SOCIAL CONFLICTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 919, 22 March 1957, Page 13

SOCIAL CONFLICTS

CUSTOM AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA, by ae Gluckman; Blackwell, English price 12/6. HE Third Programme has done many good things, and the publication of series of talks in book form is one of them, Professor Gluckman’s six talks, a discussion of an important theme by a distinguished anthropologist, make an excellent little book. Since he is addressing laymen Mr. Gluckman’s work is free from the jargon so often bandied between professionals, and the result is a lively and stimulating discussion on the fascinating theme of the conflicts within African societies and the ways in which they are solved or held in check. He explains that conflicts of loyalty which threaten to disrupt society are resolved by other loyalties which cut across them and so contain the conflicts, which would otherwise prevent the continuance of social life. He analyses these conflicts as they operate in kingship, marriage, witchcraft and ritual, and reaches the conclusion that the customs which produce social instability are controlled by wider relationships; and so life can go on. How a society preserves itself is, of course, a vital question. For other than anthropologists the most interesting aspect of the book is Mr. Gluckman’s attempt to relate African social conflicts to our own. He throws out some profitable suggestions about the conflicts which exist in European society from the analogy with the more easily detected and analysed conflicts of primitive societies: the conflicts are not essentially different in character. Looking at the solutions adopted by these primitive societies, he can make enlightening comments on our own methods of social control. His assumption is that by drawing on our knowledge of these societies we can better understand our own (which is undeniable) and, by implica-

tion, use this knowledge to engage in sociai engineering (which is more open to question). I suppose that the root assumption of social anthropology is what has been pretentiously called "the psychic unity of mankind," and Mr. Gluckman assumes this when he _ identifies our social conflicts with African. He begins his talks with T. S. Eliot’s observation that conflicts in our society are favourable to creativeness and progress. These are not the hallmarks of African society, even allowing for their appearance in different modes, but Mr. Gluckman does not explain this difference: why should similar conflicts have different results? It is unfair to criticise him for failing to do something outside the scope of his purpose, perhaps even outside the scope of his discipline; yet the question must occur to the reader of the book, and the quality of Mr. Gluckman’s mind must lead us to hope that one day he

will discuss it.

Francis

West