taken, as well as for the ways in which African objects have been used in the search for defini- tions of Africa. Only in the last two decades have material culture stud~ ies outside of Africa shifted their primary focus to a concern with the relationship of objects to the societies that produce or use them." More recently, scholars of material culture have begun to look at the construc- UUve potential of objects, in other words, at the situated ways in which individuals use objects in the construction of identity, social formations, and culture itself (see, for example, Ames 1980, Barber 1987, Karp and Lavine 1991, Leone 1977, and Willis 1978). The point at which material culture studies in general began the shift to more encompassing views of the relationship between objects and cultures, however, was precisely the point at which American and Euro- ean art markets began incorporating African objects on a large scale. As the size of the market and the value of certain kinds of Airican ob- Jecis, notably masks and other sculptures, rose dramatically in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it grew increasingly difficult to direct the focus of African material culture research away from connoisseurship or re- gional and stylistic studies to a more contemporary focus on the role of ‘objects in the construction of culture and on the ideational frameworks within which objects are produced and used. Thus, the early emphasis on connoisseurship in material culture studies has. to a large degree, remained a major, if not dominant, perspective in the study of African objects, while this strain of research has become less important in mate- rial culture research in other world regions. Formal studies of African ant continue to obscure the importance of early work in Africa that em- phasized local definitions, agency. power, and other topics." Questions of regionalism and authenticity have remained primary because collec- tors want to know whether their purchase is an authentic example of a particular type of work and they want to know where an object came Hrom in ethnic or regional terms. Such questions tend 10 reproduce the now heavily criticized notion that there is a one-to-one relationship be- jtween culture and style, and to re-create already accepted definitions of [Particular styles and ethnic boundaries, even where these have been shown to be inaccurate (Arnoldi 1986, Frank 1987, Kasfir 1984, and ihers). The emphasis on authenticity, particularly in studies of the arts, ‘and romantic perceptions of the unvarying “traditions” of precolonial African cultures have resulted in research agendas that explore tradition and the retention and continuity of a finite set of forms in preference to examinations of heterogeneity, innovation, interregional flows, and the mechanics of change.” If the market for African objects had remained stable (restricted to sculpture} throughout the last twenty years, it might have been possible to distinguish two strains of research on African material culture—one that was applied to sculptural form and focused on issues relevant to the study of art, and another that considered more mundane objects in terms of context and use. The changing nature of the market for African however, has made such distinctions impossible. In addition to rede- lining African masks and sculpture as art, the art market has constantly ‘expanded by incorporating new classes of African objects into the cate- gory of art. Since masks and figurative sculptures are less available in the late twentieth century, art dealers have now begun to promote tex- tiles, ceramics, weapons, and other objects which have been legitimized as artworks by virtue of art historical studies and related exhibitions. It is not difficult to correlate the appearance of scholarship on new classes of objects, either in published or exhibition form, with the incorporation cof those particular objects into the art market. While the ways in which formal approaches to material culture have tended to obscure context-based approaches are complex and require a ‘much fuller analysis, this brief outline sets forth a framework for ap- proaching the essays in this volume. The focus on the dialectical rela- tionship between agency and structure shared by some of the work brings with it a departure from these older paradigms. Because the dia- lectic between agency and structure can be explored only in conjunction with considerations of power, issues of power are also critical to the essays in this volume. '* Following William Arens and Ivan Karp’s recent discussion of power, we take power as the ability not only to dominate, but also to constrain or enable action, thought, and imagination in cul- ture-specific or situated ways (Arens and Karp 1989), and, in doing so, to channel future action. In other words, one of our interests is the complex conjunction among objects, social and cultural structures, hu- man agency, and the power to shape or view the world in ways that10 Kris L, Hardin and Mary Jo Arnold! extend beyond Individual or institutional interests into the realm of shaping future actions. The fact that such relations of power are culture- specific means that our explorations of the various roles objects play in the construction of culture must also necessarily indude an understand ing of the cultural and social systems within which objects are produced and used Basically, we are arguing for a more explicitly Africa-centered ap- roach to African material culture. Such a position places this volume and the essays in it in the center of long-standing debates about the value of context-based as opposed to form-based exegesis of material culture, These two approaches are often characterized, respectively, as anthropological and art historical, but in our experience we find there is a great deal of overlap in who practices what. Our interest in focusing ‘on this impasse stems from recent discussions of the limitations of both. context-based and formal perspectives and the hope that in this atmo- sphere new ground can be covered. It is now clear that each approach has resulted in studies that emphasize only selected aspects of material culture. Scholars concerned with morphotogy and form have tended to neglect social context and assume that form exists separate from con- text, while those who have examined social contexts of material culture have failed 10 explore the relationships between contexts and formal Properties of objects. Their studies often exhibit an inability to link ob- Ject studies 10 contemporary theory in the social sciences because of the emphasis op formalist perspectives, and the tendency to view objects, and thus the people who make and use them, in ahistorical terms. ‘There are several useful models for dealing with both form and con- text in significant ways. In an early study, Paula Ben-Amos suggests a relationship between social factors such as recruitment and training and the more formal elements of style, composition, and skill in the produc- Yon of Bini material culture (Ben-Amos 1975). William Stegmann has considered the way that social factors also shape the form of Poro mas- querade in three areas of West Africa (Siegmann 1980). A third model {or this kind of research can be found in Michelle Gilbert’s recent analy- sis of the ways that Akan ideas of cosmology and power relate to the forms of ancestral shrines (Gilbert 1989). The possibility of a break in the impasse between formal and context-based approaches became par- ticularly apparent during the philosophical and political debates sur- rounding the Museum of Modern Art’s 1984 exhibition Primitiviem in Twentieth-Century Art. During these debates a fair number of Africanist art historians found themselves voicing many of the same criticisms of the exhibit as their anthropologist colleagues. From this it seems that Introduction 11 anthropological/contextual and art historical/formal approaches are be- ilnining to move closer together, ‘We see these two strains of commentary as interrelated: by viewing ‘objects in terms of the structures, actions, and processes through which people produce, use, and evaluate them, researchers are better able to consider the dialectical relationship between objects and those who make or use them—how people shape objects and, in turn, how particu- lar uses of objects shape people. This reconciliation makes it possible to frame new and more encompassing ways of exploring material experi- ‘ence by allowing room for the emergence of methods and perspectives that will foster an Africa-centered approach to African material culture. From this emphasis on structure, action, and process itis also possible to link the study of African material culture to contemporary trends in social theory. Essentially, this is a call for studies that are situated in particular cultural settings and oriented toward exploring form and ac- tion in terms of local categories of production and use. Recent literature on the politics of representation has also stimulated efforts in this direc- tion by forcing scholars to step back from national, disciplinary, and other biases in ways that allow local, indigenous, or situated meanings, ‘acts of production. and usage to drive and shape research. ‘A theory of agency is important here. Objects are produced and used in ways that bring together questions of structure and tradition with human desires, goals, and aspirations. In their interactions with the ma- terial world real people explore and reform the structures that enable and constrain their actions and at the same time develop patterns for future action, Pant of this type of analysis must include the contesta~ tions, minority voices, and other factors that make everyday life and activity a messy, problematic, and ever-changing affair. The case studies in this book revolve around several main topics. First, whether the individual papers deal with such disparate topics as the production of iron ore or the aesthetic criteria of the Euro-American “high art” world, they all explore indigenous classification systems and forms of knowledge. This background serves as a first step in connecting objects to ideologies or pragmatics and allows a view of how cultural forms are constructed through the manipulation or resortings of mean- ings of objects. That such meanings are flexible and subject to manipula- tion can be seen only when the researcher's own assumed (cultural) knowledge is somehow bracketed and replaced with an approximation of how local systems of meaning are constructed. By framing research in this way many of the essays begin to look at how knowledge of ob- jects and their meanings in one domain connects with and even helps12°} ris L, Hardin and Mary Jo Arnold to construct knowledge and meanings in other domains. Thus objects connected with ritual can be related to objects or forms in other do- mains, production can be related to politics, and material form can be explored for its relationship to worldview. The precise shape of the rele- ant connections or associations cannot be presumed but must rely on an ethnographically based understanding of specific cultures. In addition to seeing connections across domains, many of the essays focus on the heterogeneity of meanings and knowledge and how objects, can be used to construct categories of similarity and difference; in other words, how relations with objects can mark inclusion or exclusion from social categories. This leads to the important role of contestation, whether the researcher's focus is on the process of constructing mean- ings and power relationships within particular societies or between soci- ties, Such contestations hold within them the potemtial for renegotiat- ing power relations and ultimately the possibility of reshaping social and cultural forms or epistemologies. The last perspective that the essays share is the view that the relation- ships between objects and meanings are tenuous, constantly shifting, and constructed through human action. While social and cultural forms constrain action in some directions, they enable it in others. In some cases the direction of enablement provides the resources with which human agents manipulate and change their worlds. Both the symbolic and the technological aspects of objectification, through which an object comes to acquire meaning and value outside of the producer and be- comes a vehicle for discourse or cultural construction, are creative pro- cesses which occur before, during, and after the actual creation of an object. Because these meanings are constructed in the constraints im- lied by structure, value, and tradition, and by the subjectively charged \erpretations of such forces as well as by the innovative and imagina- tive capacities of human agents, the meanings of objects are also subject, to the tensions between duty and interest that both plague and intensify all human experience. By focusing on an Africa-centered approach to material culture we hope to incorporate both form and context in ways that escape some of the problems of each approach alone. In this way it is possible to see how objects become potent tools in the construction of identity. social relationships, history, and epistemologies. These are issues that go far ‘beyond outsiders’ suppositions about. or expectations of, African mate- rial culture. The study of material culture, then, can shed light on how people understand, construct, and manage their lives, as well as how they act to control theit own destinies. For too long, research on Alrica, particularly the work on African arts, has carried with it the connotation Introduction #13 of lost traditions, cultural deterioration, and even victimization. By fo- using on human agency and change, It is possible (© view the ways in which Alricans actively use objects to produce social and cultural forms, Including forms of resistance, contestation, and other aspects of unique and changing identities in an ever-changing world, To explore these issues of construction, identity, and representation we have divided this volume into three sections—Technology and the Production of Form, Constructing Identities. and Life Histories of Ob- jects, However, there are numerous ways that the papers in each sectton overlap with those in the other two sections. In Part Technology and the Production of Form—we are concerned with the documentation and analysis of techniques of production, Re- searchers have tended to see techniques of production as processes to bbe described rather than as arenas for investigation in their own right. Asa result, production has been viewed primarily as a mix of given and known forces, while the relationship of particular techniques of pro- duction to the social and cultural forms in which they are embedded has remained largely unexplored.!” Because production hes not been viewed as it is locally conceived and defined, the complex relationships among activities of production, the concepis that inform them, and the nature of the resulting forms (both objective and social) have tended, until recently to remain obscure. In general, the emphasis on exploring local concepis of production provides insight into the ways that the pro- duction of form is part of a unified process that produces both material and intellectual objects (Jewslewicki 1988), ‘The chapters in this part focus on technical skill as a form of indige- nous knowledge that is focally based and thus embedded in specific s0- cial, historical, and epistemological contexts. They present the act of pro- duction as having consequences both for the production of future action and for the production of culture itself. In addition, the essays suggest that changes in one aspect of production, for example, gender relations or apprenticeship, affect other domains of culture in significant and sometimes unpredictable ways. These interests follow from recent trends in social theory that recognize the importance of human agency and practice in the continual reconstruction of social forms (see Bourdieu 1972 and Giddens 1976). Anthony Giddens, for example, suggests that change is an inherent outcome of production as actors respand to the contingent factors of specific situations in the production and use of so- Gal forms. In applying this to material culture it is possible to suggest that as people change habits of production in response to changing envi- ronmental, technological, and social factors, they are, in fact, potentially changing culture itself as new habits are developed.16 Kris L. Rardin and Mary Jo Arnold! Kris L. Hardin uses the notion of technological style, as discussed by Heather Lechtman (1977) and Marie Jeanne Adams (1973 and 1977) to explore the relationship between domains of production in the Kono ‘area of Slerra Leone. Her analysis compares the production of textiles and ceramics with the production of rice. Hardin suggests that ideational and behavioral similarities or analogies across domains of production form one aspect of knowledge that provides behavioral patterns that both structure action and, in turn, are structured by action. Such an approach provides insights into the role individuals play in the construc- tion of objects as well as culture and into the power relations embedded in production. 1t also implies that changes in practice in one domain have consequences for other domains. While much of the literature on technological style considers how domains of production mirror each other, Hardin frames her discussion in a way that shows that the differ- ences between domains and between individuals become as important as the similarities for questions of power and change. Michael Rowlands and Jean-Pierre Warnier continue the consider- ation of analogies across domains of production by looking at the tech- nology of ironworking in the Grassfields of Cameroon. While much of the literature on ironworking in Africa relates the symbolism of technol- ogy to gender relations and the processes of procreation, Rowlands and Warnier refine this literature by noting that such associations are not natural, but are humanly constructed. Rather than one technology be- ing causal, Rowlands and Warnier suggest similarity at a more abstract level than either the techniques of ironworking or reproduction. Their discussion illuminates common themes in the concept of the person, in birth and funerary rites, and in the production of iron, Techniques in each of these domains are only parts in a more sustained discourse on the practical efficacy and achievement of those who have the power to transform. In a second and related conclusion, Rowlands and Warnier show that both ironworking aud reproduction incorporate what a West- t distinguish as technical and magical actions. They use this perspective to question the assumption that a line can be drawn be- tween technical efficacy and ideological efficacy and thereby demon- strate the insufficiency of universal technical solutions to local and cul- turally specific problems. Quite simply. in the Grassfields case what Westemers might call magical efficacy cannot be separated from techni- cal efficacy. In this way Rowlands and Warnier further demonstrate that iron production is only one aspect of a general cosmology that also out- lines cause-and-effect relations, concepts of power, and social relations. ‘That cosmology is only apparent if the Westerner’s ethnocentric separa tion of person and thing is overcome. Labelle Prussin’s essay, which explores nomadic architecture among eral African groups, also raises the question of homologies or analo- ‘mong domains, but her work more directly considers the implica ‘dons of such associations for questions of change. In essence, her prob- Jem is to define the links between nomadic and sedentary lifestyles. ‘While nomadic architecture achieves its sense of permanency through hts reconstitution in and through time in ways that continually recon- struct concepts of value, aesthetics, history, and forms of ritual, shifts to more sedentary lifestyles necessarily imply shifts in the actions that give Hise to cosmological and epistemological frameworks. The changes she Ademtifies have to do with women losing control over the construction [process to husbands as they become sedentary and the implications of this shift for questions of power, affect. and a range of other issues. Prussin is also interested in the ways that sedentarization shifts the locus and nature of memory for women. As nomads settle, changes in the complex of rituals of first house-building at marriage are inevitable. Constructing the nomadic house conflates aspects of technology with highly charged symbols and an array of emotional and aesthetic re- sponses that are reproduced with each act of reconstruction. In contrast, such powerful arenas for renewal and cultural reproduction are lost or relocated when structures are no longer re-created with some frequency ‘over time. Prussin’s essay, then, points to the importance of understand- ing the ways that various domains interpenetrate and the consequences of change in any particular domain. Kanimba Misago also considers change, but at a level that implicitly challenges the tendency to see African cultures as static. He combines stylistic analysis and techniques of ethnoarchaeology to suggest that his- torical changes observed by archaeologists in pottery in the Upemba River lowlands of Central Africa are more likely related to changes in other domains of activity rather than to the replacement of one culture by another, as has been commonly accepted. He suggests that changes in ceramic form can be correlated with an array of changes that would ‘accompany larger cultural processes, including a shift from relying on agriculture to a focus on interregional trade. While his ideas must still be tested against changes in the sociopolitical environment, his work very clearly shows the necessity of situating any analysis of technologi cal change within the parameters of changes in related domains. ‘Of the chapters on technology, Kazadi Ntole most closely considers the ways that the production of objects work to construct culture. In a survey of Bambala material culture and meaning he delineates two cate- gories of oppositions: men/women and institutionalized/ordinary. His interest is in then looking at how the separation of objects into opposing16 @ Kris L. Hardin and Mary Jo Arnoldl categories operates to both shape activities and form personalities. In this way objects and their production form part of the apparatus by which people and Identities are produced and used. He then moves 10 ‘questions of how the introduction of new objects (such as firearms) or changes in objects (such as the introduction of raffia cloth) result in ‘changes in behavior and ultimately changes in culture. As a group, the chapters in Part I demonstrate the importance of viewing technology as part of the lived world. This implies that any analysis of technology must search for local definitions, categories, and situated theories of cause and cifect to understand the boundaries of any particular technology. Thus production or transformation must be seen in terms of indigenous ideas about how the world works. Viewing technology in this way necessitates connecting both production and object to the larger spheres of cosmology and epistemology in culture- specific ways. The chapters in Part 11, Constructing Identities, explore localized and culture-specific ways in which people use objects both to objectify and to construct identity. While all the disciplines that study African material culture examine meaning, much of this work relies on several untested assumptions about how meaning relates to the material world. The first assumption is that Western categories and classification systems, for ex- ample, those based on distinctions between mind and matter, body and spirit, and material and nonmaterial, are universals and thus mirror Al- rican conceptions of the objective world.'* A second assumption is that objects passively reflect or stand for meanings. While there have been numerous important studies of the relationship between form and worldview, ideology, or cosmology (see, for example, Amoldi 1986, Biebuyck 1972, and Feeley-Harnik 1980), litle attention has been paid to the process by which African objects, when coupled with human agency, become powerful allies in the con- struction of identity, meaning, and culture itself. Moving beyond the emphasis on reflection implies taking account of how human actors in- teract with objects and the consequences of those actions. A third assumption is that the meanings of objects are shared by all members of a society. What is missing is a sense of the ways that varia- Hons in meanings among individuals, over time, or across contexts are accommodated or resolved, ot the implications of such variations for questions of change or the construction of culture. Critical here is the ‘idea that the meanings of objects are apprehended or appropriated in ways that are framed by the norms of tradition or structure as well as by individualized and subjectively charged goals and activities, The result is. variations in meanings that are often the sites for dispute, contestation, Introduction @ 17 ‘and cultural production. Just as objects can have multiple meanings, ‘Arens and Karp (1989:xxiil) have pointed out that there are usually -gompeting epicenters of power, each using its own interpretative frame- ‘work to arrive at meanings in the material world. As interpretations ‘change so, often, do relations of power, in ways that have consequences {for the production of social and cultural forms. ‘Aneesa Kassam and Gemetchu Megerssa focus on a relatively mun- dane and visually unelaborated form—the Oromo walking stick—to consider the complex ways that sticks shape Oromo identity. Kassam and Megerssa demonstrate that the sticks themselves are material ex- pressions of the transformations of self and society over time. Here meanings are not inscribed in the material record but are cognitively present through the specific ways that Oromo link objective and social worlds. Meaning, then, is not reflected in formal terms in the sticks, but |s constituted through the use and interpretations of the sticks. Equally Important, Kassam and Megerssa implicitly critique the tendency of re- search on material culture £0 focus solely on elaborated forms. The Or- mo case makes it clear that the degree of formal elaboration is not always an indication of the degree of cultural import. the identity-giving aspects of objects are often associated with the serious side of life, Mary Jo Arnoldi’s analysis of Bamana puppetry demonstrates that identity can also be constructed in contexts identified as entertainment. Puppet performances in the region of Segou draw upon ritual as well as everyday forms in ways that construct historical and ethnic identities as well as models of gender and other social rela- tons, Just as in Kassam and Megerssa’s analysis of sticks, Arnoldi dem- ‘onstrates that the meanings and identities generated within perfor- mance are not solely the result of formal interpretations of objective lorm, but rather that the meaning of the puppets is tied to a variety of factors, some of which lie outside the performance itself. Meaning in the performance comes from the interrelationships and order of presenta- ton of the various characters. These relationships set up an interpreta~ tive frame within the performance where the past becomes a foil for discourse on the present as well as on ideals of future behavior or possi- bilities. Some of the meanings constructed in puppetry performances re- late to ethnic, gender, and generational identities, but Arnoldi’s histori- cal approach shows that the puppetry form itself is flexible in ways that allow agents to incorporate new meanings and commentaries over time. Michael Rowlands also addresses objects and their use in constructing both identity and ideals. His focus is the interface of identity, consumer- ism, and ideas of modernity in Bamenda, a provincial town in Camer- on, He uses case studies of consumption to explore the ways that18 Kris L, Hardin and Mary Jo Arnold! cholees reflect or counter culture-specific strategies of achievement, and {in this way Rowlands is able to critique the notion that there are distinc. ‘aps between “traditional” and “modern” lileways by tracing numerous continuities between the two. By also considering the level of individual agents, Rowlands is able to illuminate the differences between the indi- viduals in his case studies. Thus it becomes apparent that there is no single set of programmatic strategies for achievement; rather, the choices individuals make are shaped by conjunctions of factors that have to do with an individual's personal background, goals, and interpretation of the structures and traditions that constrain action more generally. Chike Aniakor presents a detailed description of Igbo domestic ar- chitecture and material culture. His starting point is the relationship between Igbo words and objects. Thus an Igbo man’s name refers not just to the man, but to his household, the objects it contains, and his standing within the community. Aniakor identifies three principles that inform Igbo domestic architecture and shows the ways in which these are constructed not only in architectural space, but in male/female rela- tions and in distinctions between public and private in the course of everyday activities. One of his principles is binary complementarity (as opposed to opposition), in which “the difference between two objects constitutes their similarity.” In this way he is able to demonstrate that the meanings and uses of objects vary among individuals and that while the meanings attached to concepts of space, morality, design, and spe- cific activities may be different for Igbo men and Igbo women, what is imporrant is the fit between these differences. Aniakor’s analysis makes it dear that cach side of the dualism is a necessary part of an integrated whole that is dynamic and capable of innovation, expansion, and change. Margaret Jean Hay’s essay is also concerned with variations in the ‘meanings of objects, but her interest is in changes in meaning over time and the way such changes affect identity. She focuses on changing atti- tudes toward the hoe and clothing in colonial western Kenya. In her analysis it is possible to see the complex interplay among material ob- Jects in ways that relate questions of taste and morality to questions of tradition, economics, production, and agency. From Hay's work it is lear that Anglican converts and labor migrants were self-conscious in- Rovators and promoters of new forms of clothing and tools. Hay is also able to discuss the repercussions of such shifts for identity and social relationships. Here, 00, it is clear that actions in one domain affect ac- tions in others in ways that have consequences both for identity and for the construction of culture. Implicit in much of the analysis is a question of power. With missionaries and colonial administrators authorizing aor Introduction @ 19 changes tn clothing and agricultural production, men in general pet ceived themselves to be losing 3 degree of control over their wives a they adopted new styles of dress and ideas of morality; mothersin-law- lost control over daughters-in-law who used new hoe types and adopted new forms of dress; and elders lost a degree of control as young met adopted both the shirts and pants necessary in wage labor and the eto» nomic independence employment allowed. Here the interplay between. structure and agency is most apparent in the dilemmas that emerged from what were often conflicting choices and in the ability of human. agents to manipulate structure in ways that produced new cultural forms, Im Part Il, Life Histories of Objects,"” the essays shift from the fine- srained analysis of production and identity to the larger-scale procestex, historical events, and changing patterns in which African material cul- ture is encapsulated. Our vehicle for exploring the relationships between objects and this wider framework is the history of objects as they move from one context to another. In this way itis possible to examine large- scale historical processes within Africa, such as regional relations among African societies, the emergence of new social forms in Africa (such as the nation-state or the museum), how objects are used within or trans- formed for these contexts, and the sharing of cultural beliefs and thelr effect on forms. By focusing on large-scale processes it is also possible to explore the lows of objects between Africa and other parts of the world, as in the incorporation of African objects into world markets, the effects of the international art trade on the meanings attributed to African ma- terial culture, and the incorporation of Euro-American objects or institu- tions (such as museums or particular kinds of research tools) in African settings Understanding these large-scale processes has to do with understand ‘ng the ways that foreign objects or institutions are domesticated in el- ther African or Euro-American contexts. Drewal writes that “[oJbjects from elsewhere—the recontextualized creations of other systems of thought and action—reveal as much about the users as objects produiced by those users. Moreover, people intentionally or unintentionally use the objects of others to define themselves” (Drewal 1989:69). This brings us back to @ question raised in the chapters on technology and again in the part on identity: How do people objectity objects? How do objects become repositories of meaning and value as they are de- contextualized and re-contextualized in new places, times, and situa- tions? In part, answering this question has to do with understanding how objects mediate between values and the interests of individuals, between tradition and creativity, between social goals and personal20 Arle L, Hardin and Mary Jo Arnold! Soals. At one level the answers to these questions have to do with cul- ture-specific definitions of what material culture is, and how it can be used, At another level such answers must take account of the creativity with which individuals approach the constraints and enablements em- bedded within particular social systems. In addition to being an issue of creativity, the objectification of objects is a question of power and the culture-specific ways in which people go about resolving contradictory meanings. Resolving conflicts of interpre- tation sets agendas for action, defines ideals, and channels the way indi- viduals see the world. Philip Ravenhill looks at the IFAN collections (the Institut Francais d'Afrique Noire) to consider what they can tell us about French colonial views of Africa. Essentially he argues that French interests used African ‘objects to reify French descriptions of Africa and that this is revealed both in the nature of the collections as well as in the exhibitions staged by IFAN. In the colonial framework ethnic cultures were self-perpetuat- ing and unchanging and, more important, any deviations from the ‘norms established by French classification were seen in negative terms— as demonstrating a lack of skill, the contamination of styles, and other factors. In short, this case study, as with the others in this section, dem- ‘onstrates that the meaning of objects is contextual, Christraud Geary’s essay deals with the contextual nature of the meanings of objects by following the changing meanings of several beaded thrones created for the royal court of the Bamum kingdom in western Cameroon within Cameroon and Europe. in this discussion Geary demonstrates very clearly the complex ways in which meanings are transformed as objects change contexts. In her examples the thrones are “things of the palace,” symbols of successful colonization (in German collections), symbols of failed colonization {in French collections), and symbols of Bamum identity within Cameroon. It is also clear from Geary’s description of the recent buming of one of these thrones in B: ‘mum that these transformations of meaning are an ongoing part of peo- ple’s interactions with objects—the meanings of objects are contested and negotiated in ways that continue to have to do with questions of ower, history, and identity. Geary’s essay also makes it clear that the ‘transformations of meaning she discusses happen in both European and African settings. Henry Drewal’s contribution to this volume explores how European objects and imagery are transformed in African contexts. Drewal begins by documenting the way that images of mermaids and snake charmers were transformed from being a symbol of the “exotic other” for Europe- ans to being an essential image for Mami Wata devotees in West Africa. Introduction & 21 ‘suggests that such resymbolizing of the other is a universal pro- that we transform aspects of the other that relate to us in our own and that such processes of symbolizing the other are at their rt attempts at self-definition, Like Geary and Ravenbill, then, Drewal jonstrates that the ways in which objects are used in particular and times often tell us more about those using the objects than ut the objects themselves. At the same time, Drewal suggests the formation of imagery of the exotic other into Mami Wata implies a of control over foreign objects that has powerful implications. By rating elements of the world capitalist system, Mami Wata devo- are not rejecting their own identities, but instead, are reworking nitions of themselves through their use and appropriation of con- porary forms. This chapter and others in Part III make it clear that s and their meanings are often a central element in such re- ngs. in a simir vein, Bogumil Jewslewich's work on popular urban Inting in Zafre demonstrates the ways that new objects or forms can to represent or fuse with already-held images or concepts. He is ricularly interested in the creative capacity of people to use elements the dominant culture to produce their own culture. In his essay he nnects the relative prosperity of Zaire in the 1960s and early 1970s ih several factors: the reorganization of private space inside the house ho include activities that would previously have been public; the reintro- fon of photos and painting on living room walls (with portraits be- ing tess expensive than photographs); the emphasis on photographic re- Jism in paintings; the “grammar” or arrangement of images in colonial wographs; and the use of images of colonial politics In ways that make reference to practices experienced in independent Zaire. This anal- is also demonstrates the complex ways in which form and context are -xtricably linked, our of hee chaps conser the way thatthe nerest af those ‘appropriating forms or objects affect their interpretation. Equally im- ‘portant, these essays suggest that the process of appropriating is an on- (Going part of everyday life. Understanding the use of objects in this pro- (ets requires research that cross-cuts national or regional boundaries and attention to the multiplicity of meanings that particular forms might ‘engender. Like many of the chapters in the section on objects and iden- tity, research on the transformation of meanings also implies research Anto questions of power—essentially these are questions as to whose meanings prevail in particular contexts, why, and what the conse- ‘quences of decisions about knowledge and authority are for future ac- Won,220% Kris L. Hardin and Mary Jo Arnold! ‘The case studies in this volume prepare fertile ground for future stud- ies of material culture in Africa by providing a framework that can en- compass both form and context in new and productive ways. On the ‘one hand these essays show the import of microstudies that relate form fo context in culture-specific terms, terms that define the nature of form” or “context” in ways that tell us more about African lives, ob- Jects, and identities. At another level, some of these case studies create a space for looking at the ways that Africa-centered approaches to African ‘material culture can help to reshape our ideas of the large-scale histori- cal processes and transnational flows that most abjects are a part of, The heart of this approach is an appreciation of agency and the constraints that particular social systems impose. We hope that this volume will Provide further incentive to explore the multitude of ways in which People use objecis to construct the world around them. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors would like to thank Ivan Karp, Christraud Geary mous reviewer for Indiana University Press for comments on \ ss re ty Press for comments on and the anony- various drafts of NoTES soli ent a oes ae mr peer Moreover that the most important clements are usually not inherent it he terial structure at all" (Thomas. 1989;41). savaea woth ag Balsa A, re 9 od a and Lie en ee visual arts from a social perspective. i so nah guinea ek acta ers Se ott ae catenin ae joa cea pehmmn i.e. saceties similar to those found in Western Europe in the late nlneiecsh Sa ea ey ee enh Pie maces in t rs so plausibly could be done with the omamestation of surlacce: eenteaa, 1990:15; see also Goldwater 1938:19), re : 5: Foran exhibition argenized around the themes of commerce, dvlization, Christianity see Jeanne Cannizzo, Into the Heart of Africa, and tts catalogue zo 1989). 6. Arvartife, a 1988 exhibition at the Center for Alrican Art in New York, zed with the definitional boundaries of various categories of objects. For a ther discussion of the history of these boundaries see Vogel (1988). ‘7. Its important to point out that this split is not necessarily a spit between istorians and anthropologists. Numerous anthropologists fell into the aes- ‘camp. For example, in 1951 the anthropologist Raymond Firth wrote re are universal standards of aesthetic quality” (Firth 1951:16) & In 1914 Alfred Stieglitz organized the first American exhibition of African at Gallery 291 in New York City. In 1933 the Museum of Modern Art in New mounted an exhibit of about six hundred African sculptures. Following this bition and throughout the next decades, a number of fine arts museums in United States began to mount modest exhibitions of African sculpture. In 4 the Museum of Primitive Art, dedicated to the collection and display of tive art, was founded by Nelson Rockefeller in New York. In 1978-79 skefeller donated the Museum of Primitive Art to the Metropolitan Museum An, uniting the two collections. ‘9. Karp terins this exhibition technique “assimilation” (as opposed to exot- ring) in that i places foreign objects in familiar settings. Definitions of the lghject are then shaped by the setting. In his words, in assimilation “cultural and Ihintarical differences are obliterated from the exhibiting record” (Karp 1991: 376), 10, Although African art was studied by European museum curators and eth- nologists it was not accepted within the European discipline of art history be- Hause, as Adams notes, it was perceived to lack “demonstrated historical evolu- tlan of forms... information about the artistic personality of the sub-Saharan ‘carver, ... [and] written documents as a basis for historical or interpretive study.” There was also the perception “that Africa lacked the kind of cultural olues that gave significance to European art” (Adams 1989:57). However, in Arserican universities in the late 1950s African art slowly began to be studied fn lis own right, The first American Ph.D. in African art history was awarded to Roy Sieber in 1957 by the University of fowa. In this early work stylistic analysis fand studies of style distribution continued to shape approaches to Aftican art bhistory, but interests in style were soon combined with growing interests in ico- frography and use, topics that were stimulated by field research in Attica 11, Even in this latter approach, however, the tendency has been to see ob- {ects as relleations of culture rather than as tools in the constitution of culture, ‘Thus ritual objects have tended to be studied from the point of view of their ability to present ideological prindples in symbolic terms rather than from the ‘lance that their production and use actually participate in the construction of Mdcology (see, for example, Adams 1973, 1977, and Litlejohn 1960). 12, Paula Ben-Amos’s recent overview of social approaches to African art ‘may help to reshape the overemphasis on formal approaches in studies of Alri- ‘can material culture (see Ben-Amos 1989). In it she stresses the importance of looking for new approaches to African art that “will be closer to actual African experience” (Ben-Amos 1989:3). 13, The sometimes heated debates about the direction and goals of African Arts, a major publication for dealers and collectors as well as scholars of Alrican an, are testimony to the fact that the marriage between scholars, collectors, and.