Anthropologist's Awakening
Return to Laughter. By Elenore Smith Bowen. (Gollancz. 16s.) THIS book is, about a problem. How is it possible for one to understand a world which is not his own world? learn the language of the alien world is only a small step. And, language means not the verbal signs, but the associations, intenti and overtones. One must also make friends with the inhabitan and especially with well-informed, intelligent inhabitants, who describe their world; which means, often, those who occupy resPo ible positions within their world—chiefs, elders and chief wives; means lunatics, lovers and poets, the nonconformist crowd, And friendship is a complex business: there i§ an element of nat affection in it—rwe all talk more freely with those whose comp pleases us; but there is also an element of utility—I will tell )' things you want to know if I have grounds for believing that you be useful to me, now or later on. Moreover, friendships breed own difficulties. I may become so deeply involved in them that forget my original purpose—which was to acquire knowledg drink the chief's beer and let the world slide. Or the obligations friendship may be inconsistent with getting, or using, certain kill of knowledge. On the other hand I may overbalance the other wa and, for the sake of knowledge, exploit friendship to the point _I which all my friends shut up. In any case the fact that I have push° my way into this world, and mean to get out of it when it suits gives a certain instability to all my relationships. An interesting book: partly because the problem with which deals is one that is common to anthropologists, historians, join alists, politicians, diplomats and itinerant witch-doctors—all MO in fact who make a living out of trying to explain or manage hug's° behaviour—yet is seldom discussed with the honesty and weal, of detail that one finds here. Miss Bowen, Nyho is herself (una another name) a working anthropologist, has the wit and detachme to describe how—naive, sensitive, young, American—she tura up in this complex, sophisticated African village community, I'll her low-backed evening dresses, tennis shoes, gin, detective stored and the works of John Locke; and learned through her lapses i1 morals or etiquette. Clearly she learned a lot: how to weed, all dance--her hands and feet keeping time with the gongs, her hill with the first drum, her back and shoulders with the second; an why mothers-in-law should not lean against teak trees. She leanly about the advantages of polygamy : When an only wife has a child, who will help her so that she nol rest? Who will feed her husband and her other children? Who tend her farm and bring her firewood so that she may be warm Who will comfort her in labour and who will stop her cries?
She. was instructed in witchcraft by the village's chief witch, who was also the official leader of its Opposition, and had to pay the prl° of temporary ostracism at the hands of the community. She learaq, how the community dealt with marriage, adultery ('It was VC" stupid of Ticha, and thus she was caught'), death in child-birth small-pox. These crises in the life of the village—which becatls° she had become accepted were crises for her too—are admirablY presented. The story of the coming of 'water' (small-pox), lappill round the village till it reached it, the terror and flight—and enduralv„ and recovery—is particularly moving. Her introspective accounts of her own moral dilemmas, her moralising about these two worlds: are less successful. Under stress she tends to lose her detachmalli and return to her European stereotypes—'Typical peasant humour' but I am not a peasant, and you are savages.' And she has American sociologist's craving to get everything neatly tied up, tP conclude on a note of finality, while having the intelligence Iv recognise that this cannot possibly be done. Clearly it is a good kind of education—this learning by toll immersion. It Shakes up presuppositions. It would be better it could be made more generally available. THOMAS HODG101
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