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Passages in the Life of a White Anthropologist: Max Gluckman in Northern Rhodesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Richard Brown
Richard Brown
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Extract

The period following the world slump saw increased British official interest in applying the new science of social anthropology to colonial problems. This paper looks at the eight years (1939–47) during which the distinguished South African anthropologist, Max Gluckman, held the post of Assistant Anthropologist and later Director at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, Northern Rhodesia, and carried out field research among the Lozi of Barotseland. His post was also referred to as one in ‘functional’ or ‘applied’ anthropology, and the R.L.I, as a whole was intended to contribute to the solution of the urgent social problems thrown up by the growth of the mining industry. It is suggested that Gluckman's own shift in outlook from a belief in academic aloofness to a concern for active involvement with the administration, as well as being part of a wider change in attitudes, was also linked to his personal situation and to the unifying effects of the Second World War within N. Rhodesia. Gluckman was able to gain support for the ambitious research programme which was to put N. Rhodesia in the forefront of the post-war policy of organizing social research through local institutes, but his attempt to engage directly in practical affairs in N. Rhodesia proved disillusioning. Although the N. Rhodesian government continued to support the Institute and in theory welcomed Gluckman's offers of co-operation, it is shown that in practice little came of his attempts to apply either his specific knowledge of the Lozi or his general theoretical knowledge to administrative problems. Any influence he may have exerted on the colonial evolution of N. Rhodesia therefore remained indirect, but his position was one in harmony with the underlying trends towards decolonization.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , October 1979 , pp. 525 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 Elizabeth Colson has reviewed the work of her immediate predecessor as Director of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in the special anniversary issue of African Social Research, 24 (Dec. 1977)Google Scholar. The memoir ‘Max Gluckman’ by Firth, Raymond, Proceedings of the British Academy, lxi (1975), 478–96Google Scholar, is a most valuable assessment. Full details of Gluckman's career and publications are available in Freedom and Constraint: A Memorial Tribute to Max Gluckman, ed. Aronoff, Myron J. (Assen/Amsterdam, 1976), 165–79.Google Scholar

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44 To Chief Secretary, 24 Feb. 1945Google Scholar, ZNA/SEC/ANT/4/28. Ironically Dr Richards had publicly thanked the author of this diatribe for his assistance while he was District Commissioner, Chinsali, in the preface to her classic work on the Bemba, , Land, Labour and Diet (London, 1939).Google Scholar

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53 Gluckman, to Vaux, H., 23 Dec. 1943Google Scholar, c.c., and G. Read, 9 Jan. 1944, c.c., IAS/148; Gluckman, to Ritchie, J. F., n.d., [?15 Feb. 1944Google Scholar ], 6 March 1944, c.c.; Ritchie, to Gluckman, , 22 Feb. 1944Google Scholar, IAS/146/8.

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56 Gluckman, to Rushbridger, G. H., 7 June 1944Google Scholar, c.c., IAS/148n.

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65 This arose from the Secretariat’s desire for comments on a memorandum by the administrative officer, Brelsford, W. V., on ‘The Succession of Bemba Chiefs’, later published (Lusaka, 1944Google Scholar). However, the comments from Audrey Richards and Gluckman were so contradictory as to cancel each other out. See Gluckman to Secretary for Native Affairs, 21 Feb., and to Waddington, 24 Feb., Richards, to Waddington, , 7 April 1944Google Scholar: ZNA/B1/4/MISC/6/1. Gluckman, later worked up his analysis and published it as ‘Succession and Civil War Among the Bemba’, Human Problems in British Central Africa, xvi (1954)Google Scholar. Like the Lozi, the Bemba were, of course, a major administrative headache. Gluckman believed he had ‘worked out the political basis of Bemba society’ on a ‘bare minimum of data’ and one essay by Richards: Gluckman, to Ritchie, J. F., 6 March 1944Google Scholar, IAS/146/8.

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79 See letters to the Times Literary Supplement, 3 Aug. 1973Google Scholar, and the New York Review of Books, 28 Nov. 1974Google Scholar. Also relevant is his ‘Anthropology and Apartheid’ in Fortes, M. and Patterson, S. (eds.), Studies in Applied Anthropology (London, 1975).Google Scholar

80 Letter to New York Review of Books, 28 Nov. 1974.Google Scholar

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82 By the end of the war, in addition to the large grant awarded from C.D. & W. funds for the Research Plan, the Institute received financial support from the six British territories in Central and East Africa, the British South Africa Company, the Rhodes and Beit Trusts, and all the major mining companies operating in Northern Rhodesia.

83 Coquery-Vidrovitch, , ‘La mise en dépendence’, 38–9.Google Scholar

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