Theoretical Approaches to African EthnologyThe Africans: An Ethnological Account by Harold K. SchneiderReview by: Janet L. StanleyAfrica Today, Vol. 29, No. 1, Namibia, South Africa and the West (1st Qtr., 1982), p. 60Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4186067 .

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Theoretical Approaches to African Ethnology

Janet L. Stanley

Harold K. Schneider, THE AFRICANS: An Ethnological Account (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981). x, 278 pp., $9.95, paper.

The Africans offers a theoretical view of African ethnology which the more common descriptive surveys of African society do not attempt. The author seeks to set forth the "social facts" in context with "culture history" in a "non- Marxist economic approach." (preface ix-x). The outline is familiar enough: Material Economics; Marriage, Descent and Association; Kinship; Power and Authority; Religion and Philosophy; Contemporary Africa. His aim is not to be exhaustive - art and music are excluded as are discussions of the interesting but numerically peripheral Pygmies and San - but to erect the theoretical framework on which ethnographic data and analyses are arrayed. In constructing this framework, he draws representative examples from many particular groups of people, citing or restating earlier research in these areas (e.g., Max Gluckman on the Lozi, Victor Turner on Ndembu color classification or his own research on the Pokot). Such an approach facilitates the understanding of the directions anthropological research has taken in the past, and conversely, reveals areas it has avoided or ignored. Thus, for example, we can see the extent to which anthropologists have ignored the study of thought processes as they concentrated instead on social processes (p. 181); or that African traditional law has not been consistently examined (p. 152); or that ethnologists were generally naive about economics and consequently paid scant attention to it (p. 162).

Our understanding of African cultures is deepened by the parallels drawn between African and European societies as, for example, comparing African sacrificial rituals with the Christian eucharist. This pedagogical technique becomes a little more ponderous when anthropological models are the basis of comparison. The author justly forewarns the reader of an intensive chapter on kinship - an area about which he is obviously quite knowledgeable - but it is a bit out of proportion to the rest of the volume with somewhat protracted comparisons of American Indian and other models of kinship classification to African systems of kinship. Thus, Iroquois is equivalent to Lozi and Omaha equals Igbo and so forth. Yet, this very chapter offers precisely the in-depth analysis of kinship structure that similar books tend to avoid. So if it is a careful, detailed exposition of African kinship models that is sought, then here is the right book.

The book is sparingly illustrated, has a 9-page bibliography linked to text references, and is well-indexed. It reads stylistically rather like a lecture and indeed is written in part in the first person singular - not altogether in- appropriately so, since The Africans is intended for the college-level audience accustomed to professorial lecturing.

On the whole, this text is recommended as a complement to the empirical studies of African societies and cultures which are becoming widely available.

Janet L. Stanley is Librarian at The Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.

60 AFRICA TODAY

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