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 Contents

Preface xv

CHAPTER 1 What Is the Anthropological Perspective? 3

What Is Anthropology? 4 Applied Anthropology 14
What Is the Concept of Culture? 6 In Their Own Words: What Can You Learn
What Makes Anthropology a from an Anthropology Major? 15
Cross-Disciplinary Discipline? 7 Medical Anthropology 16
Biological Anthropology 8 The Uses of Anthropology 17
In Their Own Words: Anthropology as a CHApTER SUMMARY 17
Vocation 9 FoR REVIEW 18
Cultural Anthropology 10
KEY TERMS 18
Linguistic Anthropology 13
SUggESTED READIngS 18
Archaeology 13

PartI TheToolsof Cultural Anthropology

CHAPTER 2 Why Is the Concept of Culture Important? 21

How Do Anthropologists Define Culture? 22 Genital Cutting, Gender,
In Their Own Words: The paradox of and Human Rights 31
Ethnocentrism 23 Genital Cutting as a Valued Ritual 32
Culture, History, and Human Agency 25 Culture and Moral Reasoning 33
In Their Own Words: Culture and Did Their Culture Make Them DoIt? 33
Freedom 27 Does Culture Explain Everything? 35
Why Do Cultural Differences Matter? 27 Culture Change and Cultural
What Is Ethnocentrism? 28 Authenticity 36
In Their Own Words: Human-Rights Law The promise of the Anthropological
and the Demonization of Culture 29 perspective 37

Is It Possible to Avoid Ethnocentric Bias? 30 CHApTER SUMMARY 37

WhatIs Cultural Relativism? 31 FoR REVIEW 38
How Can Cultural Relativity Improve
KEY TERMS 38
our Understanding of
SUggESTED READIngS 39
Controversial Cultural practices? 31

vi
viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER 3 WhatIs Ethnographic Fieldwork? 41

Why Do Fieldwork? 43 The Dialectic of Fieldwork: Some Examples 60

What Is the Fieldwork Experience Like? 43 What Happens When There Are Ruptures in
A Meeting of Cultural Traditions 45 Communication? 62
Ethnographic Fieldwork: How Has Anthropologists What Are the Effects of Fieldwork? 64
Understanding Changed? 46 How Does Fieldwork Affect Informants? 64
The Positivist Approach 47 How Does Fieldwork Affect the Researcher? 66
Was There a Problem with Positivism? 49 Does Fieldwork Have Humanizing Effects? 67
Can the Reflexive Approach Replace In Their Own Words: The Relationship between
Positivism? 50 Anthropologists and Informants 68
Anthropology in Everyday Life: Where Does Anthropological
Anthropological Ethics 52 Knowledge Come From? 68
Can Fieldwork Be Multisited? 54 How Is Knowledge Produced? 69
What Is the Dialectic of Fieldwork? 55 Is Anthropological Knowledge

How Are Interpretation and Translation Open Ended? 69

Important Aspects of Fieldwork? 56 In Their Own Words: The Skills of the
In Their Own Words: Whos Studying Anthropologist 70
Whom? 57 CHApTER SUMMARY 71
How Can Anthropologists FoR REVIEW 72
Move beyond the Dialectic? 58 KEY TERMS 72
In Their Own Words: Japanese Corporate Wives
SUggESTED READIngS 72
in the United States 59

CHAPTER 4 How Has Anthropological Thinking about

Cultural Diversity Changed over Time? 75
Capitalism, Colonialism, and the Doing without Typologies:
origins of Ethnography 76 Culture Area Studies in America 88
Capitalism and Colonialism 77 How Do Anthropologists Study
The Fur Trade in North America 79 Forms of Human Society Today? 90
The Slave and Commodities Trades 79 Postcolonial Realities 90

Colonialism and Modernity 79 Locating Cultural Processes in History 91

The Colonial Political Economy 80 Analyzing Cultural Processes
Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter 80 under Globalization 91
In Their Own Words: The Anthropological The Anthropology of Science,
Voice 81 Technology, and Medicine 93
What Explains Human Cultural Variation? 82 CHApTER SUMMARY 95
In Their Own Words: The Ecologically noble FoR REVIEW 97
Savage? 83 KEY TERMS 97
Evolutionary Typologies: The Nineteenth
SUggESTED READIngS 9
Century 83
Social Structural Typologies:
The British Emphasis 85
 Contents ix

Part II The Resourcesof Culture

CHAPTER 5 WhatIs Human Language? 99

Why Do Anthropologists Study Language? 100 How Is Meaning Negotiated
Language and Culture 100 in Pidgins and Creoles? 114
Talking about Experience 101 What Does Linguistic Inequality Look Like? 114
What Makes Human Language Distinctive? 102 What Are the Controversies Surrounding the
In Their Own Words: Cultural Translation 104 Language Habits of African Americans? 114
What Does It Mean to Learn a Language? 105 In Their Own Words: Varieties of African
Language and Context 105 American English 116
Does Language Affect How We See the WhatIs Language Ideology? 116
World? 106 What Are the Controversies Surrounding the
What Are the Components of Language? 108 Language Habits of Women and Men? 117
Phonology: Sounds 108 What Is Lost If a Language Dies? 119
Morphology: WordStructure 109 Anthropology in Everyday Life: Language
Syntax: Sentence Structure 109 Revitalization 120
Semantics: Meaning 110 How Are Language and Truth Connected? 123
Pragmatics: Language in Contexts of Use 110 CHApTER SUMMARY 124
Ethnopragmatics 111 FoR REVIEW 125
What Happens When Languages Come into KEY TERMS 125
Contact? 113 SUggESTED READIngS 12
WhatIs the Relation of Pidgins and Creoles? 113

CHAPTER 6 How Do We Make Meaning? 127

What Is play? 128 How Does Myth Reflectand
How Do WeThink about Play? 128 ShapeSociety? 146
What Are Some Effects of Play? 129 Do Myths Help Us Think? 147
Do people play by the Rules? 131 What Is Ritual? 148
How Are Culture and Sport Related? 132 How Do Anthropologists Define Ritual? 148
How Is Sport in the What Makes a Childs Birthday Party
Nation-State Organized? 132 a Ritual? 148
Sport as Metaphor 133 How Is Ritual Expressed in Action? 149
How Are Baseball and Masculinity What Are Rites of Passage? 149
Related in Cuba? 134 How Are Play and Ritual
What Is Art? 135 Complementary? 150
Can Art Be Defined? 135 In Their Own Words: Video in the Villages 151
But Is It Art? 136 How Do Cultural practices Combine play,
Shes Fake: Art and Authenticity 139 Art, Myth, and Ritual? 152
How Does Hip-Hop Become Japanese? 140 CHApTER SUMMARY 153
How Does Sculpture Figure FoR REVIEW 154
in the Baule Gbagba Dance? 141 KEY TERMS 155
The Mass Media: SUggESTED READIngS 155
ATelevision Serial in Egypt 143
In Their Own Words: Tango 144
What Is Myth? 145
x CONTENTS

CHAPTER 7 What Can Anthropology Tell Us about Religion

and Worldview? 157
What Is a Worldview? 159 In Their Own Words: For All Those Who Were
How Do Anthropologists Study Indian in a Former Life 170
Worldviews? 159 Maintaining and Changing a Worldview 171
What Are Some Key Metaphors for How Do People Cope with Change? 171
Constructing Worldviews? 161 Anthropology in Everyday Life: Lead poisoning
What Is Religion? 162 among Mexican American Children 172
How Do People Communicate in In Their Own Words: Custom and
Religion? 163 Confrontation 174
How Are Religion and Social How Are Worldviews Used as
Organization Related? 165 Instruments of power? 174
Worldviews in practice: Two Case Studies 166 Is Secularism a Worldview? 175
Coping with Misfortune: Witchcraft, Oracles, Religion and Secularism 175

and Magic among the Azande 166 Muslim Headscarves in France:

Are There Patterns of A Case Study 177
Witchcraft Accusation? 169 CHApTER SUMMARY 179
Coping with Misfortune: Listening for God FoR REVIEW 180
among Contemporary Evangelicals in the KEY TERMS 180
United States 169
SUggESTED READIngS 181

PartIII The Organizationof MaterialLife

CHAPTER 8 How Are Culture and Power Connected? 183

Who Has the power to Act? 184 How Can power Be an Independent Entity? 195
How Do Anthropologists Study politics? 186 What Is the power of the Imagination? 196
What Is Coercion? 186 The Power of the Weak 196
Coercion in Societies without States? 187 What Does It Mean to Bargain for Reality? 198
Domination and Hegemony 188 In Their Own Words: protesters gird for Long
Power and National Identity: Fight over opening perus Amazon 201
A Case Study 189 How Does History Become a prototype of and for
Biopower and Governmentality 191 political Action? 203
Trying to Elude Governmentality: How Can the Meaning of History Be
A Case Study 192 negotiated? 205
In Their Own Words: Reforming the Crow CHApTER SUMMARY 206
Constitution 193 FoR REVIEW 206
Anthropology in Everyday Life: Anthropology KEY TERMS 207
and Advertising 194
SUggESTED READIngS 20
The Ambiguity of Power 195

CHAPTER 9 How Do People Make a Living? 209

What Are Subsistence Strategies? 211 How Are goods Distributed and
What Are the Connections between Exchanged? 214
Culture and Livelihood? 212 Capitalism and Neoclassical Economics 214
Self-Interest, Institutions, and Morals 212 In Their Own Words: David graeber on
What Are production, Distribution, and Debt 215
Consumption? 213 Modes of Exchange 217
 Contents xi

Does production Drive Economic Activities? 219 What Is the Original Affluent Society? 227
Labor 220 The Abominations of Leviticus 229
Modes of Production 220 Banana Leaves in the Trobriand Islands 229
The Role of Conflict in Material Life 221 Changing Consumption
Anthropology in Everyday Life: producing in Rural Guatemala 231
Sorghum and Millet in Honduras and the How Does Culture Construct Utility? 231
Sudan 222 In Their Own Words: Fake Masks and Faux
Applying Production Theory Modernity 232
to Social and Cultural Life 222 Consumption Studies Today 232
In Their Own Words: So Much Work, So Much Coca-Cola in Trinidad 233

Tragedy . . . and for What? 224 What Is the Anthropology of

Why Do people Consume What They Do? 224 Food and nutrition? 234
In Their Own Words: Solidarity Forever 225 Interplay between the Meaningful and
The Internal Explanation: Malinowski and Basic the Material 235
Human Needs 225 CHApTER SUMMARY 236
The External Explanation: Cultural Ecology 226 FoR REVIEW 236
Food Storage and Sharing 226 KEY TERMS 237
How Does Culture Construct Human
SUggESTED READIngS 23
needs? 227

PartIV Systemsof Relationships

CHAPTER 10 What Can Anthropology Teach Us about Sex,
Gender, and Sexuality? 239
How Did Twentieth-Century Feminism How Do Anthropologists Study Relations between
Shape the Anthropological Sex, gender, and Sexuality? 255
Study of Sex, gender, and Sexuality? 240 How Does Ethnography Document Variable
How Do Anthropologists organize the Culture Understandings Concerning Sex,
Study of Sex, gender, and Sexuality? 244 gender, and Sexuality? 257
In Their Own Words: The Consequences of Female Sexual Practices in Mombasa 258
Being a Woman 247 Male and Female Sexual Practices in
How Are Sex and gender Affected by Nicaragua 260

other Forms of Identity? 248 Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in

How Do Ethnographers Study gender Iran 261
performativity? 249 CHApTER SUMMARY 263
How Do Anthropologists Study Connections Among FoR REVIEW 264
Sex, gender, Sexuality, and the Body? 252 KEY TERMS 265
How Do Anthropologists Study Connections
SUggESTED READIngS 265
between Bodies and Technologies? 254

CHAPTER 11 Where Do Our Relatives Come from and

Why Do They Matter? 267
How Do Human Beings organize The Logic of Lineage Relationships 277
Interdependence? 268 What Are Patrilineages? 277
What Is Friendship? 269 What Are Matrilineages? 278
WhatIs Kinship? 272 Matrilineality, Electoral Politics,
What Is the Role of Descent in Kinship? 273 and the Art of the Neutral Partisan 279
Bilateral Kindreds 274 What Are Kinship Terminologies? 280
What Role Do Lineages play in Descent? 275 What Criteria Are Used for Making Kinship
Lineage Membership 275 Distinctions? 280
xii CONTENTS

What Is Adoption? 281 In Their Own Words: Dowry Too High. Lose
Adoption in Highland Ecuador 282 Bride and go to Jail 296
What Is the Relation Between Adoption and What Is the Polygynous Family? 297
Child Circulation in the Andes? 283 Extended and Joint Families 298
How Flexible Can Relatedness Be? 284 How Are Families Transformed over Time? 298
Negotiation of Kin Ties Divorce and Remarriage 298
among the Ju/hoansi 284 In Their Own Words: Law, Custom, and Crimes
European American Kinship and against Women 300
New Reproductive Technologies 285 How Does International Migration Affect the
Assisted Reproduction in Israel 286 Family? 300

Compadrazgo in Latin America 287 In Their Own Words: Survival and a Surrogate
Organ Transplantation and the Family 302
Creation of New Relatives 288 Families by Choice 303
What Is Marriage? 289 Anthropology in Everyday Life: Caring for
Toward a Definition of Marriage 289 Infibulated Women giving Birth in

Woman Marriage and Ghost Marriage norway 304

among the Nuer 289 In Their Own Words: Why Migrant Women
Why Is Marriage a Social process? 290 Feed Their Husbands Tamales 306
Patterns of Residence after Marriage 290 The Flexibility of Marriage 306
Single and Plural Spouses 291 Love, Marriage, and HIV/AIDS in Nigeria 307
What Is the Connection between In Their Own Words: Two Cheers for gay
Marriage and Economic Exchange? 293 Marriage 308

In Their Own Words: outside Work, Women, CHApTER SUMMARY 310

and Bridewealth 294 FoR REVIEW 312
What Is a Family? 295 KEY TERMS 313
What Is the Nuclear Family? 295
SUggESTED READIngS 31

Part V From Local to Global

CHAPTER 12 What Can Anthropology

Tell Us about Social Inequality? 315
Class 316 In Their Own Words: The politics of
Caste 318 Ethnicity 332

Caste in India 318 Ethnicity in Urban Africa 333

How Do Caste and Class Intersect in Ethnicity and Race 334

Contemporary India? 319 nation and nation-State 335

Caste in Western Africa 322 Nationalities and Nationalism 336

The Value of Caste as an Analytic Category 323 Australian Nationalism 336
Race 323 Anthropology in Everyday Life: Anthropology
In Their Own Words: As Economic Turmoil and Democracy 338
Mounts, So Do Attacks on Hungarys Naturalizing Discourses 340
gypsies 324 The Paradox of Essentialized Identities 340
In Their Own Words: on the Butt Size of Barbie Nation-Building in a Postcolonial World:
and Shani 325 Fiji 340
The Biology of Human Variation 325 Nationalism and Its Dangers 342

Race as a Social Category 327 CHApTER SUMMARY 343

Race in Colonial Oaxaca 328 FoR REVIEW 344
Colorism in Nicaragua 330 KEY TERMS 344
Ethnicity 331
SUggESTED READIngS 345
 Contents xiii

CHAPTER 13 What Can Anthropology

Tell Us about Globalization? 347
In Their Own Words: Amazon Indians Honor an Are Human Rights Universal? 370
Intrepid Spirit 349 Human Rights Discourse as the
In Their Own Words: The Ethnographers Global Language of Social Justice 370

Responsibility 351 Rights versus Culture 371

In Their Own Words: Slumdog Tourism 352 Rights to Culture 372
Cultural Imperialism or Cultural Rights as Culture 373
Hybridity? 353 Anthropology in Everyday Life: Anthropology
Cultural Imperialism 353 and Indigenous Rights 374
Cultural Hybridity 353 How Can Culture Help in
In Their Own Words: How Sushi Went Thinking about Rights? 376
global 354 Violence against Women in Hawaii 377
The Limits of Cultural Hybridity 356 What Is the Relationship between Human
How Does globalization Affect the Rights and Humanitarianism? 379
nation-State? 357 Can We Be at Home in a global World? 380
Are Global Flows Undermining Cosmopolitanism 381
Nation-States? 357 In Their Own Words: Destructive Logging and
Migration, Trans-Border Identities, and Deforestation in Indonesia 382
Long-Distance Nationalism 358 Friction 383
In Their Own Words: Cofan 359
Border Thinking 384
Anthropology and Multicultural Politics
CHApTER SUMMARY 385
in the New Europe 362
FoR REVIEW 387
How Can Citizenship Be Flexible? 366
What Is Territorial Citizenship? 368 KEY TERMS 387

What Is Vernacular Statecraft? 368 SUggESTED READIngS 387

CHAPTER 14 How Is Anthropology

Applied in the Field of Medicine? 389
What Is Medical Anthropology? 390 In Their Own Words: Ethical Dilemmas
What Makes Medical Anthropology and Decisions 402
Biocultural? 390 Health, Human Reproduction,
How Do people with Different Cultures and Global Capitalism 403
Understand the Causes Medical Anthropology and
of Sickness and Health? 393 HIV/AIDS 406
Kinds of Selves 393 The Future of Medical Anthropology 410
Decentered Selves on the Internet 395 Why Study Anthropology? 410
Self and Subjectivity 395 CHApTER SUMMARY 411
Subjectivity, Trauma, FoR REVIEW 414
and Structural Violence 397 KEY TERMS 414
How Are Human Sickness and Health Shaped
SUggESTED READIngS 41
by the global Capitalist Economy? 401

Glossary 417

Bibliography 425

Credits 441

Index 445
 preface

from
H
place to
umans
depend
are a social

and for their flourishing.

place
species
on one another

has also characterized

whose
for their
Movement
mem-bers kind

human
of threat?
sur-vival, conclusion
formations?
one picture
reading
or is a viewer
too

may be worth
much into
who draws such

a thousand
the cloud

words,
a

history reaching back hundreds of thousands of and yet no picture speaks for itself clearly and un-ambiguously.
years before the appearance of our own species, Asit happens, the photograph is de-scribed
Homo sapiens. Anthropologists and others have as follows: Refugees in Kibati (Democratic
long been impressed by the distinctive patterned Republic of Congo) line up to receive food aid ra-tions
activities in which the members of different human from the World Food program at a camp for
groups may engage, the orderly fashion in which Internally Displaced people (2008). They are there
they their members may arrange themselves in both willingly and unwillingly. Receiving food sug-gests
order to involve themselves, for example, in the that the threat of hunger will be avoided, but
performance of public rituals of various kinds. the fact that they are receiving food rations from an
There may be nothing as quintessentially human international aid organization suggests that it was
as a group of people moving together in space, threats they experienced elsewhere that drove them
tracing intricate patterns with their bodies in to stand in this line. The sky is not sunny, but it is
motion, but also periodically ceasing to move not storming either. They are, for good and for ill,
where this is deemed appropriate. betwixt and between: they havefled their homes,
So what perspective on the human condition but have not fled their country; their old ways of
can an image like the one on this cover convey to an providing for themselves have been disrupted, but
observer? The people we see are standing in along they are alive and will soon be able to eat. But they
line outdoors. Why might they be there? Are they do indeed seem very much at the mercy of processes
watching something beyond the observers field of in the worldforces of nature as well as of human
vision? Might they be standing alongside a playing society and politicsthat makethe threatening sky
field, watching a sports competition? Might they be an apt visual metaphor for their current situation.
watching a public performance of some kindthe In the second decade of the twenty-first cen-tury,
elaborate visit of political dignitaries, for example, many people throughout the worldfind them-selves
or the enactment of a major religious ritual? Were in circumstances that resonate with that of
they individually drawn to whatever is going on, or the displaced line of humans in Kigali in 2008.
were they pressured to be present when they might Anthropologists and historians will rightly argue
have preferred to stay away? Much of the drama of that no human society has ever been static, but
the image is contributed by the dramatic and forbid-ding recent decades have been unusually disruptive of
cloud formations in the sky above the line of many local ways of life throughout the world.
people. Did the photographer take the photograph Indeed, the discipline of anthropology, which
intending to emphasize these cloud formations, or aimed to investigate and understand such ways of
later crop the photograph to produce this visual life aslived in places outside the world of European
effect? Wasthe photograph finished the way it was and north American urban society, was born
in order to convey to the viewers the impression during thefinal decades of the nineteenth century,
that the people standing in line were under some when the full force of European capitalism had
x
 xvi PREFACE

extended its reach around the world, putting the human creativity: language; play, art, myth, and
finishing touches on economic and political struc-tures ritual; and religion and worldview.

that would stabilize in the form of European Part III, The Organization of Material Life, con-sists
(and American) colonial empires. Classic works of of two chaptersone on power and one on

sociocultural research were carried out in colo-nized making a livingthat deal with the ways human

settings throughout the first two thirds of the cultural creativity is channeled and circumscribed

twentieth century, with the aim of recovering and by political and economic constraints.

even celebrating the rich patterns of everyday life Part IV, Systems of Relationships, looks at the or-ganization

that drew from the past whilefinding ways to ac-commodate of human interdependence, covering

the challenges of so-called moderniza-tion gender, sex, and sexuality, kinship, other forms of
relatedness, and marriage and the family.
imposed from elsewhere. By the end of the
twentieth century, newer historical transforma-tions Part V, From Local to Global, concludes the text.
We ask students to contemplate the globalizing,
were again remaking the face of the globe,
transnational context in which all human beings
drawing members of all human societies into new
live at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
entanglements with one another. not all such en-tanglements
Chapters examine dimensions of inequality in
have been threatening. Still, for many
the contemporary world; how anthropology is ap-plied
people, the stakes have been exceptionally high,
to medicine; and some of the consequences
triggering political struggles and often violent
of global political, economic, and cultural pro-cesses
clashes that lead to high loss of life, with survivors
that all societies face today.
forced to move away from their homes into un-known
and forbidding futures.
Sociocultural anthropology continues with its
commitment to provide fine-grained ethnographic Whats new
understandings of peoples efforts to construct co-herent
and meaningful lives, even under changing in the Tenth Edition
and challenging circumstances. The chapters in this
book aim to introduce students to the theories and In addition to updating the text, we have a number of
methods traditionally developed in the discipline to key changes to this edition:
address the manyfacets of human group life, as well
Chapter 10 is a new chapter on Sex, Gender, and
as newer innovations that allow us to track the
Sexuality. This chapter brings together material
movements of people and their cultural resources that was previously integrated into different chap-ters
into new settings, as they construct ways of life that and expands and updates it with new anthro-pological
maystabilize in new, often surprising ways,in rela-tion research and analysis documenting the
to their neighbors. varied ways in which people around the world are
revising their understandings and practices in-volving
sex, gender, and sexuality.

To make room for the new chapter 10, we have cre-ated

organization and Content a new chapter 11 that merges and integrates

previous chapters on Relationships and Marriage

and the Family. Also new in that chapter is a re-vised

Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human discussion of friendship and a new discus-sion
Condition, Tenth Edition, consists of 14 chapters in five of child circulation and adoption in the Andes.
parts:
The material on the biology of race originally in
Part I, The Tools of Cultural Anthropology, con-sists chapter 4 has now been integrated into the dis-cussion
of three introductory chapters: one on the on racial inequality in chapter 12, offer-ing
concept of culture, one on ethnographic fieldwork, students an integrated picture of how
and one on history and the explanation of cul-tural anthropologists approach the issue of race from
diversity. both a biological and a cultural perspective.
Part II, The Resources of Culture, is a set of three Chapter 12 also includes a new discussion of
chapters on key dimensions and products of class and caste in urban India
 Preface xvii

The discussion offieldwork in chapter 3 includes in Everyday Life that explores different practical
a much-expanded discussion of anthropology applications of anthropology.
and ethics. EthnoProfiles provide ethnographic summaries and
The chapter on the anthropology of globalization maps of each society discussed at length in the text.

is now chapter 13, and it includes new sections on These boxes emerged from our desire as teachers
humanitarianism and humanitarian reason, ter-ritorial to supply our students with basic geographical,
citizenship, and vernacular statecraft. demographic, and political information about

Chapter 14, on medical anthropology, is now the the peoples with whom anthropologists have

final chapter in the book. worked. These are not intended to be a substitute
for reading ethnographies or for in-class lectures,

and they are not intended to reify or essentialize

the people or culture in question. Their main

KeyFeatures purpose

for
is simply

readers.
to provide

At the same
a consistent

time, as it
orien-tation

be-comes
more and more difficult to attach peoples
to particular territories in an era of globaliza-tion,
Wetake an explicitly global approach in the text. We
the orientating purpose of the EthnoProfiles
systematically point out the extent to which the
is also undermined. How does one calculate
current sociocultural situation of particular peo-ples
population numbers or draw a simple map to
has been shaped by their particular histories
locate a global diaspora? How does one con-struct
of contact with capitalism, and we highlight ways
an EthnoProfile for overseas Chinese or
in which the postCold War global spread of capi-talism
trans-border Haitians? We did not know the
has drastically reshaped the local contexts
answer to these questions, which is why
within which people everywhere live their lives.
EthnoProfiles for those groups will not be found
Weincorporate current anthropological approaches to
in the textbook.
power and inequality into the text. We explore how
In our discussions, we have tried to avoid being omni-scient
power is manifested in different human societies;
narrators by making use of citations and quota-tions
how it permeates all aspects of social life; and
in order to indicate where anthropological ideas
how it is deployed, resisted, and transformed. We
come from. In our view, even first-year students
discuss issues of trauma, social suffering, and
need to know that an academic discipline like
human rights.
anthropology is constructed by the work of
Material on gender and feminist anthropology is fea-tured
many people; no one, especially not textbooks
both in its own chapter and throughout the text.
authors, should attempt to impose a single voice
Discussions of gender are tightly woven into the
on the field. We have avoided, as much as we
fabric of the book from the first chapter to the
could, predigested statements that students must
last and include (for example) material on geni-tal
take on faith. Wetry to give them the informa-tion
cutting, gender issues in field research, lan-guage
that they need to see where particular con-clusions
and gender, dance and gender politics,
come from.
masculinity and baseball in Cuba, women and
colonialism, gender issues in the Muslim head-scarf
controversy in France, and Nuer woman
marriage.
Ancillaries
Voices of indigenous peoples, anthropologists, and
nonanthropologists are presented in the text in In
Their Own Words commentaries. These short com-mentaries A free Companion Website at http://www.oup
provide alternative perspectivesalways .com/us/schultz features (1) Student Resources,
readable and sometimes controversialon including a study skills guide (filled with hints
topics discussed in the chapter in which they and suggestions on improving study skills, orga-nizing
appear. information, writing essay exams, and

How anthropology fits into everyday life continues to be taking multiple-choice exams), flashcards, self-quizzes,

an explicit focus. Beginning with chapter 3, most chapter outlines, and helpful links;
chapters include a feature called Anthropology (2) Instructor Resources, including PowerPoin
xviii PREFACE

presentations for lectures, filmographies, activi-ties,

discussion questions, and guest editorials
(brief essays by well-known anthropologists Acknowledgments
written especially for our text); and (3) a bonus
chapter on human evolution, based on the sug-gestion
Our great thanks to our editor at Oxford, Sherith Pankratz,
of several reviewers who feel a need to
for her commitment to our books and her infectious
provide their students with the basics of human
enthusiasm. Thanks, too, to Assistant Editor Meredith
evolutionary theory from a biological anthropo-logical
Keffer for her skill at handling the myriad of details this
perspective.
project has generated while remaining cheerful. Our
Further Instructor Resources include a free Com-puterized
thanks, too, to the production team at S4Carlisle Pub-lishing
Test Bank and Instructors Manual on
Services.
CD, created by Brian Hoey of Marshall University, Wecontinue to be impressed by the level of involve-ment
and free cartridges for Course Management Sys-tems,
of the reviewers of this book. Our reviewers
available from your Oxford University Press
recognize that they are important not only to us, the
sales representative.
authors of this book, but also to the users of textbooksboth
students and colleagues. They also recognize that

authors have more than time invested in their work, and

their thoughtfulness in their comments is much valued.
A Final note We have found that even when we didnt follow their sug-gestions,
their work caused us to think and rethink the
issues they raisedit is safe to say that we have discussed
Wetake students seriously. In our experience, although
every point they mentioned. We would like therefore to
students may sometimes complain, they are also pleased
recognize the following individuals:
when a course or a textbook gives them some credit for
having minds and being willing to use them. We have Dillon Carr, Grand Rapids Community College

worked hard to make this book readable and to present Christina P. Davis, Western Illinois University
anthropology in its diversity, as a vibrant, lively disci-pline Nicholas Freidin, Marshall University
full of excitement, contention, and intellectual
Elzbieta M. Gozdziak, Georgetown University
value. We do not run away from the meat of the disci-pline
Kimberly Hart, State University of New York at
with the excuse that its too hard for students. We
Buffalo
are aware that instant messaging, text messaging, and
Barry Kidder, University of Kentucky and Eastern
social networks and live journals have changed the ways
Kentucky University
in which students communicate, spend their time, and
Gabriel Lataianu, Bergen Community College
interact with their courses, especially their textbooks. We
believe that a clear, straightforward, uncluttered presen-tation Reece Jon McGee, Texas State University
of cultural anthropology works well. Our collec-tive James Preston, Sonoma State University and one
teaching experience has ranged from highly selec-tive anonymous reviewer
liberal arts colleges to multipurpose state universi-ties We owe a special debt to the late Ivan Karp, who was
to semirural community colleges. We have found our most important source of intellectual stimulation and
that students at all of these institutions are willing to be support for this project in its early days.
challenged and make an effort when it is clear to them Our children, Daniel and Rachel, have grown up with
that anthropology has something to offer intellectually, our textbooks. As they have grown, they have become
emotionally, and practically. It is our hope that this new increasingly concerned with the issues we raise in the
edition will continue to be a useful tool in challenging book, as well they should: These are issues that affect the
students and convincing them of the value of anthropol-ogy future of us all. This book is for them
as a way of thinking about, and dealing with, the

world in which they live.

Cultural
Anthropolog
 1
CHAPT ER

WhatIs the Anthropological

Perspective?
T his chapter introduces
anthropology
the field
is and explore its

key conceptcultureas
Weconclude with a discussion
of anthropology.
different subfields.
Welook

well asits key research

of the
Wetouch

ways anthropological
at what
on anthro-pologys

methodfieldwork.
insights

are relevant in everyday life.

Chapter Outline

WhatIs Anthropology? Cultural Anthropology Medical Anthropology

WhatIs the Concept of Culture? Linguistic Anthropology The Usesof Anthropology

Chapter Summary
What MakesAnthropology a Archaeology
For Review
Cross-Disciplinary Discipline?
KeyTerms
Applied Anthropology
Suggested Readings
Biological Anthropology
 4 CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS THE ANTHROPOlOGICAl PERSPECTIVE?

I n early
northern
1976,
Cameroon,
the authors
in western
of this book
Africa, to study
traveled
social
to but such items
to be food fit
are considered
only for eccentrics.
by most North
However,
Americans
we under-stood
relations in the town of Guider, where we rented a small the importance of not insulting the night watch-man
house. In the first weeks we lived there, we enjoyed and his wife, who were being so generous to us. We
spending the warm evenings of the dry season reading knew that insects were a favored food in many human
and writing in the glow of the houses brightest electric societies and that eating them brought no ill effects. So
fixture, which illuminated a large, unscreened veranda. we reached into the dish of nyiri, pulling off a small
After a short time, however, the rains began, and with amount. Wethen used the ball of nyiri to scoop up a
them appeared swarms of winged termites. These slow-moving small portion of termite paste, brought the mixture to

insects with fat, two-inch abdomens were our mouths, ate, chewed, and swallowed. The watchman
attracted to the light on the veranda, and we soon found beamed, bid us goodnight, and returned to his post.
ourselves spending more time swatting at them than We looked at each other in wonder. The sorghum

reading or writing. One evening, in afit of desperation, paste had a grainy tang that was rather pleasant. The
we rolled up old copies of the international edition of termite paste tasted mild, like chicken, not unpleasant
Newsweek and began an all-out assault, determined to at all. We later wrote to our families about this experi-ence.

rid the veranda of every single termite. When they wrote back, they described how they
The rent we paid for this house included the services had told friends about our experience. Most of their
of a night watchman. As we launched our attack on the friends had strong, negative reactions. But one friend,
termites, the night watchman suddenly appeared beside a home economist, was not shocked at all. She simply
the veranda carrying an empty powdered milk tin. When commented that termites are a good source of clean
he asked if he could have the insects we had been killing, protein.
we were a bit taken aback but warmly invited him to
help himself. He moved onto the veranda, quickly col-lected
the corpses of fallen insects, and then joined usin
WhatIs Anthropology?
going after those termites that were still airborne.
Although we became skilled at thwacking the insects

with our rolled-up magazines, our skills paled beside This anecdote is not just about us; it also illustrates
those of the night watchman, who simply snatched the some of the central elements of the anthropological ex-perience.
termites out of the air with his hand, squeezed them Anthropologists want to learn about as many
gently, and dropped them into his rapidly filling tin can. different human ways of life as they can. The people
The three of us managed to clear the air of insectsand they come to know are members of their own society or
fill his tinin about 10 minutes. The night watchman live on a different continent, in cities or in rural areas.

thanked us and returned to his post, and we returned to Their ways of life may involve patterns of regular move-ment
our books. across international borders, or they may make
The following evening, soon after we took up our permanent homes in the borderlands themselves. Ar-chaeologists

usual places on the veranda, the watchman appeared at reconstruct ancient ways of life from traces
the steps bearing a tray with two covered dishes. He left behind in the earth that are hundreds or thousands
explained that his wife had prepared the food for us in of years old; anthropologists who strive to reconstruct

exchange for our help in collecting termites. Weaccepted the origin of the human species itself make use of fossil
the food and carefully lifted the lids. One dish contained remains that reach back millions of years into the past.

nyiri, a stiff paste made of red sorghum, a staple of the Whatever the case may be, anthropologists are some-times
local diet. The other dish contained another pasty sub-stance exposed to practices that startle them. However, as
with a speckled, salt-and-pepper appearance, they take the risk of getting to know such ways of life
which we realized was termite paste prepared from the better, they are often treated to the sweet discovery of

insects we had all killed the previous night. familiarity. This shock of the unfamiliar becoming
The night watchman waited at the foot of the ve-randa familiaras well as the familiar becoming unfamiliaris
steps, an expectant smile on his face. Clearly, he something anthropologists come to expect and is one
did not intend to leave until we tasted the food his wife of the real pleasures of the field. In this book, we share
had prepared. We looked at each other. We had never aspects of the anthropological experience in the hope
eaten insects before or considered them edible in the that you, too, will come to find pleasure, insight,
North American, middle-class diet we were used to. To and self-recognition from an involvement with the

be sure, delicacies like chocolate-covered ants exist, unfamiliar

 What Is Anthropology? 5

Anthropology can be defined as the study of human Africa or small-town festivals in Minnesota, anthropolo-gists
nature, human society, and the human past (Greenwood are in direct contact with the sources of their data.
and Stini 1977). It is a scholarly discipline that aims to For most anthropologists, the richness and complexity
describe in the broadest possible sense what it means to of this immersion in other patterns of life is one of our
be human. Anthropologists are not alone in focusing disciplines most distinctive features. Field research con-nects
their attention on human beings and their creations. anthropologists directly with the lived experience
Human biology, literature, art, history, linguistics, soci-ology, of other people or other primates or to the material evi-dence
political science, economicsall these scholarly of that experience that they have left behind. Aca-demic
disciplines and many moreconcentrate on one or an-other anthropologists try to intersperse field research

aspect of human life. Anthropologists are con-vinced, with the other tasks they perform as university profes-sors.
however, that explanations of human activities Other anthropologistsapplied anthropologistsregularly
will be superficial unless they acknowledge that human spend most or all of their time carrying out

lives are always entangled in complex patterns of work field research. All anthropology begins with a specific
and family, power and meaning. What is distinctive group of people (or primates) and always comes back to
about the way anthropologists study human life? As we them as well.

shall see, anthropology is holistic, comparative, field Finally, anthropologists try to come up with gener-alizations
based, and evolutionary. First, anthropology empha-sizes about what it means to be human that are
that all the aspects of human life intersect with one valid across space and over time. Because anthropolo-gists
another in complex ways. They shape one another and are interested in documenting and explaining
become integrated with one another over time. Anthro-pology change over time in the human past, evolution is at the
is thus the integrated, or holistic, study of human core of the anthropological perspective. Anthropologists
nature, human society, and the human past. This holism examine the biological evolution of the human species,
draws together anthropologists whose specializations which documents change over time in the physical fea-tures
might otherwise divide them. At the most inclusive and life processes of human beings and their an-cestors.
level, we may thus think of anthropology as the inte-grated Topics of interest include both human origins
(or holistic) study of human nature, human soci-ety, and genetic variation and inheritance in living human

and the human past. Holism has long been central populations. If evolution is understood broadly as
to the anthropological perspective and remains the fea-ture change over time, then human societies and cultures
that draws together anthropologists whose special-izations may also be understood to have evolved from prehis-toric

might otherwise divide them. times to the present.

Second, in addition to being holistic, anthropology Anthropologists have long been interested in cultural
is a discipline interested in comparison. To generalize evolution, which concerns change over time in beliefs,

about human nature, human society, and the human behaviors, and material objects that shape human
past requires evidence from the widest possible range of development and social life. As we will see in chapter 4,

human societies. It is not enough, for example, to ob-serve early discussions of cultural evolution in anthro-pology

only our own social group, discover that we do not emphasized a series of universal stages. However,
eat insects, and conclude that human beings as a species this approach has been rejected by contemporary
do not eat insects. When we compare human diets in dif-ferent

societies, we discover that insect eating is quite

common and that the North American aversion to eating
anthropology The study of human nature, human society, and the
insects is nothing more than a dietary practice specific to human past.
a particular society. holism A characteristic ofthe anthropological perspective that de-scribes,

Third, anthropology is also afield-based discipline. how anthropology tries to integrate all that is known
about human beings and their activities. This is based on empirical evi-dence
That is, for almost all anthropologists, the actual prac-tice
that any aspect of culture is entangled with other aspects
of anthropologyits data collectiontakes place in complex ways.

away from the office and in direct contact with the comparison A characteristic of the anthropological perspective that
requires anthropologists to consider similarities and differences in as
people, the sites, or the animals that are of interest.
wide a range of human societies as possible before generalizing about
Whether they are biological anthropologists studying human nature, human society, or the human past.
chimpanzees in Tanzania, archaeologists excavating a evolution A characteristic of the anthropological perspective that
site high in the Peruvian Andes, linguistic anthropolo-gists requires anthropologists to place their observations about human
nature, human society, or the human past in atemporal framework that
learning an unwritten language in New Guinea, or
takes into consideration change over time
cultural anthropologists studying ethnic identity in West
6 CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS THE ANTHROPOlOGICAl PERSPECTIVE?

anthropologists who talk about cultural evolution, like skills with tools and other artifacts that support our con-tinued
William Durham (1991) and Robert Boyd (e.g., Richer-son survival. learning and enskillment are a primary
and Boyd 2006). Theoretical debates about culture focus of childhood, which lasts longer for humans than
change and about whether it ought to be called cultural for any other species.
evolution or not are very lively right now, not only in From the anthropological perspective, the concept
anthropology but also in related fields like evolutionary of culture is central to explanations of why human
biology and developmental psychology. In the midst of beings are what they are and why they do what they
this debate, one of anthropologys most important con-tributions
do. Anthropologists are frequently able to show that
to the study of human evolution remains the members of a particular social group behave in a particu-lar

demonstration that biological evolution is not the same way not because the behavior was programmed by
thing as cultural evolution. Distinction between the two their genes, but because they observed or interacted with
remains important as a way of demonstrating the falla-cies other people and learned how to perform the behavior

and incoherence of arguments claiming that every-thing themselves. For example, North Americans typically do
people do or think can be explained biologically, not eat insects, but this behavior is not the result of ge-netic
for example, in terms of genes or race or sex. programming. Rather, North Americans have been

told as children that eating insects is disgusting, have

never seen any of their family or friends eat insects, and

WhatIs the Concept do not eat insects themselves. As we discovered person-ally,

however, insects can be eaten by North Americans
of Culture? with no ill effects. The difference in dietary practice can
be explained in terms of cultural learning rather than
genetic programming.
A consequence of human evolution that had the most
However, to understand the power of culture, an-thropologists
profound impact on human nature and human society
must also know about human biology.
was the emergence of culture, which we define here as
Anthropologists in North America traditionally have
patterns of learned behaviors and ideas that human
been trained in both areas so that they can understand
beings acquire as members of society, together with the
how living organisms work and become acquainted with
material artifacts and structures humans create and use.
comparative information about a wide range of human
Our cultural heritage allows humans to adapt to and
cultures. As a result, most anthropologists reject explana-tions
transform the world around us, through our interactions
of human behavior that force them to choose
with material structures and objects in the communities
either biology or culture as the unique cause. Instead
where we live, through the connections we form with
they emphasize that human beings are biocultural
other people, through the actions and skills of our indi-vidual
organisms. Our biological makeupour brain, nervous
bodies, and through the ideas and values of our
system, and anatomyis the outcome of developmental
minds. The cultural heritage of the human species is
processes to which our genes and cellular chemistry con-tribute
both meaningful and material, and it makes us unique
in fundamental ways. It also makes us capable of
among living creatures. Human beings are more depen-dent
creating and using culture. Without these biological en-dowments,
than any other species on learning for survival be-cause
human culture as we know it would not
we have no instincts that automatically protect us
exist. At the same time, our survival as biological organ-isms
and help usfind food and shelter. Instead, we have come
depends on learned ways of thinking and acting
to use our large and complex brains to learn from other
that help usfind food, shelter, and mates and that teach
members of society what we need to know to survive.
us how to rear our children. Our biological endowment
This includes learning to manage the built environ-mentour
makes culture possible; human culture makes human
dwellings and settlementsand mastering
biological survival possible.
To understand the power of culture, anthropologists
are also paying increasing attention to the role played by
culture Sets oflearned behavior and ideas that human beings acquire
material culture in the lives of biocultural human or-ganisms.
as members of society together with the material artifacts and struc-tures

humans create and use. Human beings use culture to adapt to and
Many cultural anthropologists, including our-selves,
to transform the world in which they live. have traditionally emphasized the way peoples
biocultural organisms Organisms (in this case, human beings) whose dealings with artifacts are shaped by the cultural mean-ings
defining features are codetermined by biological and cultural factors.
they attach to those artifacts. This emphasis has
material culture Objects created or shaped by human beings and
seemed particularly necessary in the face of the wide-spread
given meaning by cultural practices.

assumptions in our own North American societ

 What Makes Anthropology a Cross-Disciplinary Discipline? 7

that material objects have obvious functional meanings and other reasons, we agree with Daniel Miller that
that are the same for everyone, everywhere. But cultural the best way to understand, convey, and appreciate
anthropologists have found repeatedly that the same our humanity is through attention to our fundamental
object can mean different things to different people: Just materiality (2010, 4). And this means taking material
consider the varied meanings attached to assault weap-ons culture seriously.
or the morning after pill that have been held by
different groups of U.S. citizens in the recent history of
the United States.
At the same time, innovative theories of materiality What Makes Anthropology
developed in fields called cyborg anthropology and sci-ence
studies have provided cultural anthropologists
a Cross-Disciplinary
with new ways of conceptualizing relations between
Discipline?
persons and things. Examples illustrating these new ap-proaches
will be found throughout this book. Many ex-amples
center on human experiences with new kinds Because of its diversity, anthropology does not easily fit

of thingscomputers, cell phones, the Internetthat into any of the standard academic classifications. The
are increasingly central to the everyday lives of people discipline is usually listed as a social science, but it spans

all over the world. For instance, persons who play the natural sciences and the humanities as well. What

online video games seem to join with the technology it is not, as we will see, is the study of the exotic, the
and the other players to form a seamless hybrid entity; primitive, or the savage, terms that anthropologists

or the technology that links us to friends on Facebook reject. Figure 1.1 brings some order to the variety of in-terests

disappears from our awareness. This is a phenomenon found under the anthropological umbrella.
that anthropologist Daniel Miller calls the humility of Traditionally, North American anthropology has
things: objects are important, not because they are evi-dent been divided into four subfields: biological anthropology,

and physically constrain or enable, but quite the cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and archae-ology.
opposite. It is often precisely because we do not see Because of their commitment to holism, many
them (2010, 50). The merging of persons and things is anthropology departments try to represent most or all
sometimes a source of pleasure, as when we do our hol-iday of the subfields in their academic programs. However,
shopping on the Internet; but it can also be trou-bling universities in other parts of the world, such as Europe,
when we realize that our web-surfing activities usually do not bring all these specialties together. Many
are being tracked by commercial web bots. For these North American anthropologists, however, associate

Anthropology
The integrated study of human nature, human society, and human history.

Biological anthropology Cultural anthropology

Kinship and
Paleoanthropology
social organization
Human biology
and variation
Material life and technology
Subsistence and economics
Primatology
Worldvie
Applied anthropology
Medical anthropology

Developmental anthropology
Urban anthropology
Anthropological
Archaeology linguistics

Prehistoric archaeology Descriptive linguistics

Historical archaeology Comparative linguistics

Historical linguistics

FIGURE 1.1 In the United States, anthropology is traditionally divided into four specialties: biological anthropology, cultural anthropology,
anthropological linguistics, and archaeology. Applied anthropology draws on information provided by the other four specialties.
8 CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS THE ANTHROPOlOGICAl PERSPECTIVE?

holistic four-field North American anthropology with measure different observable features of human popu-lations,
the successful repudiation of nineteenth-century scien-tific including skin color, hair type, body type, and
racism by Franz Boas and other early-twentieth-century so forth, hoping to find scientific evidence that would
anthropologists. They also value four-field allow them to classify all the peoples of the world into
anthropology as a protected trading zone within a set of unambiguous categories based on distinct sets
which anthropologists are encouraged to bring to-gether of biological attributes. Such categories were called
fresh concepts and knowledge from a variety of races, and many scientists were convinced that clear-cut
research traditions. North American anthropologist criteria for racial classification would be discovered
Rena lederman, for example, has stressed that four-field if careful measurements were made on enough people

anthropology does not insist on a single way of from a range of different populations.
bringing the subfields together (2005). European scientists first applied racial categories to
Anthropological holism is attractive even to those the peoples of Europe itself, but their classifications

who were not trained in North America. British anthro-pologist soon included non-European peoples, who were
Tim Ingold, for example, argues, The best an-thropological
coming under increasing political and economic domi-nation
writing is distinguished by its receptiveness by expanding European and European Ameri-can

to ideas springing from work in subjects far beyond its capitalist societies. These peoples differed from
conventional boundaries, and by its ability to connect white Europeans not only because of their darker
these ideas in ways that would not have occurred to skin color but also because of their unfamiliar lan-guages
their originators, who may be more enclosed in their and customs. In most cases, their technologies
particular disciplinary frameworks (1994, xvii). We were also no match for the might of the West. In the
share the views of lederman and Ingold: Trained in ho-listic, early eighteenth century, for example, the European bi-ologist
four-field anthropology, we continue to value the Carolus linnaeus (Carl von linne, 17071778)
unique perspective it brings to the study of human classified known human populations into four races
nature, human society, and the human past. Indeed, as (American, European, Asian, and Negro) based on skin
the organizers of a recent anthropological conference color (reddish, white, yellow, and black, respectively).
observed, Even those who were the least persuaded linnaeus also connected racial membership with the

that the traditional four-field organization of American mental and moral attributes of group members. Thus,
anthropology was still viable (if it ever was) came away he wrote, Europeans were fickle, sanguine, blue-eyed,
with a strong sense that the subfields had a great deal to gentle, and governed by laws, whereas Negros were

say to one another and indeed needed one another choleric, obstinate, contented, and regulated by

(McKinnon and Silverman 2005, viii). custom and Asians were grave, avaricious, dignified,
and ruled by opinion (Molnar 2001, 56).

In the nineteenth century, influential natural scien-tists

such as louis Agassiz, Samuel George Morton, Francis
Biological Anthropology Galton, and Paul Broca built on this idea of race, ranking

different populations of the world in terms of brain size;

Since the nineteenth century, when anthropology was unsurprisingly, the brains of white Europeans and North
Americans were found to be larger, and the other races
developing as an academic field, anthropologists have
were seen to represent varying grades of inferiority, with
studied human beings as living organisms in order to
discover what makes us different from or similar to Africans ranked at the bottom (Gould 1996). Thesefind-ings

other animals. Early interest in these matters was a by-product were used to justify the social practice of racism:
the systematic oppression of members of one or more
of centuries of exploration. Western Europe-ans
socially defined races by another socially defined race
had found tremendous variation in the physical
appearance of peoples around the world and had long that is justified in terms of the supposed inherent bio-logical

tried to make sense of these differences. Some re-searchers superiority of the rulers and the supposed inherent
biological inferiority of those they rule.
developed a series of elaborate techniques to
Biological or physical anthropology as a separate
discipline had its origins in the work of scholars like

races Social groupings that allegedly reflect biological differences. these, whose training was in some other discipline, often

racism The systematic oppression of one or moresocially defined medicine. Johann Blumenbach (17521840), for exam-ple,
races by another socially defined race that is justified in terms of the whom some have called the father of physical an-thropology,
supposed inherent biological superiority of the rulers and the supposed
was trained as a physician. Blumenbach
inherent biological inferiority of those they rule.

identified five different races (Caucasoid, Mongoloid

 Biological Anthropology 9

In Their Own Words

Anthropologyasa Vocation
Listening to Voices
James W.Fernandez (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is a professor of anthropology at the University of
Chicago. He has worked among the Fang ofGabon and among cattle keepers and miners ofAsturias, Spain.

This is an excerpt from an essay about the anthropological vocation.

F or me,the anthropological
do with the inclination to
calling has fundamentally
hear voices. An important
to
demands
At the same time, there is a paradox
of us a sense of proportion.
here, one that
Although the
part of our vocation is listening to voices, and our meth-ods anthropologist is called to bring diverse people into inter-communication,
are the procedures that best enable us to hear voices, he or she is also called to resist the
to represent voices, to translate voices. homogenization that lies in mass communication. We are
Bylistening carefully to others voices and by trying to called by our very experience to celebrate the great variety
give voice to these voices, we act to widen the horizons of of voices in the human chorus. The paradox is that we at

human conviviality. If we had not achieved some fellow once work to amplify the scale of intercommunicationand
feeling by being there, by listening carefully and by negoti-ating in effect contribute to homogenizationwhile at the
in good faith, it would be the more difficult to give same time we work to insist on the great variety of voices
voice in a way that would widen the horizons of human in communication. We must maintain here too a sense of
conviviality. Be that asit may,the calling to widen horizons proportion. We must recognize the point at which wider
and increase human conviviality seems a worthy and wider cultural intercommunication can lead to domi-nant

callingfull of a very human optimism and good sense. voices hidden in the homogenizing process. Human
Who would resist the proposition that more fellow feeling intercommunication has its uses and abuses.
in the world is better than less, and that to extend the
interlocutive in the world is better than to diminish it? Source: Fernandez 1990, 1415.

American, Ethiopian, and Malayan), and his classifica-tion debunking racist stereotypes, using both their knowl-edge
wasinfluential in the later nineteenth and twentieth of biology and their understanding of culture. As
centuries (Molnar 2001, 6). He and his contemporaries the discipline of anthropology developed in the United

assumed that the races of mankind (as they would States, students were trained in both human biology and
have said) were fixed and unchanging subdivisions of human culture to provide them with the tools to fight
humanity. racial stereotyping. After World War II, this position

However, as scientists learned more about biological gained increasing strength in North American anthro-pology,
variation in human populations, some of them came to under the forceful leadership of Sherwood
realize that traits traditionally used to identify races, such Washburn. The new physical anthropology Washburn

as skin color, did not correlate well with other physical developed at the University of California, Berkeley, repu-diated
and biological traits, let alone mental and moral traits. racial classification and shifted attention to pat-terns
Indeed, scientists could not even agree about how many of variation and adaptation within the human
human races there were or where the boundaries be-tweenspecies as a whole. This shift in emphasis led many
them should be drawn. of Washburns followers to define their specialty as
By the early twentieth century, some anthropolo-gists biological anthropology, a move that highlighted their
and biologists were arguing that race was a cultural differences with the older physical anthropology de-voted
label invented by human beings to sort people into to racial classification.
groups and that races with distinct and unique sets of
biological attributes simply did not exist. Anthropolo-gists
like Franz Boas, for example, who in the early 1900s

founded the first department of anthropology in the biological anthropology (or physical anthropology) The specialty
United States, at Columbia University, had long been of anthropology that looks at human beings as biological organisms and

tries to discover what characteristics make them different from other

uncomfortable with racial classifications in anthropol-ogy.
organisms and what characteristics they share

Boas and his students devoted much energy to

 10 CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS THE ANTHROPOlOGICAl PERSPECTIVE?

a
FIGURE 1.2 Some biological anthropologists are primatologists,
such as Agustn Fuentes (a). Other biological anthropologists are

paleoanthropologists, such as Matthew Tornow, who studies

ancient primate ancestors (b).

Some biological anthropologists work in the fields

of primatology (the study of the closestliving relatives
of human beings, the nonhuman primates), paleoan-thropologyb
(the study of fossilized bones and teeth of
our earliest ancestors), and human skeletal biology
(measuring and comparing the shapes and sizesor

morphologyof bones and teeth using skeletal re-mains

primates, and other forms of life (Boaz and Wolfe
from different human populations) (Figure 1.2).
1995; Weinker 1995).
Newer specialties focus on human adaptability in dif-ferent
Whether they study human biology, primates, or the
ecological settings, on human growth and devel-opment,
fossils of our ancestors, biological anthropologists clearly
or on the connections between a populations
share many methods and theories used in the natural
evolutionary history and its susceptibility to disease.
sciencesprimarily biology, ecology, chemistry, and geol-ogy.
Forensic anthropologists use their knowledge of human
What tends to set biological anthropologists apart
skeletal anatomy to aid law enforcement and human
from their nonanthropological colleagues is the holistic,
rights investigators. Molecular anthropologists trace
comparative, and evolutionary perspective that has been
chemical similarities and differences in the immune
part of their anthropological training. That perspective re-minds
system, an interest that has led to active research on the
them always to consider their work as only part of
virus that causes HIV/AIDS. Moreover, new analytic
the overall study of human nature, human society, and
techniques, such as biostatistics, three-dimensional im-aging,
the human past.
and electronic communication and publishing,
have revolutionized the field. In all these ways, biologi-cal
anthropologists can illuminate what makes human

beings similar to and different from one another, other

Cultural Anthropology
primatology The study of nonhuman primates, the closest living rela-tives
of human beings.
The second specialty within anthropology is cultural
paleoanthropology The search for fossilized remains of humanitys
earliest ancestors. anthropology, which is sometimes called sociocultural

cultural anthropology The specialty of anthropology that shows how anthropology, social anthropology, or ethnology. By the early
variation in the beliefs and behaviors of members of different human twentieth century, anthropologists realized that racial bi-ology
groups is shaped by sets of learned behaviors and ideas that human
could not be used to explain why everyone in the
beings acquire as members of societythat is, by culture.

world did not dress the same, speak the same language
 Cultural Anthropology 11

FIGURE 1.3 Cultural anthropolo-gists

talk to many people, observe

their actions, and participate as fully
as possible in a groups way of life.
Here, Sri Lankan anthropologist

Arjun Guneratne converses with

some of his consultants in Nepal.

pray to the same god, or eat insects for dinner. About the whether economic, political, or spiritual. This focus
same time, anthropologists like Margaret Mead were within cultural anthropology bears the closest resem-blance

showing that the biology of sexual difference could not to the discipline of sociology, and from it has
be used to predict how men and women might behave come the identification of anthropology as one of the
or what tasks they would perform in any given society. social sciences.

Anthropologists concluded that something other than Sociology and anthropology developed during the
biology had to be responsible for these variations. They same period and share similar interests in social organiza-tion.
suggested that this something else was culture. What differentiated anthropology from sociology

Many anthropologists did significant research was the anthropological interest in comparing different
throughout the twentieth century to separate human forms of human social life. In the racist framework of nine-teenth-and
biological variation from human cultural practices, early-twentieth-century European and North
showing that these practices could not be reduced to American societies, some people viewed sociology as the
racial difference. By the latter part of the twentieth study of civilized industrial societies and labeled anthro-pology
century, anthropologists also regularly distinguished as the study of all other societies, lumped together
between the biological sex an individual was assigned as primitive. Today, by contrast, anthropologists are con-cerned

and the culturally shaped gender roles considered ap-propriate with studying all human societies, and they reject
for each sex in a given society. As we shall see the labels civilized and primitive for the same reason they
in chapter 10, the contemporary anthropological study reject the term race. Contemporary anthropologists do re-search
of sex, gender, and sexuality has become considerably in urban and rural settings around the world and

more complex, drawing together contributions from among members of all societies, including their own.
cultural anthropologists, biological anthropologists, Anthropologists discovered that people in many
and other scholars and scientists. non-Western societies do not organize bureaucracies

Because people everywhere use culture to adapt to or churches or schools, yet they still manage to carry

and transform everything in the wider world in which

they live, the field of cultural anthropology is vast.

Cultural anthropologists tend to specialize in one or sex Observable physical characteristics that distinguish two kinds of
humans, females and males, needed for biological reproduction
another domain of human cultural activity (Figure 1.3).
gender The cultural construction of beliefs and behaviors considered
Some study the ways particular groups of human beings
appropriate for each sex

organize themselves to carry out collective tasks,

12 CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS THE ANTHROPOlOGICAl PERSPECTIVE?

out successfully the full range of human activity be-causetheir own local cultural context. For example, some an-thropologists
they developed institutions of relatedness that are currently tracing the various ways in
enabled them to organize social groups through which which populations both inside and outside the West
they could live their lives. One form of relatedness, make use of cybertechnology for their own social and
called kinship, links people to one another on the basis cultural purposes.
of birth, marriage, and nurturance. The study of kin-ship As cultural anthropologists have become increas-ingly
has become highly developed in anthropology aware of the sociocultural influences that stretch
and remains a focus of interest today. In addition, an-thropologists
across space to affect local communities, they have also
have described a variety of forms of become sensitive to those that stretch over time. As a

social groups organized according to different princi-ples, result, many contemporary cultural anthropologists
such as secret societies, age sets, and numerous make serious efforts to place their cultural analyses in
forms of complex political organization, including detailed historical context. Cultural anthropologists

states. In recent years, cultural anthropologists have who do comparative studies of language, music, dance,
studied contemporary issues of gender and sexuality, art, poetry, philosophy, religion, or ritual often share
transnational labor migration, urbanization, global-ization, many of the interests of specialists in the disciplines of

the postCold War resurgence of ethnicity and fine arts and humanities.
nationalism around the globe, and debates about Cultural anthropologists, no matter what their
human rights. area of specialization, ordinarily collect their data
Cultural anthropologists have investigated the during an extended period of close involvement with
patterns of material life found in different human the people in whose language or way of life they are
groups. Among the most striking are worldwide varia-tions interested. This period of research, called fieldwork,
in clothing, housing, tools, and techniques for has as its central feature the anthropologists involve-ment
getting food and making material goods. Some an-thropologists in the everyday routine of those among whom
specialize in the study of technologies they live. People who share information about their
in different societies or in the evolution of technology culture and language with anthropologists have tradi-tionally
over time. Those interested in material life also de-scribe been called informants; however, anthropolo-gists
the natural setting for which technologies have use this term less today and some prefer to describe
been developed and analyze the way technologies these individuals as respondents, collaborators, teachers,
and environments shape each other. Others have in-vestigatedor simply as the people I work with because these terms

the way non-Western people have re-sponded emphasize a relationship of equality and reciprocity.

to the political and economic challenges of Fieldworkers gain insight into another culture by par-ticipating
colonialism and the capitalist industrial technology with members in social activities and by ob-serving

that accompanied it. those activities as outsiders. This research

People everywhere are increasingly making use of method, known as participant observation, is central to

material goods and technologies produced outside their cultural anthropology.

own societies. Anthropologists have been able to show Cultural anthropologists write about what they
that, contrary to many expectations, non-Western people have learned in scholarly articles or books and some-times
do not slavishly imitate Western ways. Instead, they document the lives of the people they work with

make use of Western technologies in ways that are cre-ative on film or video. An ethnography is a description of
and often unanticipated but that make sense in the customary social behaviors of an identifiable
group of people (Wolcott 1999, 2523); ethnology is
the comparative study of two or more such groups.

Thus, cultural anthropologists who write ethnogra-phies

fieldwork An extended period of close involvement with the people in are sometimes called ethnographers, and anthro-pologists
whose language or way of life anthropologists are interested, during
who compare ethnographic information on
which anthropologists ordinarily collect most of their data.

informants People in a particular culture who work with many different cultural practices are sometimes called

anthropologists and provide them with insights about their way of ethnologists. But not all anthropological writing is eth-nographic.
life. Also called respondents, teachers, or friends.
Some anthropologists specialize in recon-structing
ethnography An anthropologists written orfilmed description of a
the history of our discipline, tracing, for
particular culture.
example, how anthropologists fieldwork practices have
ethnology The comparative study of two or more cultures.
changed over time and how these changes may b
 Archaeology 13

related to wider political, economic, and social changes trained in this way, and many cultural anthropologists
within the societies from which they came and within also receive linguistics training as part of their profes-sional
which they did their research. preparation.

Archaeology
Linguistic Anthropology
Archaeology, another major specialty within anthro-pology,
Perhaps the most striking cultural feature of our spe-cies is a cultural anthropology of the human past
is language: the system of arbitrary vocal symbols involving the analysis of material remains. Through ar-chaeology,
we use to encode our experience of the world and of anthropologists discover much about

one another. People use language to talk about all human history, particularly prehistory, the long stretch
areas of their lives, from material to spiritual. Linguis-tic of time before the development of writing. Archaeolo-gists
anthropology therefore studies language, not only look for evidence of past human cultural activity,

as a form of symbolic communication, but also as a such as postholes, garbage heaps, and settlement pat-terns.
major carrier of important cultural information. Many Depending on the locations and ages of sites they
early anthropologists were the first people to tran-scribe are digging, archaeologists may also have to be experts

non-Western languages and to produce gram-mars on stone-tool manufacture, metallurgy, or ancient pot-tery.
and dictionaries of those languages. Because archaeological excavations frequently un-cover
Contemporary linguistic anthropologists and their remains such as bones or plant pollen,
counterparts in sociology (called sociolinguists) study archaeologists often work in teams with other scientists
the way language differences correlate with differences who specialize in the analysis of these remains.
in gender, race, class, or ethnic identity. Some have Archaeologists findings complement those of pa-leoanthropologists.
specialized in studying what happens when speakers For example, archaeological infor-mation
are fluent in more than one language and must choose about successive stone-tool traditions in a
which language to use under what circumstances. particular region may correlate with fossil evidence of
Others have written about what happens when speak-ers prehistoric occupation of that region by ancient human
of unrelated languages are forced to communicate populations. Archaeologists can use dating techniques

with one another, producing languages called pidgins. to establish ages of artifacts, portable objects modified
Some linguistic anthropologists study sign languages. by human beings. They can create distribution maps of
Others look at the ways children learn language or the cultural artifacts that allow them to make hypotheses

styles and strategies followed by fluent speakers en-gaged about the ages, territorial ranges, and patterns of socio-cultural

in conversation. More recently, linguistic an-thropologists change in ancient societies. Tracing the spread
have paid attention to the way political of cultural inventions over time from one site to an-other

ideas in a society contribute to peoples ideas of what allows them to hypothesize about the nature and
may or may not be said and the strategies speakers degree of social contact between different peoples in

devise to escape these forms of censorship. Some take the past. The human past that they investigate may be

part in policy discussions about literacy and language quite recent: Some contemporary archaeologists dig
standardization and address the challenges faced through layers of garbage deposited by human beings
by speakers of languages that are being displaced by within the past two or three decades, often uncovering

international languages of commerce and technology surprising information about contemporary consump-tion
such as English. patterns.
In all these cases, linguistic anthropologists try to
understand language in relation to the broader cul-tural,
historical, or biological contexts that make it pos-sible. language The system of arbitrary vocal symbols used to encode ones
Because highly specialized training in linguistics experience of the world and of others.

as well as anthropology is required for people who linguistic anthropology The specialty of anthropology concerned
with the study of human languages.
practice it, linguistic anthropology has long been
archaeology A cultural anthropology of the human past involving
recognized as a separate subfield of anthropology. Con-temporary
the analysis of material remains left behind by earlier societies
linguistic anthropologists continue to be
14 CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS THE ANTHROPOlOGICAl PERSPECTIVE?

Applied Anthropology

Applied anthropology is the subfield of anthropology

in which anthropologists use information gathered from
the other anthropological specialties to propose solutions
to practical problems (Figure 1.4). Some may use a par-ticular
group of peoples ideas about illness and health

to introduce new public health practices in a way that

makes sense to and will be accepted by members of the
group. Other applied anthropologists may use knowl-edge
of traditional social organization to ease the prob-lems

of refugees trying to settle in a new land. Still others

may use their knowledge of traditional and Western
methods of cultivation to help farmers increase their

crop yields. Given the growing concern throughout the

world with the effects of different technologies on the

environment, this kind of applied anthropology holds

promise as a way of bringing together Western knowl-edge

and non-Western knowledge in order to create sus-tainable

technologies that minimize pollution and

environmental degradation. Some applied anthropolo-gists

have become management consultants or carry out
market research, and their findings may contribute to FIGURE 1.4 Members of the Argentine Forensic Anthropologists
the design of new products. Team work on the biggest dictatorship-era mass grave to date,

In recent years, some anthropologists have become where around 100 suspected victims of the 19761983 military

junta were buried in a local cemetery in Crdoba, 800 km

involved in policy issues, participating actively in social
(500 miles) northwest of Buenos Aires.
processes that attempt to shape the future of those

among whom they work (Moore 2005, 3), and this has
involved a change in their understanding of what applied
anthropology is. les W. Field, for example, has addressed
nized status (Field 2004), or to defending indigenous
the history of applied anthropology on Native American
land rights in latin America (Stocks 2005).
reservationsIndian Countryin the United States.
Although many anthropologists believe that ap-plied
He observes that by the end of the twentieth century, a
work can be done within any of the traditional
major transformation had occurred, from applied an-thropology
four fields of anthropology, increasing numbers in
in Indian Country to applications of anthro-pological
recent years have come to view applied anthropology
tools in Indian country to accomplish tribal
as a separate field of professional specialization (see
goals (2004, 472). This often draws anthropologists
Figure 1.1). More and more universities in the United
into work in the legal arena, as when, for example, they
States have begun to develop courses and programs in
have lent their expertise to arguments in favor of legisla-tion
a variety of forms of applied anthropology. Anthropol-ogists
mandating the repatriation of culturally significant
who work for government agencies or nonprofit
artifacts and tribal lands in North America, or to efforts
organizations or in other nonuniversity settings often
by tribal groups to reclaim official government-recog-applied
describe what they do as the anthropology of practice. In
the twenty-first century, it has been predicted that more
than half of all new Ph.D.s in anthropology will
anthropology The subfield of anthropology that usesinfor-mation become practicing anthropologists rather than take up
gathered from the other anthropological specialties
positions as faculty in university departments of an-thropology
to solve practical cross-cultural problems.
 Applied Anthropology 15

In Their Own Words

WhatCanYouLearnfrom an Anthropology Major?

The Career Development Center at SUNY Plattsburgh developed a document that highlights what students
typically learn from a major in anthropology.

In an unfamiliar social or career-related setting, you learn to quickly size up the rules of the
1. Socialagility
game. You can become accepted more quickly than you could without this anthropological skill.

2. Observation You must often learn about a culture from within it, so you learn how to interview and
observe as a participant.

3. Analysis and You learn how to find patterns in the behavior of a cultural group. This awareness of patterns
planning allows you to generalize about the groups behavior and predict what they might do in a
given situation.

4. Socialsensitivity Although other peoples ways of doing things may be different from your own, you learn
the importance of events and conditions that have contributed to this difference. You also rec-ognize

that other cultures view your ways as strange. You learn the value of behaving toward
others with appropriate preparation, care, and understanding.

5. Accuracyin You become familiar with the range of behavior in different cultures. Youlearn how to look at
interpreting cultural causes of behavior before assigning causes yourself.
behavior

6. Ability to You learn that analyses of human behavior are open to challenge. You learn how to use new
appropriately knowledge to test past conclusions.
challenge
conclusions

7. Insightful inter-pretation
Youlearn how to use data collected by others, reorganizing orinterpreting the data to reach original
of conclusions.

information

8. Simplification Because anthropology is conducted among publics as well as about them, you learn how to
of information simplify technical information for communication to non-technical people.

9. Contextualization Although attention to details is a trait of anthropology, you learn that any given detail might
not be asimportant as its context and can even be misleading when the context is ignored.

10. Problem solving Because you often function within a cultural group or act on culturally sensitive issues,
you learn to approach problems with care. Before acting, you identify the problem, set your
goals, decide on the actions you will take, and calculate possible effects on other people.

11. Persuasive Anthropologists strive to represent the behavior of one group to another group and continually
writing need to engage in interpretation. You learn the value of bringing someone
else to shareor at least understandyour view through written argument.

12. Assumption of a You learn how to perceive the acts of individuals and local groups as both shaping and being
social perspective shaped by larger sociocultural systems. The perception enables you to act locally and think
globally.

Source: Omohundro 2000.

16 CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS THE ANTHROPOlOGICAl PERSPECTIVE?

or global scale. Indeed, critical medical anthropologists

have been among the most vocal in pointing out how
Medical Anthropology various forms of suffering and disease cannot be ex-plained
only by the presence of microbes in a diseased
body, but may depend onor be made worse bythe
Medical anthropology is one of the most rapidly grow-ing
presence of social inequality and a lack of access to
branches of anthropology. Beginning half a century
health care. According to anthropologist Merrill Singer,
ago as a form of applied anthropology, it has developed
critical medical anthropology is committed to the
into an important anthropological specialty that has
making social and the making political of health and
offered new ways to link biological and cultural anthro-pology.
medicine (1998, 195). Thus, critical medical anthro-pologists
Medical anthropology concerns itself with
pay attention to the way social divisions based
human healththe factors that contribute to disease or
on class, race, gender, and ethnicity can block access to
illness and the ways that human populations deal with
medical attention or make people more vulnerable to
disease or illness (Baer et al. 2003, 3). Medical anthro-pologists
disease and suffering. They draw attention to the way tra-ditional
may consider the physiological variables that
Western biomedicine encourages people to
are involved with human health and disease, the envi-ronmental
fight disease rather than to make the changes necessary
features that affect human well-being, and
to prevent it, for example, by linking low birth weight in
the way the human body adapts to various environ-ments.
newborn babies to poor nutrition, but failing to note
Contemporary medical anthropologists engage
that poor nutrition may be a major health factor among
in work that directly addresses the anthropological
impoverished social classes and oppressed ethnic groups
proposition that human beings must be understood as
in developed countries despite an abundance of food in
biocultural organisms (Figure 1.5).
society generally (M. Singer 1998, 106, 109).
Particularly significant has been the development of
One of the most important insights of critical med-ical
critical medical anthropology, which links questions of
anthropologists has been to point out that various
human health and illness in local settings to social, eco-nomic,
practices that bioculturalist anthropologists have tradi-tionally
and political processes operating on a national
called adaptations might better be analyzed

as social adjustments to the consequences of oppres-sive

sociopolitical relationships (M. Singer 1998, 115).
medical anthropology The specialty of anthropology that concerns Gavin Smith and R. Brooke Thomas, for example, draw
itself with human healththe factors that contribute to disease or ill-ness
attention to situations where social relations compro-mise
and the ways that human populations deal with disease or illness.
peoples options for attaining biological well-be-FIGURE

1.5 Medical anthropolo-gist

Andrea Wiley is shown here in
a high-altitude setting in the
Himalayas of Ladakh (India),

where she studied maternal and

child health
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN