(Methodology and History in Anthropology) Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales (Editors)-Out of the Study and Into the Field_ Ethnographic Theory and Practice in French Anthropology (Methodology and Histor

OUT OF THE STUDY AND INTO THE FIELD
Methodology and History in Anthropology

General Editor: David Parkin, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford
Volume 1
Marcel Mauss: A Centenary Tribute
Edited by Wendy James and N.J. Allen
Volume 2
Franz Baerman Steiner: Selected Writings
Volume I: Taboo, Truth and Religion
Franz B. Steiner. Edited by Jeremy Adler and
Richard Fardon
Volume 3
Franz Baerman Steiner: Selected Writings
Volume II: Orient politik, Value, and Civilisation.
Franz B. Steiner. Edited by Jeremy Adler and
Richard Fardon
Volume 4
The Problem of Context: Perspectives from
Social Anthropology and Elsewhere
Edited by Roy Dilley
Volume 5
Religion in English Everyday Life:
An Ethnographic Approach
By Timothy Jenkins
Volume 6
Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic
Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia,
1870s1930s
Edited by Michael OHanlon and
Robert L. Welsch
Volume 12
An Introduction to Two Theories of Social
Anthropology: Descent Groups and Marriage
Alliance
By Louis Dumont. Edited and Translated by
Robert Parkin
Volume 13
Navigating Terrains of War: Youth and
Soldiering in Guinea-Bissau
By Henrik Vigh
Volume 14
The Politics of Egalitarianism: Theory and Practice
Edited by Jacqueline Solway
Volume 15
A History of Oxford Anthropology
Edited by Peter Rivire
Volume 16
Holistic Anthropology: Emergence and
Convergence
Edited by David Parkin and Stanley Ulijaszek
Volume 17
Learning Religion: Anthropological Approaches
Edited by David Berliner and Ramon Sarr
Volume 18
Ways of Knowing: Anthropological Approaches
to Crafting Experience and Knowledge
Edited by Mark Harris
Volume 7
Anthropologists in a Wider World: Essays on Field
Research
Edited by Paul Dresch, Wendy James and
David Parkin
Volume 19
Difficult Folk? A Political History of
Social Anthropology
By David Mills
Volume 8
Categories and Classications: Maussian
Reections on the Social
By N.J. Allen
Volume 20
Human Nature as Capacity: Transcending
Discourse and Classication
By Nigel Rapport
Volume 9
Louis Dumont and Hierarchical Opposition
By Robert Parkin
Volume 21
The Life of Property: House, Family and
Inheritance in Barn, South-West France
By Timothy Jenkins
Volume 10
Categories of Self: Louis Dumonts Theory
of the Individual
By Andr Celtel
Volume 11
Existential Anthropology: Events, Exigencies
and Effects
By Michael Jackson
Volume 22
Out of the Study and Into the Field:
Ethnographic Theory and Practice in French
Anthropology
Edited by Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales
OUT OF THE STUDY AND INTO THE FIELD
Ethnographic Theory and Practice in French Anthropology
Edited by
Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales
Berghahn Books
New York Oxford
Parkin & DeSales text_v4:Layout 2
5/25/10
4:51 PM
Page iv
First published in 2010 by

Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
2010 Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Out of the study and into the field : ethnographic theory and practice in French
anthropology.
p. cm. -- (Methodology and history in anthropology vol.22)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84545-695-5 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Anthropology--France--Philosophy. 2. Anthropology--France--Field work. 3.
Anthropology--France--Methodology. I. Parkin, Robert, 1950- II. Sales, Anne de.
GN585.F8O88 2010
301.010944--dc22
2010018543
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper
ISBN: 978-1-84545-695-5 (hardback)
CONTENTS
List of illustrations
vii
List of authors discussed in this volume
ix
Preface
xi
Introduction: ethnographic practice and theory in France

1.
2.
3.
Keeping your eyes open: Arnold van Gennep and the autonomy
of the folkloristic
Giordana Charuty
25
Canonical ethnography: Hanoteau and Letourneux on Kabyle

communal law
Peter Parkes
45
Postcards at the service of the Imaginary: Jean Rouch,

shared anthropology and the cin-trance
Paul Henley
75
4.
Eric de Dampierre and the art of eldwork

Margaret Buckner
103
5.
What sort of anthropologist was Paul Rivet?

Laura Rival
125
6.
Alfred Mtraux: empiricist and romanticist

Peter Rivire
151
7.
Roger Bastide or the darknesses of alterity

Stefania Capone
171
8.
The art and craft of ethnography: Lucien Bernot, 19191993

Grard Toffin
197
9.
Andr-Georges Haudricourt: a thorough materialist

Alban Bensa
219
Contents
vi
10. Louis Dumont: from museology to structuralism via India
Robert Parkin
11. Will the real Maurice Leenhardt please stand up? Four anthropologists
in search of an ancestor
Jeremy MacClancy
235
255
Notes on contributors
273
Subject index
277
Name index
289
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
1.1. Arnold van Gennep, aged 80, lighting a bonre on the summer solstice
(21 June 1953), also the saints day of St John the Baptist.
26
2.1. Commandant Adolphe Hanoteau at Fort-Napolon, 1861.
47
2.2. Opening column of qanun rulings transcribed in Arabic with French

translation by Captain Alphonse Meyer, military interpreter at Dellys, 1864. 50
2.3. Dedication of Ait Iraten qanun rulings submitted to Hanoteau by Si Mula,
ca. 1859/60.
52
2.4. Submission of the Kabyle tribes to Marshall Randon in 1857.
64
2.5. Hanoteau and two Tuareg, 1858.
65
3.1. Jean Rouch shooting in a market in the Gold Coast in 1954.
76
4.1. Eric de Dampierre at Madabazouma, thirty kilometres from

Bangassou, Central African Republic.
104
5.1. Paul Rivet.
126
6.1. Alfred Mtraux, seated second from right, doing eldwork among
Chipaya in Bolivia, 1931 or 1932.
152
7.1. Roger Bastide, seated left on bench, Ifanhin, Bnin, 1958.
172
8.1. Lucien Bernot, on the occasion of his being honoured with a Festschrift
at the cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1987.
198
9.1. Andr-Georges Haudricourt: le matre la recherche de la petite bte

ou le matre dans lexercice de ses fonctions, June 1972.
220
10.1. Louis Dumont, taken by himself, among the Kallar, Tamil Nadu (India),
with his chief informant, Muttusami Tevar, 1949.
236
11.1. Maurice Leenhardt (back row, centre), with Melanesian pastors

during a conference, Nouvelle Caldonie 1916.
256
LIST OF AUTHORS DISCUSSED

IN THIS VOLUME
Authors dealt with in this volume, their dates and main eldwork
area(s) and/or peoples of interest.
Author
Dates
Roger Bastide
18981974
Lucien Bernot
19191993
Eric de Dampierre
19291997
Louis Dumont
Adolphe Hanoteau
Andr-Georges Haudricourt
Aristide Letourneux
Maurice Leenhardt
Alfred Mtraux
19111998
18141897
19111996
18201890
18781954
19021963
Paul Rivet
Jean Rouch
Arnold van Gennep
18761958
19172004
18731957
Main eldwork area(s)

and/or peoples of
interest
Afro-Brazilians (northeast Brazil)
Marma, Cak
(Bangladesh, Myanmar)
Nzakara (Central African
Republic)
India
Kabyle (Algeria)
Vietnam
Kabyle (Algeria)
New Caledonia
Argentina and other
South America, Haiti,
Easter Island
Ecuador, Colombia
Songhay (Niger)
France, Europe
PREFACE
The present volume originated in a conference, Out of the Study and into
the Field: Ethnographic Theory and Practice in French Anthropology,
held at the Maison Franaise dOxford on 2224 April 2005. It does not,
however, represent the formal proceedings of the conference, since some
of the original contributors have not been able, for a variety of reasons,
to submit the papers they gave on that occasion for inclusion here.
Conversely, the chapters by Buckner, Capone and Parkin were written
subsequent to the conference especially for this volume.
The chapters by Bensa, Capone and Charuty have been translated from
the French, the rst by Amy Jacobs, the second and third by the editors.
Quotations from texts originally written in French have either been
translated by the authors of those chapters or the editors, or else replaced
by the equivalent passage from an existing published English translation.
Due to the rarity of some of the original French texts in Rivires paper,
there the original French texts have been retained in footnotes.
The editors wish to thank the contributors to both the original
conference and the present collection, where these are different, as well
as the staff and management of the Maison Franaise for providing the
conference venue and refreshments. The conference was supported by a
grant from the British Academy, which is gratefully acknowledged. We
also thank the publishers of this collection, Berghahn Books, especially
Marion Berghahn, as well as Prof. David Parkin, the series editor, for their
support of this project. We are also grateful to those contributors who
commented on the introduction to the volume, and to the two
publishers reviewers for their very useful reviews of the whole volume,
even though we have not felt able to incorporate all their observations.
The editors are also grateful to the following organisations and
individuals for helping them obtain the plates used in this volume:
LAgence photographique de la Runion des muses nationaux (France)
for the portrait of van Gennep; Harold Prins for the portrait of Mtraux;
Alex Baradel, Fundao Pierre Verger (Brazil), for the portrait of Bastide;
Jean-Claude Galey, for the portrait of Dumont; and Christophe Dervieux,
Archiviste, Direction des affaires culturelles et coutumires, Service des
archives, Noumea (Nouvelle Caldonie), for the portrait of Leenhardt.
xii
Preface
Last but not least, this whole project has proved to be a smooth and
convivial joint venture between British and French anthropology,
represented here by the respective editors, who both feel they have a
reasonable knowledge, understanding and appreciation of each others
national anthropological traditions and have enjoyed working together.
They would therefore like to take this opportunity of thanking each other.
Robert Parkin
Anne de Sales
Oxford, October 2009
Introduction
ETHNOGRAPHIC PRACTICE AND

THEORY IN FRANCE
Introduction
Rather like the nations they represent, there is a sense in which what
pass as the British and French schools of anthropology really are each
others Other: on both sides of the Channel, there is a wary awareness
of the others alleged achievements and failings, perpetually shaped by
a strong feeling of, and for, difference and distinctiveness. Perhaps this
sense of respectful rivalry was first expressed aptly back in the late
sixteenth century when, in a passage from Astrophel and Stella
describing what appears to be a joust, a minor but very English
Elizabethan poet, Sir Philip Sidney, referred to that sweet enemy,
France. Be that as it may, it is clear that British anthropologists have a
long history of being influenced by their French colleagues in a whole
series of disciplines, often despite themselves, and often in reaction to
them rather than accepting their teachings wholesale. The list is long:
even a partial one would have to include at least Durkheim, Mauss,
Lvi-Strauss, Barthes, Althusser, Ricoeur, Dumont, Merleau-Ponty,
Bourdieu, Foucault, Lacan, Baudrillard, Derrida, and more recently de
Certeau and Latour.
However, as this collection is intended to demonstrate, some
powerful but often distorting stereotypes have been at work here. This
gaze from across the English Channel has given rise to two common
linked impressions about French anthropology among the British.1 The
first is that it is dominated by theory based mainly on rationality and

deductive reasoning. Secondly, and conversely, it is commonly said not
to be very concerned to derive general principles inductively from
ethnographic facts. The latter, of course, is often thought to be the
strength of the British tradition in particular, which also likes to think
of itself as cultivating a healthy scepticism of theory. Indeed, it is hard
to think of a major British contributor to theory who has not been, at
some time or other, a fieldworker too.
This is far less true of the French school, notwithstanding, for
example, Lvi-Strausss travels around the Amazon. However, this is
less because the French are all theorists than because, au contraire, a
good many of them are ethnographers obsessed with the facts and
dismissive of theory, to the extent that they might be described as
ethnographic essentialists. Accordingly, we argue that there is a
sharper distinction, and disjunction, between theory and ethnographic
practice in France than in Britain, where, as just noted, many
anthropologists have seen it as their task to contribute to both
simultaneously.
The British editor of this volume still remembers being struck by the
novelty of this discovery, which came as a revelation after years of his
viewing French anthropology as excessively theoretical and almost
anti-empirical, in accordance with the prevailing British stereotype.2i
Indeed, so-called British empiricism is frequently trumped by the
ethnographic essentialism purveyed by many of the figures treated in
this collection. Is not the conventional British view of French
anthropology therefore seriously distorted? Are not the grand theorists,
who are mostly anyway associated with other disciplines, falsely and
perversely seen as being more representative of French anthropology
than those who have pursued their profession in the field as much as in
the study, if not more so? These are the main questions we are asking in
this volume.
We fully acknowledge that this situation has nothing to do with any
lack of theoretical awareness or competence generally among French
ethnographers, as Lucien Bernot showed in his brief but pungent
dismissal of structuralism (discussed below). Moreover, the quality of
their ethnographic work is undoubtedly as high as in other traditions.
Nor do we wish to exaggerate this tendency in France, far less claim that
it has been the only approach to fieldwork there, nor indeed suggest that
it is entirely absent outside the country. Dumont, as well as the French
Marxist anthropologists both those who were influenced mainly by
Althusser, such as Emmanuel Terray, Claude Meillassoux and Pierre
Philippe Rey, as well as Maurice Godelier, famous for his attempts to
combine Marxism with structuralism all did fieldwork and had a clear
Introduction
theoretical framework within which to do so (which, however, was often

seen by others as directing, rather than reflecting, the search for facts).
Similarly, the research team set up by Louis Dumont and later taken
over by Daniel de Coppet brought together a number of French and
international anthropologists who had done fieldwork in different parts
of the world and asked them to frame their work in relation to Dumonts
theoretical notions of hierarchy, value and hierarchical opposition. Yet
even Dumont, who perhaps comes closest to what we see as typical
British practice, liked to present himself first and foremost as a
craftsman or technician (Delacampagne 1981: 4). We therefore argue
that ethnographic essentialism represents a distinct but not exclusive
trend in French anthropology, one based not just on a simple disinterest
in theoretical positions but a positive rejection of them. In fact, this
tendency seems every bit as characteristic of the French school as the
theory-heavy ruminations of those thinkers we have all learned to
know and, sometimes, even love so well.
What are the reasons for this? Any assessment has to be based on the
history of fieldwork and of field enquiries generally in French
anthropology. In the rest of this introduction, we provide a brief survey
of this history, starting with the early nineteenth century and proceeding
to the heyday of structuralism.3 As we shall see, one trajectory of
significance here is a series of shifts from learned societies to museums to
research and training institutes, only finally reaching the universities at
a relatively late stage. We then proceed to provide a brief overview of each
chapter before considering what commonalities and differences can be
discerned in the lives, careers and works of these subjects.
Fieldwork in French anthropology: a brief history

An interest in field enquiries in France can be traced back to around
1800, when the short-lived Socit des Observateurs de lHomme
promoted the use of anthropological questionnaires by travellers to
other parts of the world and issued guidelines for anthropological
enquiries. This was the era of antiquarian and other learned societies in
France, as elsewhere in Europe, that is, of amateur intellectuals and
collectors working in an intellectual environment that was only then
beginning to institutionalise itself. At this early stage, French universities
were hardly involved directly at all in either teaching or research in
anthropology, and it was a museum, the Muse dHistoire Naturelle, that
established the first chair in anthropology in 1855, in cultural as well as
physical anthropology (Gaillard 2004: 85). Later in the nineteenth
century, however, in 1878, the first anthropological museum was
founded in France, namely the Muse dEthnographie, housed in the

Trocadro, by which name it was commonly known.4 Although initially
focused on pre-Columbian New World artefacts the chief interest of its
first curator, Ernest-Thodore Hamy the expansion of the French
Empire soon encouraged collection elsewhere and, along with it, basic
fieldwork yielding highly factual ethnographic monographs. This
promoted rather than initiated such activities, which were already going
on, for example, in Senegal in the 1850s, where General Faidherbe was
already busy producing anthropological and linguistic studies of its
indigenous peoples (Gaillard 2004: 86). In addition, many missionaries
were also active in this period in various parts of the world, such as Jean
Kemlin, who went out to the Bahnar in Vietnam in the same decade,
long before French rule had been established there. Apart from a crude
colonial-style evolutionism, none of this work can be considered
theoretically informed. However, methodologically attempts were
already being made to supplement earlier, purely biological approaches
to the study of humankind with a specific perspective on culture
(promoted, among others, by Hamy and his colleague in setting up the
Trocadro museum, Armand de Quatrefages), as well as to treat the
collection and display of anthropological objects as scientific, not artistic,
in character. Even at this early stage, therefore, a certain separation
between ethnography and theory can be discerned in France.
Other currents in the nineteenth century can be linked to France
itself, or at any rate Europe, rather than growing overseas empires. In
early sociology of the mid-nineteenth century, Frdric Le Plays
surveys, made as part of his roving work as a mines inspector, produced
insights into, or at least theories concerning, the nature, evolution and
sustainability of family forms. Perhaps of greater influence were studies
into the folklore of France in this period and later. Though dating back
well into the nineteenth century, like early anthropology, folklore
studies were also stimulated subsequently by the founding of a
museum, this time the Muse des Arts et Traditions Populaires, by
Georges-Henri Rivire and Andr Leroi-Gourhan in 1937. A good
example is Louis Dumonts study La Tarasque, a festival in southern
France (Dumont was at one time an employee of the aforesaid
museum). The main figure here, though, is Arnold van Gennep, a
highly active fieldworker whose major work in sheer scale was his
multivolume Manuel de folklore franaise contemporaine (19381958).
However, as can be seen from Giordana Charutys chapter in this
volume, van Gennep is really a transitional figure who attempted to
transform the folklore of France from a concern with origins and
survivals to synchronic studies that were more in tune with postevolutionist trends in anthropology more generally. In doing so, he
Introduction
resisted the attempts of the French political right to enlist folklore for
its own nationalist agenda, as well as becoming almost a structuralist
avant la lettre in his most famous work, Les rites de passage (1909; on
ritual forms in the world in general). For Susan Rogers, this fusion of
folklore and anthropology still informs the anthropology of France
itself, partly because of a desire to challenge sociological studies of the
death of rural France by stressing the uniqueness and continued
viability of such communities (2001: 49091). Indeed, some of the
figures treated in this volume took part in studies of French
communities before moving on to fieldwork in other parts of the world
(Bastide, Bernot, Dampierre, Dumont). But also, writers like Franoise
Zonabend and Martine Segalen used a combination (variously) of
material culture, historical documents, oral histories and literatures,
and anthropological fieldwork in their histories of the family in different
parts of France an interest that can be traced back to Le Plays
surveys. Yet even in Les rites de passage, what we have just called van
Genneps structuralism was adventitious rather than programmatic,
and facts predominate over grand theory in the bulk of his work, apart
from an interest in the experience of fieldwork itself.
This practice of separating fieldwork and theory persisted into the
twentieth century in France, where anthropology as a distinct discipline
developed differently than it did in Britain and America, especially in
turning to professional fieldwork rather later. In the early twentieth
century, however, fieldwork by amateur missionary and administrator
ethnographers still continued. One representative figure is Lopold
Sabatier, active in producing legalistic coutumiers, or compendia of
tribal custom, in the highlands of Vietnam. Work in this part of the
French Empire was supported by the cole Franaise dExtrme-Orient,
set up in Hanoi in 1898 as a research institute. Perhaps the most
famous figure here, however, is Maurice Leenhardt (see MacClancy, this
volume), though he is not entirely typical: in returning to France and
teaching anthropology as part of Mausss circle between the wars
after living in and writing on New Caledonia for many years he, at
least, can be said to have made the transition from amateur to
professional status in his career.5
Nonetheless, in the main, fieldwork by professional academics came
to France later than in Britain or America. One factor here was
obviously the dominance of Durkheimian sociology, which for a long
time was deeply suspicious of the term anthropology and anyone or
anything to do with it. First, it was seen as having been discredited by
the speculations of the nineteenth-century British intellectualists-cumevolutionists for Durkheimians, one of the main examples of wrongheadedness in the social sciences of the time. Secondly, it was too closely
connected with amateur, antiquarian folklore. This attitude is reflected

in the groups hostility to van Gennep, who sullied his reputation still
further in their eyes by using ethnography to criticise Durkheims views
on totemism (van Gennep 1920). It may also be found in the criticism
that Robert Hertz, a leading Durkheimian scholar, faced from his own
colleagues after conducting a brief period of fieldwork on the cult of St
Besse in northern Italy in 1911 (Parkin 1996: 12, MacClancy and
Parkin 1997). Consistently, even in the case of what had already long
been a central anthropological topic like religion, the Anne sociologique
group saw their work as sociology, not anthropology, despite their
increasing use of ethnography.
After his uncles death, though, Mauss eventually overcame these
scruples, at least in part. Conscious that French anthropology was
falling behind British in this regard, he encouraged others to do longterm fieldwork in the 1930s without participating in any himself.6 This
was reflected in, and perhaps also reinforced by, Mausss and others
activities in teaching the virtues of ethnography to French colonial
officers and trainees for administrative positions. Such activity, one
assumes, would not give emphasis to theory. Mauss taught these
courses at the Institut dEthnologie, which had been set up for the
purpose by his friend Lucien Lvy-Bruhl, and with which a whole range
of key figures in the history of French anthropology were involved,
including Leroi-Gourhan, Paul Rivet and Maurice Delafosse.
Mausss Manuel dethnographie (1947), which has recently been
translated (2007), was also linked to these activities (having been used
for lecturing prior to publication). In fact, a scrutiny of some of his more
programmatic statements indicates that he, more than anyone else
except perhaps Marcel Griaule, was the probable source of the
widespread focus on the facts and on ethnography in much French
anthropology after the First World War. In the Manuel, Mauss calls
ethnology a science of facts and statistics, its aim being the knowledge
of social facts (2007 [1947]: 7). Further, comparative ethnography
should be based on comparison between facts, not between cultures
(ibid.: 8). Earlier too, in an Intellectual self-portrait evidently written
to support his candidature to the Collge de France in 1930 (Mauss
1998), he states repeatedly that the facts, or alternatively description,
have enjoyed the priority in his work over theory. Thus right at the start
of this self-evaluation, he describes himself as a positivist, believing
only in facts, and asserts that descriptive sciences attain greater
certainty than theoretical sciences (1998: 29). Similarly, in contrast
to some of his other activities, at the Institut dEthnologie, I have
always confined my teaching to the purely descriptive (ibid.: 32). The
main aim of himself and his collaborators over the past four years has
Introduction
been to promulgate and often to establish the facts deriving from

unclassified civilizations with a view to classifying them (ibid.: 34).7
Finally, the only objective of the discipline to which I have devoted
myself has been to show the place of social life ... in the life of
humanity through sensitive contact with the facts (ibid.: 42). Perhaps
the admission that discoveries and novelties were a constant delight
(ibid.: 36), with the hint that processing them further through
classification and theory were less exciting, had something to do with
the development of this attitude. Certainly, in reading these
formulations from Mausss pen, one acquires a distinct feeling that
theory is secondary in his view of his own work and its aims a
surprising realisation, in the light of his long and intimate association
with one of the supreme sociological theorists, his uncle Durkheim.8
Apart from Mausss teaching, another stimulus to anthropology in
this period was the Colonial Exhibition, organised by Marshal Lyautey,
a key French Empire-builder, and held at Vincennes outside Paris in
1931. A celebration as much as exhibition of the French Empire and its
cultural variety, it attracted millions of visitors and stimulated both an
interest in anthropology in the general public and a desire to do more
fieldwork among a growing class of professional ethnographers (see
LEstoile 2003, 2007). Yet, this was also the period of expeditions and
ethnographic travel at least as much as fieldwork in the Malinowskian
sense, the former method sometimes being allied with diffusionism, as
had been the case about a quarter of a century earlier with, for
example, the Torres Straits expedition in Britain. Thus the famous
Dakar-Djibouti expedition of the early 1930s, led by Marcel Griaule,
was soon followed by Lvi-Strausss travels around the Amazon later in
the decade, though the latter, of course, were put to the service of
structuralism. As for Griaule, he did much to popularise anthropology
in France, both before and after the Second World War, partly through
his own charisma as a teacher and partly through the quite large cohort
of his colleagues and students he gathered around him. Many of these
were significant figures in their own right, such as Michel Leiris (who
soon broke with him), but also Marcel Delafosse, Germaine Dieterlen,
Denise Paulme and Jean Rouch (on the latter, see Paul Henley, this
volume). Although Griaule himself has been accused of exploiting
informants in questionable ways and of indulging in cultural
reproduction rather than ethnographic reporting by deliberately
staging ritual events, he abandoned his early diffusionism in favour of
a focus on the field and a theorising of field methods.9 And under
Griaules influence, members of this group at least spoke up for the
validity of indigenous ideas and ways of life, often comparing them
favourably with Western civilisation.
Although Griaules influence persisted after the Second World War,

there was certainly a change of emphasis with the arrival of
structuralism. This was a method rather than a theory in Lvi-Strausss
own view, though not one specifically directed towards fieldwork.
Nonetheless it rapidly came to be treated as a theoretical tendency, if not
a school. Lvi-Strausss influences were many and varied, and were not
conspicuously dominated exclusively by previous periods of
anthropology in France. Of course, the Anne sociologique school,
especially Mauss, was a key influence, but so were the structural
linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobsen. In addition,
the cultural anthropology, if not entirely the cultural relativism, of the
Boas school influenced Lvi-Strauss, who had been exposed to it during
his wartime exile from France at the New School of Social Research in
New York. In his critiques too, his target was British structuralfunctionalism more than anything else in anthropology. Above all, his
aim of creating a science of culture on the model of structural linguistics
was explicitly a break with the past. This was also a period in which
anthropology became more rooted in the universities in France, together
with research groups in, for example, ORSTOM (Organisation pour la
Recherche Scientifique et Technique de lOutre-Mer)10 and, perhaps most
importantly, CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique).
Lvi-Strauss himself was, of course, at the opposite extreme to
ethnographic essentialism, using structuralist theory to explain
ethnographic facts rather than vice versa (he is perhaps the most explicitly
deductive of all major international anthropologists). His influence was such
that the fieldwork of others and the facts they collected began to be shaped
and organised in relation to his theoretical ideas. Key figures here, who all
did proper fieldwork in relation to various theoretical agendas, include Luc de
Heusch, Franoise Hritier and Philippe Descola. As already noted above, in
tandem and, through Maurice Godelier, even overlapping with structuralism
was the work of mostly Althusser-inspired Marxists like Terray, Meillasoux
and Rey, chiefly on West Africa. Here too, theory (Marxist this time) was used
to explain ethnographic facts rather than vice versa. With structuralism and
Marxism, therefore, French anthropology converged more with practice in
other national traditions of anthropology in intimately uniting theory and
practice, and even in subordinating the latter to the former.
However, we should not forget that both structuralism and Marxism
co-existed with other intellectual currents: the psychoanalysis of
Jacques Lacan; the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty; the
existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre; the historical sociology and
philosophy of Michel Foucault; the contemporary sociologies of
Georges Gurvitch and Pierre Bourdieu; postmodernism; archaeology
and material culture; the alternative, non-structuralist anthropologies
Introduction
of Georges Balandier or Eric de Dampierre; the cognitive anthropology

of Dan Sperber and the continuance of ethnographic essentialism in
such figures as Rouch, Lucien Bernot, Andr-Georges Haudricourt (all
treated in this volume) and Georges Condominas.
French studies of fieldwork in French anthropology

To what extent have these issues namely the part fieldwork has played
in the history of French anthropology and its relationship to theory
been addressed in France itself? In fact, several important publications
have recently tackled these issues from various points of view. Thus
Claude Blanckaert has produced a historical perspective on the
transformation of the status of the observer in the course of the past three
centuries in a collection of studies of texts, basically French, which enact
research directives and codify the empirical work of travellers and, after
them, researchers (Blanckaert 1996). Daniel Cfa has brought together
fourteen classic British and American texts, translated into French, on
the subject of the field, participant observation and ethnographic
description, with an important postface devoted especially to French
works on these questions (Cfa 2003). Four manuals directed at students
on methods of enquiry have also appeared.11 Moreover, the last ten years
have seen a revival of studies on the social sciences in colonial situations
which take the view that colonialism was constitutive of these disciplines
rather than disqualifying them as legitimate modes of intellectual
enquiry. Thus four recent studies deal with the research actors, colonial
administrators, indigenous scholars, official and unofficial researchers,
and institutions involved in colonial research.12 In plunging actors into
the heart of colonial realities, the field appears as a crucial experience to
be taken into account in reconstructing the history of the social sciences.
Benot de LEstoile in particular (see notes 4 and 12) has focused on
the links in France between anthropological museums, anthropology
as a scientific discipline and the politics of empire and, more recently,
on global multiculturalism and the place of France within it. His period
therefore begins with the Colonial Exhibition of 1932 and the creation
of the Muse de lHomme six years later, and ends with the transfer of
the latters collections to the new Muse du Quai Branly in 2005. He is
especially critical of claims that such museums are all about displays of
alterity, pointing out how, instead, they really represent western ideas
of the Other rather than the Other itself, and also seeing continuity, not
a break, in the transition from the Trocadro to the Quai Branly. This,
of course, is a dilemma for anthropology generally, and it is especially
significant in fieldwork, where not only are facts and impressions
10
collected, but also the Other is confronted on a human level of mutual

comprehension and incomprehension. For LEstoile, therefore,
museums should be sites for the display of relations between collectors
and collected, and avoid either an explicit focus on the Other or a
concealed focus on western perspectives of the Other.
These works have done something to make good the lack of any
French histories of French anthropology, a lack highlighted, for
example, by Jean Jamin in the introduction to a collection (Copans and
Jamin 1994 [1978]) of very early texts produced under the auspices of
the Socit des Observateurs de lHomme of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. Mention should also be made of the series
Terre Humaine, published in Paris by Plon over many years, the focus of
which was precisely the publication of ethnographies in French.13
Nonetheless, all this is still something of a closed book to the world
outside France. While we do not engage directly with these texts here,
we do seek to supplement them with a wholly English-language
perspective on the particularities of the relationship between
ethnographic practice and theory in French anthropology.
The present collection

The approach adopted in addressing this question was to ask French and
British anthropologists to compose intellectual biographies of French
anthropologists, some of them little known, if at all, to the Anglo-Saxon
public, yet who offer particular potential in exploring the relationship
between ethnography and theory. We chose to focus on actual
practitioners of anthropology rather than on movements or schools,
meaning that, in relation to his or her subject, each contributor has had
to make more complex a picture that the international commerce of
ideas (Cusset 2008 [2003]) tends to simplify, even to caricature. Hence
the eclectic character of this gallery of portraits when compared to either
a manual of ethnographic practice or a history of the discipline. Also,
despite Rivets involvement with the Trocadro and the interests of some
of those featured here in material objects (especially Bernot and
Haudricourt), this is not a volume about French museology.
Thus the present collection is selective rather than comprehensive. It
is unfortunate that there is no chapter on a female French
anthropologist. This partly reflects the principle we chose to adopt of not
featuring any living anthropologists in this collection, which restricted
us in large measure to the middle and early histories of French
ethnography and these periods in France appear to have had even
fewer women fieldworkers than the British and American schools. Many
Introduction
11
French women ethnographers, now deceased, such as Germaine

Dieterlen and Denise Paulme, were linked to Griaule, a circle represented
here by Jean Rouch. Outside this circle was Germaine Tillion, a much
discussed figure in France itself in recent years for her fieldwork in the
Aurs area of Algeria and her political activism as a supporter of and
mediator for the resistance movement against French rule, as well as
having been a resistance fighter earlier against the Germans in the
Second World War (see Todorov and Bromberger 2002, Todorov 2007).
A main thrust of these chapters is therefore historical. Is the
ethnographic essentialism of many of the figures dealt with in this
volume now similarly historical? In fact, given what has been identified
as the general tendency for anthropologists to refrain from large-scale
comparisons and theoretical statements today (Gingrich and Fox
2002), with a concomitant concentration on the facts of specific
ethnographic situations, ethnographic essentialism appears rather to
be alive and kicking in at least some quarters. In addition, of course, it
cannot be said that the fundamental problems of doing fieldwork have
gone away, nor that the basic process itself has changed markedly since
the time those discussed in this collection were themselves in the field,
despite the distinctive attitudes of many of them to fieldwork. The time
therefore seems right to draw attention to this tendency once more in
the context of the past practices of some though not all adherents of
the French tradition, in the belief that, in a more general way too, their
experiences and their own telling of them remain very relevant to
contemporary anthropology. A review of the chapters follows, which
are arranged broadly according to the ethnographic areas in which
their subjects mainly or wholly worked.
The first chapter in the collection focuses on a key figure in the
transition from folklore to a recognisable anthropology of symbolism and
ritual, Arnold van Gennep (18731957). Charuty shows that van
Gennep did not accept his dismissal by the Durkheim school as a mere
folklorist lying down. Indeed, it produced a reaction in him which
conceded nothing to the theoretical peculiarities of his rivals, while
outperforming them in relation to his greater feel for ethnographic
realities and the problems involved in both eliciting and reporting these
problems in the field. Being almost entirely armchair anthropologists, his
rivals were especially vulnerable to attacks of this kind. Much of this
reaction was formulated in the Chroniques pages of the Mercure de France,
but these pages were not only critical of others, they also put forward a
prescription for how fieldwork in a literate or semi-literate society should
be carried out. Thus neutral observation should be coupled with
informants memories and life histories; as a fieldworker, one should
maintain an intellectual distance, while also being exposed fully to the
12
exotic world one is examining; and such experiences should be embodied

in ones own self, in a manner that almost suggests a form of
phenomenology. Also, van Gennep addressed the often problematic status
of fieldwork questions, answers and other methods. For example, in
talking about fake rituals that is, performances in the form of festivals
put on to support conservative nationalist agendas in rural France he
came close to the idea of the invention of tradition (for van Gennep, only
the rituals the people put on for themselves were authentic).
Charuty points out the centrality of the rite in van Genneps
approach to the whole ethnographic project. For him ritual is, among
other things, a manifestation of universal structure, marked not only by
the famous three stages, but also by transition and by the marginality
of the central, liminal stage. It is hard, therefore, to avoid remarking on
the double irony that van Gennep himself represents not only
intellectual transition in his work, but also marginality in respect of his
own institutional destinies.
In his chapter, Peter Parkes examines the contribution of two
colonial functionaries, Adolphe Hanoteau and Aristide Letourneux, to
the early ethnography of the Kabyle Berbers of Algeria and to the
distinctive genre of what Parkes calls canonical ethnography
(indigenous juridical documentation and its analytical interpretation).
This was based on legal canons or qawanin, a neglected but valuable
form of early ethnographic documentation, and the prototype of later
administrative ethnographies in sub-Saharan Africa. The work of these
two officials, comprising a gazetteer of general information about the
area and its people, together with their legal customs and social systems,
was collected through a peculiarly intensive kind of dialogical
fieldwork in the 1860s and published in the early 1870s. Significant
here was their key informant, Si Mula, a Sayyid alim or religious scholar
and Hanoteaus khoja or interpreter-cum-secretary at Fort-Napolon in
Kabyle. Si Mula became, in Parkess words, at least an equal co-author
with the two Frenchmen, though they do not openly credit him as such.
Parkes describes the canonical ethnography of Hanoteau and
Letourneux as severely factual or documentary, largely eschewing
historical contextualisation. Nonetheless Hanoteau, the main author,
was well aware of the extent to which French conquest and military
rule had already disrupted Kabyle society, an account of whose
traditional social organisation he was therefore keen to draw up. In
effect, therefore, while historical or reconstructive in intent, the
treatment is paradoxically synchronic in presentation, describing an
independent Kabyle society on the eve of its conquest.
Although the two authors juridical approach would be displaced by
Maussian transactional ethnographies of the inter-war period, not even
Introduction
13
Bourdieu was able to escape their influence entirely, despite his surface
criticism of their legalistic prejudice. Indeed, as Parkes finally notes,
there is reason to believe that some, at least, of Bourdieus fundamental
ideas as perhaps the most famous ethnographer of the Kabyles were
originally forged in reactive opposition to the rule-based canonical
ethnography of Hanoteau and Letourneux a theory of practice that
both complements and contrastively highlights the significance of the
juridical fieldwork they pioneered.
Paul Henleys chapter deals with a figure who is probably the most
famous ethnographic film-maker of them all, Jean Rouch (19172004).
Seen already as somewhat pass in France by the 1980s, it was precisely
at this time that Anglo-Saxon anthropology began to discover Rouch
as a precursor of post-modernism. As Henley makes clear, however, this
is not entirely what it seems, and in many respects Rouch actually
belongs to a specifically French tradition of ethnography dating back to
the surrealists as much as to Mauss, but also reflecting the strong though
not overwhelming influence of his doctoral supervisor, Marcel Griaule.
Henley discusses the ways in which the experience of working with
Griaule did and did not influence Rouch. While Rouch refrained from
deliberately antagonising informants in the way that Griaule frequently
did, and stressed their co-authorship with him in what he saw as a
genuinely collaborative effort (the source of his later being claimed as
a prophet of dialogical anthropology), he also relied on provocation in
the ethnographic encounter but only by the camera itself. For Rouch,
the fact of it not being possible to hide the cameras presence was
creative, not disadvantageous, since what it provoked in the informant
was a reaction different from, but at the same time deeper than, normal
behaviour, uncovering the truth underlying the superficiality of the
everyday world.
Henley also shows, though, that Rouch took his ideas about the
impact of the camera a great deal further than the simple claim that it
is provocative to the subjects. Filming also allows the film-maker to
immerse him- or herself in the culture. If film can provoke trance in the
natives, as Rouch claimed it actually did in at least one case, the filmmaker him- or herself can also be provoked by the act of filming to enter
a trance. Hence Rouchs famous cin-trance, conceived as a metaphor for
the film-makers own cultural creativity. At the very least, just as, for
the Songhay, spirit possession changes the mediums experience of the
world, so for Rouch the film-maker is changed by filming it. In other
words, in Rouchs conception, these processes of collaboration between
author and subjects involved a performative element that goes beyond
the merely verbal exchange implicit in the conventional Anglo-Saxon
conception of dialogical anthropology.
14
Margaret Buckners chapter on Eric de Dampierre (19281997) is one

of a minority in this collection in which the pupil discusses the work and
career of the master (also Toffin on Bernot). Like Bernot, Bastide and
Dumont, Dampierre began his career with a study of a French rural
community, in his case as part of a multi-disciplinary social-science
research team. His life-long fieldwork, from 1954 to the late 1980s, was
among the Nzakara, in what is now the Central African Republic. As a
French aristocrat, he was clearly comfortable living in a highly stratified
and class-conscious African society, while recognising that they seemed
less able to cope with the consequences of colonialism and modernity than
their close neighbours the Zande, otherwise a very similar society, made
famous through Evans-Pritchards earlier work among them. Dampierres
work therefore provides us with a little-known but very valuable French
counterpart to Evans-Pritchards famous monograph (1937).
Dampierre identified what he called thinking in the singular as a
key aspect of Nzakara thought, this being perhaps the most original of
his findings, which he saw as pervading all domains of Nzakara life,
from politics to music. It stresses the unique, the incommensurability of
any two beings, so that, for example, one cannot count people, nor
classify them, for fear of treating them all the same. Although, in his
sophisticated attempt to define this mode of thought, he may have
turned to Greek philosophy, it was still his experiences among the
Nzakara, his observations of their practices, discourse and material
culture, that had launched his research in the first place.
The Lvi-Straussian flavour of the title of his last work, Une esthtique
perdue (Dampierre 1995), links Dampierre with that generation of
anthropologists who had the feeling that they were living at the end of
an era, the traces of which they wanted to preserve as lucidly and
faithfully as possible. Not the least of Dampierres legacies, however, is
his founding and support of the Department of Ethnology and
Prehistory in the University of Paris-X at Nanterre, to the west of the
city, perhaps the major university department dedicated to
anthropology and to training anthropologists in the whole of France,
where one of the present editors received her own training and with
which she continues to be associated.
Laura Rivals chapter on Paul Rivet (18761958) discusses a now
neglected figure who was one of the key figures institutionally in the
anthropology of France in the inter-war period. His work with the
Institut dEthnologie and later at the Trocadro (including the Muse de
lHomme) gave him a pivotal role in the organisation of anthropology
in France between the two world wars, not far behind those of Mauss
and Lvy-Bruhl, with both of whom he cooperated closely and shared
many aims for the promotion of French anthropology.
Introduction
15
A pupil of literature and philosophy at school who then trained as a

doctor, Rivet spent five years in the early twentieth century conducting
polymathic fieldwork and collecting as part of a French geodesic
expedition to Ecuador, with which, together with Colombia, he was to
be associated for the rest of his life. Rivet can hardly be described as an
exemplary fieldworker from the point of view of post-Malinowskian
anthropology. This was basically because he had no direct contact with
the native population, but used what Rival calls indirect methods of
enquiry, interviewing intermediaries who were in the happy but selfdeceptive position of knowing the natives without having to question
them about anything. In many respects, Rivet seems to have been
mainly an observer, collecting, classifying and comparing, in Rivals
words. He rarely if ever asked questions about native meanings or ideas
he had little interest in religion, for instance, except to see in it an
example of the ignorance that was holding the natives back. Here we
have the Third-Republic scientific mind finding fault with Amerindian
society especially for its ignorance born of religious mysticism and
superstition while at the same time rejecting race as an explanation
for difference in favour of a humanism that unites us all as equal and
equivalent. In view of what has been said about the links between
modern French identity and a generalised humanity (e.g. Dumont
1986), it is perhaps not surprising that we also find a focus in Rivets
work on the generic human condition rather than the specifics of
different cultures.
Although Alfred Mtraux (19021963) was born in Switzerland,
brought up largely in Argentina and later became an American citizen,
he belongs to the French tradition of anthropology primarily by virtue
of the institutional side of his training: taught by Mauss and Rivet in
the 1920s, his theses on the Tup-Guaran of Brazil were submitted in
Paris. However, as Peter Rivire notes in his chapter on him, he was
hardly influenced intellectually by Mauss, nor even by Rivet, who
supported him in his career early on. Instead Mtraux fell under the
spell of the Swedish ethnologist Nils Erland Nordenskild, adopting
especially the latters tracing of trait distributions across one or more
ethnographic regions and his theoretically uncontextualised treatment
of ethnographic data. Rivire argues that Mtraux saw himself
primarily as a collector of facts, retaining a strict and almost
nineteenth-century demarcation between this activity and the wider
comparison or theorising done by others in the library or study. As a
result, there is little or no contextualisation or analysis in his own
writings, which are rather of the nature of compilations.
This apparent hostility to theory indicates a mind that is not
prepared to speculate over what cannot be known concretely. Yet
16
Mtrauxs attitude to fieldwork and the collection of data through it

was not entirely straightforward. On the one hand, he doubted whether
the collection of ethnographic facts could ever be truly scientific, mainly
because he felt that the civilised mind cannot readily grasp them. At the
same time, not only did he frequently complain about local conditions
in the field, he felt that ethnographers including himself implicitly
were essentially misfits in their own societies. He was clearly somewhat
prone to romanticising the people he studied, in a manner which seems
to have been fashionable in French anthropology for a time (Rivire
mentions Lvi-Strausss Tristes tropiques, and some of Pierre Clastres
work is in a similar vein; cf. Colchester 1982). Like Lvi-Strauss,
Mtraux praised what he saw as the neolithic in the native South
American, which he also considered as in some sense the end point of
human happiness in human evolution, not least because he saw it as
being on the verge of disappearing. Perhaps it was this feeling of
witnessing the disappearance of a way of life he much admired, as
much as the sense of his having received little recognition for his lifes
work, that led him apparently to take his own life in 1963.
Like some other figures dealt with in this book (Dumont, Bernot,
Dampierre), Roger Bastide (18981974) took part in an early study in
France itself, this time on Armenian immigrants in the town of Valence.
However, being already interested in mysticism, and in 1938 finding
himself a professor at the University of So Paulo in Brazil in succession
to Lvi-Strauss, he embarked on a long-term though intermittent study
of candombl in the northeast of the country. This brought him into
contact with Pierre Verger, who became a life-long friend and
collaborator. Bastide and Verger shared a belief in the importance of
experience in fieldwork, including the idea that one could not
understand something like possession without going through it oneself.
In addition, they both rejected the standard view of northeast Brazilian
culture being an original form born of acculturation and religious
syncretism: Vergers life-long concern in particular was to prove to AfroBrazilians the Africanness of their cultic practices. Although it was
mysticism that was the focus of Bastides interest, it was ironically the
sceptic Verger who went furthest into the candombl as a religious
experience: Bastide stopped halfway out of fear for his own sanity if he
were to allow his grip on reality to be loosened by continuing.
Nonetheless Bastide felt able to proclaim Africanus sum, and, as with
Griaules defence of African religion as represented by the Dogon, he
developed a view of Afro-Brazilian religion as being comparable in its
sophistication to any of the religions of civilisation. Moreover, there is
something similar here to the Rouchian cin-trance described by Henley
(this volume): in both cases, the trance state affects the ethnographer as
Introduction
17
much as the people he is studying. Bastides subsequent return to Paris

in 1954 to work with Georges Gurvitch exposed him to yet more
influences, though academic this time, including Marxism, a renewed
view of Mauss, and Gurvitchs own depth sociology. Between them,
they became a sort of opposition to Lvi-Strausss structuralism, which
was just then taking off in France.
Despite the support given to him at key points in his career by LviStrauss, Lucien Bernot (19191993) was no structuralist. Indeed, he
once remarked that, while ethnographic monographs could always be
treated structurally, structuralism was quite incapable on its own of
reconstructing the original ethnography. He was also of the view that,
in always being available to later generations of anthropologists, the
ethnographic monograph invariably outlasts theory, which is subject
to changes in intellectual fashion. His main influence was therefore the
anti-structuralism and ethnographic essentialism of Leroi-Gourhan
and some of his own more exact contemporaries among French
Southeast Asianists, in particular Andr-Georges Haudricourt, but also
Georges Condominas.
Toffin describes Bernot as an acute fieldworker when it came to
meticulous observation of what people do. Bernot advocated a focus on
small-scale communities of 200300 people, since he felt that in these
cases the ethnographer could come to know everyone within them. His
main focus was on technology and its relation to society, and later on
ethnobotany (reflecting Haudricourts influence). This factual
concentration in his work recalls Rivet and is similarly diffusionist in its
methods, if not explicit theoretical orientation. This aspect is perhaps
reflected mainly in the ethnolinguistic atlases Bernot created, which traced
the distribution of key words across vast swathes of Southeast Asia, but
also in his use of written sources for purposes of historical reconstruction
and his frequent citation of diffusionist geographers. Fundamentally,
though, he was what Toffin describes as a ruralist by both upbringing and
professional interest, that is, a specialist in rural, agricultural communities,
which, the world over, had similarities that link them and distinguish them
from urban society: thus the people of Nouville (northeast France) have
more in common with Burmese peasants than with Parisians one respect
in which he disagreed with his friend Haudricourts stress on the differences
among rural communities in the world at large.
Andr-Georges Haudricourt (19111996) was nonetheless another
ruralist, a country-born child who, because of ill health, was educated
first by his mother and subsequently by himself. Based on observational
habits learned during his upbringing, combined with the experience of
early fieldwork in Vietnam, Haudricourt developed not only an extreme
focus on the facts, but what Bensa calls a hyperrealist view of facts as
18
being restricted to what can be known through the senses alone. He

accordingly accepted no psychological, sociological or intellectual
interference with our own direct exposure to the world and experience
of it, and he rejected notions such as the autonomy of representations
and ideas (Durkheim), the social being projected on to nature
(Durkheim and Mauss 1963 [1903]) or the symbolic transformation
of nature by culture (Lvi-Strauss). The structuralists dualism of
nature and culture is replaced by a close symbiosis between them in
which they often imitate each other, though the latter is always rooted
in the former, not vice versa.
Haudricourts extended comparison between the Middle East and
Far East in part relies on a distinction between the cultural
predominance given respectively to plant and animal breeding, but
nonetheless it is the different plant and animal ecologies of both areas
that are ultimately the bases of the distinction. Thus in the Middle East,
animal herds and wheat both originated outside human environments
and had to be subdued and controlled by humans, whereas in the Far
East (actually in this example Melanesia) there was a situation in which
humans, plants and animals started out living symbiotically in the
same environment. From this distinction, Haudricourt derives different
ideas of religion, social authority and hierarchy: thus in the Middle East
the gods are remote, but in Melanesia they are all around one. Bensa
uses the term functional historicism to characterise Haudricourts
focus on origins and history, by which is meant both the biological
history of particular species and the histories of distinct human
populations in distinct environments. And, as with some other
ethnographers discussed in this introduction, such as Bernot and Rivet,
the focus on the facts stresses the particular over the general, the
ethnographically specific over the universal.
In contrast to many of the other anthropologists featured in this
volume, Louis Dumont (19111998), an exact contemporary of
Haudricourt, discussed here by Robert Parkin, is known for his
theoretical contributions and more literature-based writings at least as
much as for his fieldwork. Nonetheless his fieldwork in south India
formed a significant part of his own intellectual development and led to
one of the classic ethnographies of the region. Dumonts subsequent
sojourn in Oxford under Evans-Pritchard influenced his anthropology
quite profoundly, and in many ways he is the most Anglo-Saxon of the
figures treated in this collection. Yet the earlier influence of Mauss
remained strong, while the Tamils, whom he regarded as born
sociologists, influenced him in developing his view that a form of
structuralism was the key to understanding Indian society and culture.
His use of pure/impure as a key hierarchical opposition in the values
Introduction
19
of the caste system ultimately replaced the simple binary oppositions

of Lvi-Strauss, being focused on values as more important than
symbolism, and recognising the significance of social action while still
subordinating it to ideology and structure. These ideas were enshrined
especially in his most famous work, Homo hierarchicus, on the Indian
caste system (Dumont 1966, 1980).
After India and Oxford, Dumont returned to Paris to pursue
comparisons between India and the West, which also involved contrasts
between hierarchy and egalitarianism, holism and individualism, and
indeed two sorts of individual, the individual-outside-the-world and the
individual-within-the-world. This move was also a shift from fieldwork
to writings, from observation to ideas, and in its approach it reflected
the influence of Mauss in the latters writings on such themes as the
gift and the person, where world history was the framework within
which both the topic and the related arguments were set. Finally, in his
last major work on German ideology (Dumont 1994 [1991]) or, as we
might say today, identity, he demonstrated that even in the West
individualism was not all of a type: in particular, the German stress on
personal self-development being subordinated to a holistic state is
opposed to the individual-against-the-state model of Anglo-Saxon and
French libertarian philosophies.
Jeremy MacClancys chapter on Maurice Leenhardt (18781954)
is a little different from some of the others in this volume, since it
discusses this quasi-iconic, early, pre-Malinowskian fieldworker
through the eyes of his later commentators. Born at Montauban in
1878 into a French Protestant family the latter circumstance he
shares with Roger Bastide Leenhardt wrote an early thesis on the
Ethiopian church movement in southern Africa. However, he spent
most of his career until well into the 1920s as a Protestant missionary
in New Caledonia.
Leenhardts interests were many, but they included especially
Melanesian languages in and around New Caledonia and what he is
most famous for his very striking and imaginative analyses of
personhood and myth. As MacClancy shows, he has been claimed
successively as a post-structuralist in the manner of Clifford and
Marcus, a Jungian phenomenologist, a Heideggerian existentialist and
a Strathernian advocate of the decentred nature of personhood in
Melanesia the first and last, at least, very much before his time. More
likely though, as MacClancy himself suggests, he was basically just a
man of his own time. One can argue that his patent sympathy for the
indigenes was romantically inclined towards his primitivist vision of
their way of life, rather than concerned with their progress as such (cf.
Mtraux or Clastres), while his intellectual perspective was fundamentally
20
evolutionist, despite his awareness of Maussian holism. If he seems

anti-structuralist, therefore, it is because of his already outmoded
intellectual position.14
Unity in diversity?
What common features emerge from a comparative reading of the
chapters in this collection? First, as already noted, it is striking how
many of these figures can be considered anti-theoretical fact-gatherers
and compilers, at least in their own view of their activities. Certainly
Hanoteau, Rouch, Rivet, Mtraux, Bernot and Haudricourt, in their
very different ways, exemplify this tendency. Yet theory is not
necessarily so very far away, even in these cases. For example, given
their interests in the distribution of words in particular, Rivet and
Bernot can be seen as being informed by diffusionist methods and
assumptions in their handling of the facts they collected. Moreover, the
very emphasis on ethnographic essentialism can be regarded as a
theoretical or at least philosophical position in itself, as it clearly was
for Haudricourt. As we have remarked already, van Gennep, with his
project of converting folklore into anthropology; Dampierre, whose
non-structuralist approach was informed at least in part by his
background in sociology; and Dumont, with his revisionist
structuralism, all had their own particular theoretical focuses.
It is also remarkable how many of these fact-gatherers seem to have
had rather limited abilities as fieldworkers: thus Hanoteau, Rouch,
Rivet, Mtraux, Bastide and Bernot had to rely largely on interpreters,
Rivet and Bastide on local intellectuals and other sorts of intermediary
too, while Mtraux seemed to spend a lot of time complaining about
actual fieldwork conditions. Nonetheless most of the figures treated
here spent long periods of their lives in the field, though Dumont and
Bastide perhaps least of all. Moreover, arising out of this dedication to
the collection of facts are also a number of real commitments on the
part of many of these figures to the peoples they encountered, to the
latters contemporary circumstances and conditions, and to their
relations with them. There is a whole range of attitudes here, from the
relatively passive and neutral to genuine if selective political activism.
At one end of the scale is Dumont, whose commitment was
fundamentally restricted to achieving ethnographic understanding
with the aid of particular theoretical frameworks within an overall
ethos of intellectual neutrality. For example, in defending this principle
in relation to phenomena that may shock western sensibilities in field
situations elsewhere in the world, Dumont frequently argued that to
Introduction
21
seek to understand, say, the caste system in India or female circumcision

in parts of Africa did not necessarily mean that one approved of them
(e.g. Dumont 1979). Although Bernot and Rouch clearly developed
close and mutually supportive personal relationships with their
principal subjects and greatly admired their cultural traditions, neither
evinced any deep political commitment to their respective peoples.
Mtraux hardly goes beyond a nostalgia for the neolithic, which
Amerindians represented for him, though as Peter Rivire points out
(personal communication), later in life he became somewhat more
sympathetic to the peoples he encountered through his activities in
assessing war damage in Germany and his involvement with UNESCO.
Conversely, while Dampierre merely seems to record the changes
associated with colonialism among the Nzakara, albeit with a tinge of
nostalgia, others like Hanoteau among the Kabyle and Leenhardt in
New Caledonia tried to protect the native population from the worst
consequences of colonialism.
At the other end of the scale is Rivet, the only figure here actually to
become a politician not in South America against colonialism, but in
France in the 1930s, against fascism. Otherwise his self-appointed role
was to affirm the positive in the practice and status of mtissage and to
record and discuss the conditions of the Amerindians he encountered
from the scientific perspective of a social scientist of the Third
Republic, even though his direct personal contact with them, because
of his habitual use of intermediaries, was minimal. Finally, both Rouch
and Bastide hailed the experience of the (cin-)trance as a fulfilment of
the ethnographic experience that was almost mystical for them; yet the
fulfilment they sought was strictly their own, rather than intended to be
of any use to those whose cults they were taking part in and recording.
Exposure to the field, and even ones personal bodily experience of it,
was also important to van Gennep, though as a tool of ethnographic
enquiry rather than a means of personal discovery.
Nonetheless it was perhaps this more personal and/or political
commitments that replaced theory as a goal of fieldwork in the minds
of some of these figures. At all events, we argue that, while some French
ethnographers are scarcely any different from their colleagues
elsewhere when it comes to relating facts to theory, very many others
have dedicated themselves to the former to the exclusion, in whole or in
part, of the latter. There can be no question, of course, of the
tremendous contribution of French intellectuals in many disciplines to
the enrichment of anthropological theory and model-building
worldwide. Yet ethnographic practice informs anthropology in France
too, often overshadowed by the theorists or neglected entirely, especially
abroad, but involving a variety of genuine commitments to data
22
collection, exotic cultures, ethnographic subjects as fellow human

beings, ones relations with them or just the personal experience of
fieldwork. Amongst other things, this makes the study of fieldwork a
perfectly valid and highly productive way of approaching the history of
French anthropology generally. That is because France is distinct not
just for its theories and model-building but because, in explicit
opposition to them, many a practical fieldworker has theorised away
theory itself so that the facts of the ethnography can shine forth in all
their splendour.
Notes
1. See also Cusset (2008 [2003]) on the invention of French theory in America.
2. His epiphany has already been hinted at in print (Parkin 2005), where an attempt at
a potted history of the whole of French anthropology can also be found. These
originated in lectures given at the official opening of the Max Planck Institute of
Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany, in June 2002.
3. For a more extended account of these events, see Parkin (2005), in which key
references can also be found. More recently, see also Sibeud (2008).
4. In 1938 the Trocadro was transformed into the Muse de lHomme by Paul Rivet
and Georges-Henri Rivire. Its collections have since been transferred to the new
Muse du Quai Branly (see lEstoile 2003, 2007).
5. Jacques Dournes, sometimes known under his Sre name of Dam Bo, made a similar
shift somewhat later (the Sre are located in the Vietnamese highlands).
6. We stress the long-term: Mauss did undertake one brief field trip to witness dances in
Morocco.
7. Allen describes this as a longstanding preoccupation that originated in part with the
question of how to organise the Anne sociologique (2007: 2), the house journal of the
Durkheim group, in terms of the rubrics into which it should be divided.
8. It is hard to be sure whether, in talking about the facts, Mauss necessarily has in mind
his uncles idea of the social fact as defined quite narrowly (though also discussed at
some length) in Chapter 1 of the Rules of sociological method (Durkheim 1982 [1895]).
Nor is it clear to what extent Mauss was concerned with the construction of facts in
the epistemological sense. Mausss usage often seems to be purely normative in these
passages.
9. The more questionable aspects of Griaules methods were the main reason for Leiris
breaking with him; see Leiris (1934). A good account of Griaule in the field is Clifford
(1983).
10. Now lInstitut pour la Recherche et le Dveloppement (IRD).
11. In order of appearance, these include Laplantine (1996), Beaud and Weber (1997),
Copans (1998) and Berger (2004).
12. In Revue dHistoire des Sciences humaines, No. 10, 2004. For an innovative analysis,
from a similar perspective, of the genesis of different national anthropologies in
Europe, the Americas and South Africa, and the linkage between them, see LEstoile
et al. (2005).
13. The second book in this series, which was founded by Jean Malaurie in 1955, was
Lvi-Strausss Tristes tropiques (1955) not a conventional ethnography, any more
than its author was an ethnographic essentialist, let alone a willing ethnographer;
Introduction
23
more typical, perhaps, of the genre is Georges Condominass Lexotique est quotidien:
Sar Luk, Vietnam (1965). On this important series, see Aurgan (2001).
14. Laura Rival adds the information that post-structuralist Amazonianist anthropology
makes much of Leenhardt, especially the oft-quoted anecdote about the missionaries
bringing to the Canaques not the soul but the body (personal communication).
References
Allen, N.J. 2007. Introduction, in M. Mauss, Manual of ethnography, New York and Oxford:
Berghahn.
Aurgan, P. 2001. Des rcits et des hommes: Terre humaine un autre regard sur les sciences
de lhomme, Paris: Nathan.
Beaud, S. and F. Weber. 1997. Guide de lenqute de terrain, Paris: La Dcouverte.
Belmont, N. 1979. Arnold van Gennep: the creator of French ethnography, Chicago and
London: The University of Chicago Press.
Berger, L. 2004. Les nouvelles ethnologies, Paris: Nathan.
Blanckaert, C. (ed.). 1996. Le terrain des sciences humaines: instructions et enqutes (XVIII
XXme sicle), Paris: LHarmattan.
Cfa, D. (ed.). 2003. Lenqute de terrain, Paris: La Dcouverte.
Clifford, J. 1983. Power and dialogue in ethnography: Marcel Griaules initiation, in G.W.
Stocking (ed.), Observers observed: essays on ethnographic fieldwork, Madison: The
University of Wisconsin Press.
Colchester, M. 1982. Les Yanomami, sont-ils libres? Les utopies amazoniennes, une
critique: a look at French anarchist anthropology, Journal of the Anthropological Society
of Oxford, 13(2): 14764.
Condominas, G. 1965. Lexotque est quotidien: Sar Luk, Vietnam, Paris: Plon.
Copans, J. 1998. Lenqute ethnologique de terrain, Paris: Nathan.
Copans, J. and J. Jamin. (eds). 1994 [1978]. Aux origines de lanthropologie franaise: les
mmoires de la Socit des Observateurs de lHomme en lAn VIII, Paris: Jean-Michel Place.
Cusset, F. 2008 [2003]. French theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and co. Transformed
the intellectual life of the United States [French theory: Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze et Cie et
les mutations de la vie intellectuelle aux Etats-Unis] (tr. J. Fort), Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Dampierre, E. de. 1995. Une esthtique perdue, Paris: Presses de lENS.
Delacampagne, C. 1981. Louis Dumont and the Indian mirror, Royal Anthropological
Institute News, 43: 47.
Dumont, L. 1966. Homo hierarchicus: essai sur le systme des castes, Paris: Gallimard
(English trans. 1972, London: Paladin).
1979. The anthropological community and ideology, Social Science Information,
18: 785817.
1980. Homo hierarchichus: the caste system and its implications (2nd ed.), Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press.
1986. Essays on individualism: modern ideology in anthropological perspective,
Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
1994 [1991]. German ideology: from France to Germany and back, Chicago and
London: The University of Chicago Press.
Durkheim, . 1982 [1895]. The rules of sociological method, London: Macmillan.
Durkheim, . and M. Mauss. 1963 [1903]. Primitive classification, London: Cohen & West.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1937. Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande, Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
24
Gaillard, G. 2004. The Routledge dictionary of anthropologists, London and New York:
Routledge.
Gingrich, A. and R.G. Fox (eds). 2002. Anthropology, by comparison, London and New
York: Routledge.
Laplantine, F. 1996. La description ethnographique, Paris: Nathan.
Leiris, M. 1934. LAfrique fantme, Paris: Gallimard.
LEstoile, B. de. 2003. From the Colonial Exhibition to the Museum of Man: an alternative
genealogy of French anthropology, Social Anthropology, 11(3): 34161.
2007. Le got des autres: de lExposition colonial aux Arts premiers, Paris:
Flammarion.
LEstoile, B., F. Neiburg and L. Sigaud (eds). 2005. Empires, nations and natives:
anthropology and state-making, Durham: Duke University Press.
Lvi-Strauss, C. 1955. Tristes tropiques, Paris: Plon.
MacClancy, J. and R. Parkin. 1997. Revitalization or continuity in European ritual? The
case of San Bessu, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 3(1): 6178.
Mauss, M. 1998. An intellectual self-portrait, in W. James and N.J. Allen (eds), Marcel
Mauss: a centenary tribute, New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
2007 [1947]. Manual of Ethnography (tr. D. Lussier), New York and Oxford:
Berghahn.
Parkin, R. 1996. The dark side of humanity: the work of Robert Hertz and its legacy,
Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
2005. The French-speaking countries, in F. Barth et al., One discipline, four ways:
British, German, French, and American anthropology, Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
Rogers, S. 2001. The anthropology of France, Annual Review of Anthropology, 30: 481
504.
Sibeud, E. 2008. The metamorphosis of ethnology in France, 18391930, in H. Kuklick
(ed.), A new history of anthropology, Oxford: Blackwell.
Todorov, T. (ed.). 2007. Le sicle de Germaine Tillion, Paris: Seuil.
Todorov, T. and C. Bromberger (eds). 2002. Germaine Tillion: une ethnologue dans le sicle,
Paris: Actes Sud.
van Gennep, A. 1909. Les rites de passage, Paris: Nourry.
1920. Ltat actuel du problme totmique, Paris: Ernest Letroux.
193858. Manuel de folklore franais contemporain, Paris: Picard, 9 vols.
Chapter 1
KEEPING YOUR EYES OPEN:

ARNOLD VAN GENNEP AND THE AUTONOMY
OF THE FOLKLORISTIC
Giordana Charuty
Introduction
The intention of the exhibition and its catalogue, Hier pour demain, held at
the Grand-Palais in Paris between June and September 1980, was to make
the general public aware of the French ethnographic heritage on the
precise occasion of lAnne du Patrimoine or the Year of the Patrimony
(Cuisenier 1980). In the exhibition, a chronology of ethnographic
precursors identified a succession of moments, from the mid-eighteenth
century of LEncyclopdie up until 1937, marked by two monuments. One
was the Muse des Arts et Traditions Populaires. The other was the
beginning of the publication of the Manuel de folklore franais contemporain
by Arnold van Gennep (18731957), an author in whom one recognises
a double status: the last of the folklorists in the manner of the nineteenth
century, and the first of contemporary ethnographers.1
However, certain other readings, recent and not so recent, have
restored a greater degree of complexity with respect to the academic
training, initial theoretical interests and intellectual sites that permitted
van Gennep to work without respite for the recognition of a disciplinary
field in the first half of the twentieth century (see Belmont 1974, Chiva
1987, Fabre 1992, Velay-Valentin 1999). After some schooling away
from Paris, he received training in linguistics and the history of religions
at the Ecole des Langues Orientales and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes
Etudes, which he attended at the same time as Marcel Mauss. With Lon
Marillier in particular, he discovered there the ethnographies of remote
26
Giordana Charuty
Figure 1.1. Arnold van Gennep, aged 80, lighting a bonfire on the summer solstice (21
June 1953), also the saints day of St John the Baptist. Taken by Pierre Soulier. Muse
des civilisations de lEurope et de la Mditerrane.
worlds and learned the art of rigorous criticism of ethnographic

documents. However, while he shared the same intellectual interests
and the same knowledge as British anthropologists, his relations with
those who collaborated in LAnne sociologique were more conflictual.
In the journal, his Mythes et legendes dAustralie of 1906, which he
presented as a study in ethnography and sociology, was subjected to
a critique, signed by Mauss, that was at least as severe as that of the sole
work of van Genneps that British anthropology was to retain, namely
Les rites de passage of 1909 (Mauss 1908, 1909). In response, the
Mercure de France and the Revue de lhistoire des religions provided him
with a platform to object to the use that Emile Durkheim had made of
Australian ethnographic data in the latters Les formes lmentaires de
la vie religieuse (1912):
I fear that M. Durkheim, despite his apparent care with ethnographic facts,
only possesses a metaphysical sense, or, even more so, a scholastic sense; he
accords a genuine reality to both concepts and words. Not having any sense
Keeping your eyes open
27
of life, that is, any biological or ethnographic sense, he turns living

phenomena and living beings into plants that have been dried scientifically,
as in a herbarium. (2001: 94 )2
He repeated this criticism in his Etat actuel du problme totmique of

1920, to which Lvi-Strauss paid homage in his La pense sauvage,
saluting simultaneously his innovatory audacity and his limitations
for having remained, in his turn, the prisoner of a traditional carving
up of social institutions (1962: 21315).
Nonetheless, in the same period Mauss and van Gennep conducted
similar diagnoses of the stagnation, in France, of the ethnography of the
French domain or of remote worlds: fieldwork, museums, archives, teaching
none were worthy of the name. However, while the former entered the Fifth
Section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes at a very young age, the latter
never obtained any university post apart from a few brief years, between
1912 and 1915, when he occupied the chair of ethnography at Neuchtel.
Here he reorganised the museum and arranged the first ethnographic
congress in 1914, before being expelled for his lack of political discretion by
casting doubt publicly on Switzerlands neutrality during the war.
What does one live off when one has no university position? In
1896, aged 23, van Gennep left France for four years to teach French in
Poland. On his return to Paris in 1901, he entered the Ministry of
Agriculture as head of translations he mastered a dozen or so
languages and he lived materially from his contributions to journals
and his translations. This did not prevent him from conducting a fivemonth enquiry in Algeria between 1911 and 1914 to make an
inventory of the techniques and styles of Kabyle pottery, nor from
publishing several theoretical essays, including the future, much
celebrated Rites de passage (1909). Between 1904 and 1914, and again
on the eve of the Second World War, he ran several journals of
ethnography and sociology, living folklore and popular traditions,
as well as providing contributions to a large number of specialist
journals on his own account, which still remain to be studied.
Prefacing his 1967 English translation of Les demi-savants (van
Gennep 1911, Needham 1967), Rodney Needham was the first to
suggest that the publication of this brief pamphlet in 1911, a parody of
the academic world, may not have been unconnected with this lack of
institutional recognition. The hypothesis was taken up again in 1992 by
Alan Dundes (1992: 4), who identified at least one amateur folklorist
among these semi-scholars. Since then, other explanations have been
suggested, which may be summarised quite briefly.
The struggle that arose in France after 1925 for ethnology to be fully
recognised as a university discipline produced a division into two
28
Giordana Charuty
camps. On the one hand, there was a conservative anthropology, the

heritage of Le Play and de Broca, promoted by Louis Marin through
several learned societies and two journals, LAnthropologie and
LEthnographie. Opposed to this was the Institut dEthnologie, with
Lucien Lvy-Bruhl, Mauss, Marcel Cohen and Paul Rivet, which
provided training for future researchers, travellers and colonial officers,
while seeking to take over the university. This enterprise succeeded
through the creation of degree certificates at the Sorbonne, the naming
of Paul Rivet as Professor of Anthropology at the Musum National
dHistoire Naturelle and Director of the Muse dEthnographie du
Trocadro, and Mausss nomination to the Collge de France in 1931.
A stranger to the Durkheim circle, van Gennep also remained on the
margins of an analogous circle of ethnologists of France. Although he
had played an essential role in the Congress of Popular Art organised in
Prague in 1928 by the Socit des Nations and the Institut International
de Coopration Intellectuelle, the following year he was kept away from
the creation of the Socit de Folklore Franais and its journal of the
same name, and in particular from the management of the Muse de
Trocadro, whose restoration Paul Rivet entrusted to Georges Henri
Rivire. This activity prefigured the creation of the Muse des Arts et
Traditions Populaires and from 1938 was continued by the teaching of
the history of popular arts and traditions at the Ecole du Louvre.
Building on the evidence already provided by Nicole Belmont (1974)
and Isaac Chiva (1987), Daniel Fabre argues (1992) that van Genneps
removal should lead one to reject the convergence, accepted up to that
point, between the Muse des Arts et Traditions Populaires and van
Genneps Manuel de folklore franais contemporain, which instead he
proposes to read as an inverted monument with a highly polemical
relationship with the principles that governed the ethnography and
museography of the Muse. This reversal of perspective is supported by
the discovery of another intellectual site where van Gennep published
with great regularity between 1905 and 1949, namely his Chroniques
in the journal the Mercure de France (see below). These have just become
the object of a very useful if partial republication, which permits us to
pursue alternative readings (van Gennep 2001).
The work he produced in Mercure de France reveals the demands,
difficulties and ambiguities of what would later be called ethnology at
home. It was the author Rmy de Gourmont who in 1904 introduced van
Gennep, then thirty years old, to the director of this cultural review, whose
aim was to oppose all academic theories. The publication of van Genneps
thesis, Tabou et totmisme Madagascar (1904), had attracted the editors
attention, and his bi-monthly Chroniques were to become one of the sites,
on the margins of the university, of the definition and recognition of a
29
discipline which he continued, after many hesitations, to call folklore

in its relations with the ethnography of non-western societies, the history
of religions, prehistory and physical anthropology. These were not just
reviews of recent publications but also, as Jean Marie Privat has stressed
(2001), a weapon in the struggle to win autonomy with respect to other,
better established scientific disciplines in order to train practitioners and
distinguish good and bad academic practices in this discipline.
There is also, like a watermark, a kind of intellectual biography
which can be read through the memories of experiences, encounters,
readings, research projects and hesitations over the methods and
instruments to be preferred. This reveals, in the course of time,
difficulties in reconciling a multiplicity of positions, which are not
necessarily as opposed to one another as has been said, to the limits and
impasses of ethnography in the Muse des Arts et Traditions Populaires.
The ethnographic position

Van Gennep never ceased to repeat: It therefore remains the case that
ethnography, folklore, and popular traditions are no longer ethnic or
political in kind, but designate the study of the mores and customs of all
peoples, ancient and modern, and of all forms of civilisation (2001
[1947]: 220). In fact, in the early years, the Chroniques in Mercure de
France put forward this universalist aim by making ethnographies of the
African, Australian, Amerindian and European worlds converge, since,
wherever the enquiry takes place, providing the conceptual categories of
a rigorous description forms part of a general theory of culture. But
although the reader is invited to approach the popular life of a French
province and the life of the Nandi or the Masai with the same curiosity,
the conversion of gaze required of the western observer in order to
reconstitute the diversity of rural societies in Europe in a comparative
manner can in no way be taken for granted: the requirement of
descriptive objectification presupposes systematic submission to a unique
form of lived experience in order to be able to produce alterity at home.
Dispersed among these Chroniques can be found several narratives of
the genesis of an ethnographic posture in van Genneps childhood. To
begin with, there is his passion for collecting objects whose significance
must be brought out as if they were the traces of previous periods and
remote cultures, later known as prehistoric objects. On the other hand,
when van Gennep was fifteen his father, a laryngologist, entrusted him
with microscopic specimens; and even though the young van Gennep
30
Giordana Charuty
did not gravitate towards medical studies as his father had wished, he
reported having retained his passion for biology. Finally, while a pupil at
the lyce at Nice, he spent most of his time doing bush school, that is,
actually experiencing a different way of conveying knowledge through
elective affinities between boys of different ages. But the passage to
ethnography one of the numerous paradoxes in this itinerary came
after attempting the theoretical conceptualisation of totemism and
above all of ritual activity, of which he was to say repeatedly that it
constituted a sort of internal illumination which permanently
transformed his relationship with daily life.
To see the most familiar things differently involves a double
movement of removing oneself from the common sense of ordinary life
and incorporating strictly localised ways of living and speaking by
distancing oneself from them. Initially it was in Savoy, during his
holidays as a child and an adolescent, that van Gennep busied himself
with this exercise. Moreover, during the period of the Manuel, leading
every informant through his memories and his juvenile experiences was
to be erected into a principle of ethnographic enquiry. For the time being,
keeping ones eyes open designated the first step, which he described in
a Chronique of 16 October 1909, when he had just passed the summer
doing fieldwork, having installed himself in the little town of Bonneville:
And, with the thought of being useful to others who were busying themselves
with regional ethnography, I will indicate here the method required: I situate
myself with regard to the Savoyards as if they were savages and their land
were located in the heart of Africa. I assume that nothing is known about
them, and that I myself in particular am entirely ignorant of their language,
houses, legends, etc. This amounts to keeping ones eyes open all the time, to
wonder at everything, to wish everything to be new and to take note of every
observation. It will then suffice to check ones personal observations against
those of others and to let go of any useless ballast. In brief, it is necessary to
put oneself in the right frame of mind, use the methods of an explorer
thrown right into the middle of black or yellow populations, and to arrange
ones observations rigorously in series. (2001: 68)
The second step, that of apprenticeship, is objectivised in the same

Chronique of 16 October 1909:
As a temporary citizen of Bonneville, Haute-Savoie, I found myself shaking
with laughter [je my suis gondol] repeatedly that summer, as was
appropriate. For you must realise that Bonneville is built in triangular
fashion around a square which, according to the locals, has the form of a
gondola [gondole]. At the centre of the square is an alley with beautiful plane
trees and an old fountain; surrounding the plane trees, a triangle of wide
paths, cleanly maintained; and making a tour of the square untiringly for
31
some hours, going right down the middle of these paths, is to shake with
laughter [se gondoler]: oh, the joys of small towns! (ibid.: 67)
In summary, it is a matter of testing very physically, in his body, his

emotions, his thoughts, the impact of a landscape or a piece of
architecture, of other ways of living in a place and the categories of
thought borne by another language (a patois), as well as the attribution of
intentionality to other beings than just humans. This is a position that
connects the insistent interrogation of literary or aesthetic avant-gardes
Where is one primitive? When is one primitive? to the existence of
other psychic states and other ways in which social life may function
which are no longer linked to another place or a remote past, but identified
very near to us, within ourselves. The claim of the specificity of this
knowledge, derived from a double movement establishing a distance
while at the same time reincorporating local micro-societies own usages
was to be a constant feature of all these Chroniques. Reviewing the
Manuel de folklore of P. Saintyves on 1 April 1937, he again wrote:
It must be admitted that everyone has the right to consider the facts from
the angle that pleases him the most; it would be ungracious of me just
because my temperament pushes me to take facts and people in hand, to
massage them, and to have a horror for the fluid phraseology or the uncoiled
metaphysics to reproach someone else for preferring them [But] I
consider it inauspicious for a science of direct observation like ours to
immure it in a verbal system and a study, when this requires fresh air, the
bottle of white wine, disdain for what one is told, the diffusion of oneself
among the mass, yet also the maintenance of the self as individualised as
possible, without contempt for anything whatever, and without the idea that
bookish instruction represents a superior human value. (ibid.: 189)
Apart from his criticism of de Saintyves there are other disagreements,

those that opposed van Gennep to the Durkheimian sociologists from
the outset. Saluting some years earlier, in 1931, the reissue of some of
Robert Hertzs papers by LAnne sociologique in Mlanges de sociologie
religieuse et folklore (1928), van Gennep recalled the part he had played
in the genesis of Hertzs enquiry into the cult of St Besse:
one day I said to Hertz that to write [faire] a thirteenth book on the basis of
[avec] twelve others was unworthy of him and that, reserving Savoy to myself,
I advised him to do Piedmont and go and live with the Alpine peasants before
reconstructing the psychology of the Australians! [] Whoever wishes to
learn what sociology could become in the hands of Robert Hertz, freed from the
dogmas of the school, must read this volume. (2001 [June 1931]: 310)3
Giordana Charuty
32
Off the beaten track

Roaming around the countryside, either chancing encounters or shifting
methodically from village to village while knowing by heart which items
to document; sharing in the informal sociability of rural life while ridding
oneself of bourgeois value hierarchies; paying attention to the
determining role of highly individualised actors, as well as the sexual
division of competences and knowledge; submitting oneself to a technical
apprenticeship in the arts one intends to describe these pieces of advice,
distributed throughout the Chroniques and systematised in the Manuel, are
insufficient to characterise a good ethnography. Whether ones
interlocutor is literate or not, the account of an enquiry must favour the
same lifting of internalised forms of social distance and intellectual
censure to reach, as in psychoanalysis, the unconscious cultural memory:
In folkloristic practice, this means that it is not necessary to submit witnesses
to a methodical interrogation as a judge would do. However, it is necessary
to let them take short cuts and yield themselves up to reminiscences, which
may seem only digressions, but which have the value of mnemotechnical
prompts through associations of ideas. (van Gennep 1943, I: 60)
One can assess how innovative this method, which seems so familiar to
us today, was then when one recalls the inquisitorial form of questioning,
which, fifteen years earlier, Marcel Griaule had recommended in his
instructions for researchers on the Dakar-Djibouti expedition.4
For van Gennep, as for modern anthropology, this mode of interaction
is directly governed by the particular regime of thought which governs
the facts of folklore, that is, mores and customs, a regime which he does
not yet describe in terms of a symbolic logic but for which he accepts
permanence and universality, while rejecting any theory of survivals:
In folklore especially, it is necessary to take care not to presuppose scales of
value, nor that participation is prior to logic. In reality, always and
everywhere, people have used these two ways of thinking, and they continue
to use them sometimes in certain moments or circumstances, sometimes in
others. The two ways of reasoning and concluding, and as a consequence
the two modes of action, are elements that are equally constitutive of and
normal in the thought of the whole human species. (van Gennep 1943: 97)
Training the collectors

The Chroniques respond to a pedagogical need on several levels. The
readers of the Mercure de France are invited to become informants
temporarily. But in addition, lacking the power to train university
researchers, van Gennep seems to have dreamt of a regionalised
national organisation, and to begin with he sets himself the task of
33
stimulating literate amateurs to adopt rigorous methods of enquiry, as

well as to identify learned societies and scholars who are already engaged
in the practice of collecting, so as to transmit to them his requirements
and experience. To both, the same advice returns like a leitmotiv: distrust
exhaustive questionnaires, pay attention to details and beware of
generalities that have no scientific utility. In addition, citing his own
experience while reviewing the Ethnographic Congress of Neuchtel:
After trials, I have come to prefer to draw up questionnaires that are
restricted, for example, just to the house, or to birth and death ceremonies,
or to fairies, revenants and sorcerers, etc. It is better to do them several times,
but then in great detail. (2001 [1 August 1914]: 1059)
Beyond this attempt, there is a cartographic concern: being able to

transfer all the ritual variants, hamlet by hamlet, on to a map of a scale
of eighty to a thousand in order to draw up a great descriptive work of
rural, popular France. But this attention to detail, this concern to keep
ones eyes open, also proceeds via an encouragement to multiply the
descriptive instruments notably drawing and photography with
precise instructions for the visual documentation of rituals, thus
acknowledging that the image has descriptive powers beyond those of
writing. Likewise, the quality of illustrations in publications drawings,
engravings, water colours are the object of very careful remarks in
his reviews, for, undoubtedly more than writing, they constantly risk
being pervaded by stereotypes of rurality that screen out the actual
diversity of modes of life.
However, does not training amateur collectors, for want of training
the professionals, amount to confirming a division of labour that partly
contradicts the principle of the personal experience of defamiliarisation
by reintroducing a cleavage between the point at which data are
collected and that of their treatment?
The rejection of regionalism
The rejection of regionalism and the emblematic use made of cultural
traits leads van Gennep to stimulate all Mercure de Frances readers to
develop in their turn a different way of looking at and listening to
ordinary life and its significant details as a mode of opposition to the forms
of celebration of traditionalism. Reviewing a book entitled La Bretagne
des druides, des bardes et des lgendes in 1931, he affirms quite simply:
This is probably a little book of propaganda like hundreds of others already
in the literature called regionalist, which does more harm than good to
folklore. For this is usually just a retarded folklore as adulterated as the
chemical aperitifs we have these days. (2001: 311)
Giordana Charuty
34
And the brochure Art populaire et loisirs ouvriers, presented by the

Institut International de Coopration Intellectuelle for the 1937
Exhibition, incurs, retrospectively, a double condemnation for its
incompetence and reactionary ideology:
Little by little, exhibitions of regional costumes, more or less faked, have been
organised; and each year now, one sees filing through different towns, and
right up to the cinema in Bourg-la-Reine, troupes of actors in costume
representing the French provinces. These troupes sing arranged popular
songs, invariably with accompaniment, which deprives these songs of their
strictly vocal character; they dance rounds, farandoles, carols, rigaudons,
bourres and God knows what, on the boards, in a closed room, or on the
Promenade des Anglais, without the prior stimulus of the work of
haymaking or of harvesting, in the bawdy atmosphere of the wedding day,
without the iridescent light of the barns hazy with dust, or the smokeblackened light of the rooms below. In brief, as the common people say, its
a carnival, all right, but not so much fun as the proper one. (2001: 372)
Thus a militant position is affirmed, supported by its adherence to the

non-Marxist left, in order to dissociate a culturally authentic popular
heritage from conservative values which encourage the performance
of rural customs that conform to clerical morality. But why, then, the
regret that the leisure time activities of the peasants and workers should
henceforward be directed towards the songs of the caf or the radio?
Disciplinary frontiers
To make people aware of ethnographic knowledge as a scientific
discipline was all the more necessary, given that in the 1930s rural
societies were made the objects of collective enquiries into social history,
sociology and human geography, which van Gennep could not ignore.
A concern for cartography formed a part of this project as a visual tool
providing a demonstration of the autonomy of the folkloristic that
social anthropology would later recognise as the autonomy of the
symbolic. Reviewing his own Folklore du Dauphin (van Gennep 1932
33) on 15 August 1933, he identified a general property:
those collective phenomena that are called folkloristic evolve according to
an autonomous plan that is independent of geography, political
organisation, diocesan organisation, economic differentiation or dialect,
which obey laws that one might summarily call sociological, although
uniquely nuanced. [] I have used ten or so methods simultaneously
(experimental, statistical, cartographic, psychological, comparative etc.),
and the image one thus obtains of a group like that of the peasants of Isre
35
differs enormously from that which geographers, historians or novelists are

able to give us, since the geographer subordinates man to the land, the
historian the present day to the past, the romantic the normal to the
abnormal. (2001 [15 August 1933]: 372)
This method has a demonstrative value when it allows the limited range
of variants of a ritual designation or performance to be reconstructed.
However, what had been a heuristic tool at a point in the foundation of
the discipline would suddenly cease to be so once it had become an end in
itself, precisely because of its failure to lead to a conceptualisation of the
relational character of symbolic thought. The multiplication of points of
enquiry simply led to a confirmation of the chance dividing up of
differences and the superposition of internal boundaries. This method,
born in Switzerland, did not lead to the preparation of a national
ethnographic atlas in France. However, through spatial projection, it
profoundly influenced the treatment of ritual or technical facts, a
treatment which ought to have deconstructed the national territory in
favour of a social description of the regions, a genuine measure of the
understanding of the differences which are the object of ethnography.
What always seemed relevant, on the other hand, was the
examination of relations with another field of knowledge, namely literary
studies. Van Genneps ties with philologists and specialists in the Romance
languages determined his concern to insist on normalised forms of
description in taking account of oral narrative materials. By constantly
putting collectors of stories on their guard against any literary
transposition, which could only provide fake documents, it was
especially the typological and philological concept of the catalogue, such
as would impose itself in the 1950s, that he promoted, in opposition to the
quest for a literary form of writing or the reassertion of regional
languages. Nevertheless, alongside the identification of genres and
typical plots, attention became more focused on less formal narrative
discourses, performances and social institutions, in which were inscribed
the words of the storytellers or singers, all objects that ethnographers
would only later place at the centre of their analyses. Finally, his
reflections on the relations between ethnography and literature were
more complex than just the concern to establish reliable documents.
Certainly van Gennep busied himself in decoding novels and short stories
as a source for historical ethnography, within a logic of the extraction of
documents. For example, this led him to unpack in meticulous detail the
ethnographic illusion of novels set in the countryside, notably those of
George Sand. But he is also attentive to identifying the subtle interactions
in dialect and literary writings by means of unexpected comparisons. For
example, his Chronique of 15 February 1935, A precursor of Stendhal: B.
Chaix, a statistician from the Hautes-Alpes, begins as follows:
36
Giordana Charuty
There is, in Stendhals prose, the Stendhal of Henri Brulard and the Letters,
a rhythm and rubbing together of words, which I have always experienced
as pertaining to the Dauphinois patois when translated, but which Remy de
Gourmont, a Norman critic, commentators on other provinces and above all
professors of literature have regarded as a matter of style, that is, as an
intentional form of expression, not at all spontaneous The texture of
Dauphinois when heard, but not necessarily read, is quite different from
Savoyard or Provenal, its neighbours. It is more pounding, drier, and in its
syntax readily suppresses all redundancy.
Gourmont smiled at what he judged to be only a theory, and I do not know
to what extent Paul Lautaud or L. Royer, who, however, lives in Grenoble,
would take seriously my affirmation that the real Stendhal not tidied up for
the Paris salons, nor for the literary esteem of his time and afterwards (let us
say, with him, around 1880) represents the Dauphinois patois preserved
since his childhood and imposed on the dulled French of good company.
However, the chances of my folkloristic researches have brought me an
unexpected proof. I do not know whether or not it has escaped Stendhals
followers, and I do not have the leisure to find out. But I doubt whether any
of them are far-seeing enough to find literature in reading any Dauphinois
statistical treatise. (2001 [15 February 1935]: 34647)
There follows an account of this treatise, Proccupations statistiques,

gographiques, pittoresques et synoptiques des Hautes-Alpes of 1845, and its
author, who was sub-prefect of Brianon from 1800 to 1815. Then, citing
long extracts from passages, van Gennep comments on the jerky writing,
the compressed turns of phrase, the rhythmic variations, the verbal
cascades which juxtapose incidents without repeating grammatical
subjects, which substantivise participles: this is genuine Stendhal, but also
genuine Dauphinois patois. He concludes that the Baron would have done
better to write short stories, even a novel, on the lives of these Dauphinois,
whom he knew so well because he could speak their tongue.
Thus he was quite ready to admit specifically that certain novelists
possessed an ethnographic gaze that had escaped contemporary
folklorists. When novelistic writing articulates the disparate elements of
the social, not in a folkloristic reconstruction but in a biographical
experience, it might even constitute the best means of accessing
ethnographic knowledge. These statements are not reserved for the
readers of the Mercure de France: one finds similar remarks in the first
volume of the Manuel, where van Gennep states that infantile customs
in particular those of ones second childhood are described better
by novelists than by ethnographers, and he cites in support of this
assessment the autobiographical accounts of Renan, Valls, Mistral and
Pergaud (1943, I: 169, 174).
37
From folkloristic to symbolic autonomy

The rejection of folklore by social anthropology during the 1960s came
about through a re-centring of analysis on the principles of
reproduction and the exercise of power within localised societies. But it
was also done by passing from folkloristic autonomy in van Genneps
sense ceremonial customs, rites, ways of speaking and believing to
symbolic autonomy in Mausss sense, as reinterpreted by Lvi-Strauss.
In passing from the ethnography of remote worlds to that of nearby
societies, van Gennep always maintained as central the general
question of ritual, which he revived on the theoretical level before even
undertaking that vast description of rural France, which was never
completed. We know that the notion of a ceremonial sequence governs
the idea that rites of separation, liminality and reincorporation project
the moments of passage into space by dramatising the change for the
individual who is passing, as well as for the social group being affected
by this change. First in Italy, then in France, another interpretative
move was created by refusing to reduce this conceptualisation simply to
function and form, and by abandoning the interpretative categories of
a Frazer or a Lvy-Bruhl that are preserved in the Manuel in order to
assimilate ritual efficacy to the processes of magical action. But, in both
cases, the debt to the Manuel is evident on the part of researchers
confronted for the first time with the recurring question of the place
and legitimacy of an ethnology of Europe within general anthropology.
The readings of de Martino
We owe an initial metamorphosis of van Genneps conceptualisations
not to a highly Durkheimian French anthropology, but to Italian
religious anthropology as relaunched by Ernesto de Martino on the eve
of the Second World War. De Martino did not hesitate to turn the
Manuel de folklore franais into a tool with which to oppose an indigenous
approach to the British intervention in the Mediterranean, as well as
to American-inspired studies in applied anthropology. In particular, the
methodological reflections of the French ethnographer served to guide
de Martino who was trained in the same fashion in the history of
religions and was also a critic of Durkheim in passing from knowledge
constructed through an exclusive familiarity with ancient texts and the
works of missionaries to the ethnographic observation of the religious
practices of southern Italy.
The preparatory notes of all de Martinos initial enquiries in Lucania
at the beginning of the 1950s, undertaken to revive strictly economic
ways of understanding the southern question in Italy, document an
attentive reading of van Genneps work in order to define the proper
38
Giordana Charuty
method of enquiry: the necessity of distinguishing informants

according to whether they belong to a literate or a popular culture; the
need not only to collect accounts, but also to witness gestures in action;
methods of criticising and classifying ethnographic documents; and
the requirement for comparativism. The first collective enquiry used
several questionnaires from the Manuel, on life-cycle rites, popular
songs and dances, magic, the church and the clergy. The use made of
these is all the more surprising because, ten years later, de Martino was
to have two favourite expressions for deriding the folkloristic position:
the people sing, and from cradle to tomb (see Gallini 1995: 52).
But running through different unpublished versions made in
preparation for the editing of Sud e magia (de Martino 1959), one sees
the category of the rite of passage being progressively abandoned in
favour of an existential type of interrogation of the historicity of the
person and another definition of the critical moments of individual
existence no longer the passage from one social state to another, but
the confrontation of the individual with the historical development of
his or her society. As for the notion of magic, this will be restricted
solely to the therapeutic techniques that use ritual gestures and
mythical accounts, while excluding all the customary prescriptions of
which life-cycle rites consist. However, the concern to historicise these
usages and to restore cultural flows between learned cultures and
peasant cultures from a sociological perspective systematises an aim
that is present everywhere in the Manuel. A large number of practices,
pieces of knowledge and ways of speaking grasped while the enquiry is
taking place can only be integrated into sets of significant relations by
taking into account the temporal depth evidenced by the traces and
indications that are present in a great variety of documentary
collections. These include archives of administration and power,
dictionaries, encyclopaedias, ecclesiastical and medical enquiries. For
these collections, it is appropriate, depending on the case, to explain the
normative constraints that have informed the description.
There is a more hidden affinity, perhaps, that links the two authors:
the importance accorded to the regimes of temporality of peasant
cultures that are modelled on Christianity. With van Gennep, the
introduction of the notion of a ceremonial cycle in the 1920s served to
distinguish, alongside biographical time, the festive cycles based on
seasonal variations, the official solar calendar, the Christian calendar of
the saints, and the rhythms of agricultural and pastoral activities. Unlike
human geography or Marxist-inspired social history, this involved not
separating material culture from the symbolic elaboration that gives it
meaning by recognising the uniqueness of the social construction of
time the existence of a cyclical time produced by the ritual, unlike
39
events or history which was particularly pregnant in the rural societies

of the nineteenth century, and right up to the Second World War.
Having become a sort of commonplace, this notion of a ceremonial
cycle became fixed within an unsurprising functional reading. De
Martino, on the other hand, revived this question by treating Christianity
as an idea of time imbued with a tension between two models, one linear,
the other cyclical, which anticipated more recent analyses of
Christianity as a religion that has left religion behind. But one recalls
that van Genneps work served above all as an eye-opener to the
complexity of the cultural history of southern Italy and of perceiving
the procedures of mythico-ritual symbolism that gave meaning to the
cultural idiom of Apulian tarentism (de Martino 2005 [1961]).5
The French heritage
In France at the end of the 1960s, two opposed attitudes marked the relaunching of the discipline. One was to reject the ethnography of van Gennep
as that of a folklorist, which would return the rural world to assimilation into
the domain of superstition and mental retardation. Such was the aim of
Jeanne Favret-Saada, who, analysing the logic of sorcery in the Norman
Bocage, initially isolated a domain of social activity rituals to remove sorcery
as an expression of an indigenous theory of magical efficacy that the
anthropologist could not make his or her own (Favret-Saada 1981). The other
approach was to use regional monographs and the Manuel as a sort of cultural
memory to adopt other forms of seeing and listening to contemporary societies
that at first sight have none of the ceremonial richness of earlier rural societies.
This was, to begin with, the aim of Yvonne Verdier in a research team led by
Lvi-Strauss, on Minot in the Bourgogne. Alongside Franoise Zonabend, Tina
Jolas and Marie Claire Pingaud, she worked to link an ethnography in the
present with van Genneps theoretical enquiry regarding rites of passage and
the impressive cultural materials collected by ethnographers since the last
third of the nineteenth century. The study she devoted to the cycle of
exemplary lives the washerwoman, the seamstress, the cook which leads
to an encounter with other village lives at the most crucial moments in their
existences in order to make custom (Verdier 1979), represents a profound
transformation of van Genneps model on the basis of a double
methodological choice. One is to adopt the point of view of the women, their
knowledge, their techniques and the world of prescriptions and prohibitions
that govern representations of feminine physiology by conditioning fertility
or sterility, in order to reveal the lives of young girls, with their rules, rights and
duties. The other is to identify semantic codes, in the Lvi-Straussian sense,
that construct the symbolic logic of ritual action.
One example will suffice to illustrate the renewal of the analysis that
derives from this. Van Gennep devoted almost an entire volume of his
40
Giordana Charuty
Manuel to marriage rites (Vol. 1, part 2, 1946), marked simultaneously

by a succession of highly stable sequences and a considerable
proliferation of local variants. One of these enigmatic moments, the
rtie,6 particularly caught his attention. Van Gennep rightly recalls the
great historical depth of this culinary rite, attested since the medieval
period, its generalisation and its resistance in the face of all attempts to
ban it, since it regularly became the object of disorder, a desire for its
abolition and the condemnation of its scandalous nature. He also notes
that the principal actors in this case are the young people, assisted by
close relatives, godfathers and godmothers. And he comments at length
on the transformation of culinary materials and objects in order to
conclude that the scatological form which became dominant during the
1930s stresses an aspect of parody that was absent from usages attested
earlier. Finally, the cartography of the variants gives way here to an
interrogation of the rites meaning. According to him, the indigenous
exegesis bears witness to the permanence of very primitive ideas
regarding fertility. He rejects any interpretation along the lines of a
simple decoding of symbols, but concludes, in a manner that is very
likely to disappoint today, with a rite of the socialisation of marriage.
For Verdier (1979), adopting a structuralist position consists in
making explicit all the semantic relations, which, in the contemporary
or 1970s form of the rite, underlie what van Gennep traced back to the
remote past of hypothetical primitive ideas about fertility. The rite uses
a culinary code, that of sugar and spices, for an action which is
equivalent to a seasoning of the bride that is equivalent, from the
masculine point of view, to a sexual act, public and shared, and one
with procreative value. On the other hand, however, the exploration of
the vocabulary illuminates the rules of the transmission of procreative
powers between female generations. Thus, one might add, by imposing
a language that is virile or scatological, the young people appear to be
diverting the female cooks role of guide [passeuse] to the extent that the
value of marriage itself has changed, namely to perpetuate not a house
any longer, but a couple for whom the language of desire prevails (see
Fabres review, 1980).
The work carried out in the 1980s and 1990s at the Centre
dAnthropologie de Toulouse (EHESS-CNRS-Toulouse-Le Mirail),
directed by Daniel Fabre, expanded this perspective by departing from
the framework of monographic enquiry to pursue a re-description of
the social institutions and symbolic logics characteristic of Christian
societies. To begin with, it is to the observer sensitive to linguistic
differences between countries that we owe the attention paid to
situations of diglossia as a recognition of cultural differences. By
contrast to monographs that are blind to linguistic differences and the
41
social relations that inform them, it is a matter of restoring the

coherence of semantic logics modelled by the diverse dialects in which
these are actually thought. Fabre has revived the analysis of social
institutions so well identified by van Gennep such as masculine youth,
with its principles of organisation, its rights and duties by taking into
account its confrontations for the maintenance of a prerogative, the
social control of houses. From this point on, and in opposition to their
atemporal definition, the conflictual relations of village societies with
certain categories of ritual, notably the political stakes of the charivari
or hullabaloo, have been made evident.7 Claudine Fabre-Vassass
exploration of all forms of expression of a ban on the consumption of
pork for Christians and of a popular antisemitism made systematic use
of the cultural materials collected in the Manuel: for example, the
ethnography of a twelve-day cycle between Christmas and Epiphany,
which reveals the metaphysical issue involved in cooking one part of
the pig, namely the blood (Fabre-Vassas 1997 [1993]). Likewise the
study of spiritual kinship by Agnes Fine (1994) made considerable use
of customary usages ordered by the succession of life-cycle rites.
To describe a Christian custom the discontinuous ensemble of
usages, prescriptions and ritual or ceremonial activities that link
biographical time with the cyclical time of a localised society modelled on
a unique biography, namely the life of Christ it is certainly necessary to
call into question the categories of medicine and popular religion that
organise van Genneps ethnography.8 Making an ethnography of two
categories of disorder that are invariably thought of as belonging together,
namely hysteria and epilepsy, I have myself been led to describe not an
ethnopsychiatry but a metaphysics in action, that is, certain ways through
which the most abstract theological notions may become the object of an
experience through the senses (Charuty 1997). In Europe as elsewhere,
the person is produced by a work of modelling the body and by social
interactions that link the different ages of infancy, adolescence and youth
to the gradation of the ritual operations of the clergy and customary
officiants. Parallel with this, socialised trials within age groups ensure the
biographical inscription of dogmatic utterances transmitted by the
catechism in the fashion of impersonal knowledge. This modelling gives
place to a profusion of discourse on ritual faults in the fulfilment of
customary liturgical rites and prescriptions with regard to the relations to
be maintained with categories of beings souls, the deceased, the Virgin,
saints which are simultaneously deprived of corporality and credited
with intentionality. And the anthropologist then discovers the significance
of a category the sickness of the saint properly identified by van
Gennep as designating all sorts of somatic, psychic and social disorders
sanctioning these transgressions, in his concern to treat Christianity as a
Giordana Charuty
42
magico-religious activity.9 Only the analysis of rituals of atonement

permits the etiological thought that unifies them to be explained, namely
diversified forms of dissociation of the Christian person. Thus all
operations of measurement and of the manufacture of doubles, iconic
and aniconic, of sick bodies to revive them suggest a literal reading of
metaphors which, in ethical discourses and devotional texts, oppose the
heaviness of the flesh to the lightness of the soul.
Concluding remarks
Van Genneps work guaranteed a transition between the history of religions
and ethnology in Italy, and between positivist ethnography and the
anthropology of the symbolic in France. It is not only a turning point in
the history of the discipline, fixed within a limited period it has had the
value of a passage in the disciplinary conversion of Europeanist
ethnologists of my generation, who, most often, come from other
disciplines, such as literature, philosophy and history, and whose university
training made them read Durkheim, Lvi-Strauss and Malinowski, but who
failed to realise that an anthropology of themselves was conceivable.
However, our understanding of van Gennep is influenced by a
reading of de Martino and Lvi-Strauss, reintroducing the dimension of
power to the very heart of the logic of meaning, to explore conflictual
situations born of confrontation between hierarchised cultural codes,
without, nonetheless, reducing the symbolic to an emblematic or
expressive function of social divisions. Thus, although local societies in
which our first ethnographic experiences are inscribed very often seemed
dechristianised, in fact we have been led to recognise the heterogeneity
of social practices capable of taking charge of religious representations.
We clearly see that the treatment of the cultural materials collected by
van Gennep who became an institution in himself was only made
possible by resuming the dialogue with historians and sociologists, while
nonetheless maintaining the specificity of the questions of a general
anthropology in the face of these disciplines.
Notes
1. Arnold Van Gennep, Manuel de folklore franais contemporain, Paris, Picard (1938
1958). Van Gennep had begun by publishing Volumes III and IV: Questionnaire.
Provinces et pays: Bibliographie mthodique (1937) and Bibliographie mthodique (fin)
(1938), then Volume I in six parts: Introduction gnrale. Du Berceau la tombe:
naissance, baptme, enfance, adolescence, fianailles (1943); Du berceau la tombe (fin):
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
43
mariage, funrailles (1946); Crmonies priodiques cycliques: 1. Carnaval, Carme, Pques

(1947); Crmonies priodiques cycliques: 2. Cycle de mai, la Saint-Jean (1949); Les
Crmonies agricoles et pastorales de lt (1951) and Les Crmonies agricoles et pastorales
de lautomne (1953). Cycle des Douze Jours (1958) was published posthumously. The
introduction to each volume focuses on a particular theoretical problem.
Appeared originally in Mercure de France, 16 January 1913.
This somewhat cryptic passage contains an implicit criticism of the armchair
anthropology of the Durkheimian school, including, at this time, Hertz.
For Michel Leiriss criticism of this relationship of suspicion, see Jamin (1996: 3839).
This work, originally published in Italian in 1961, has recently been translated into
English, with notes by Dorothy Louise Zinn and a preface by Vincent Crapanzano (de
Martino 2005 [1961]).
Literally roasted, this refers to a marriage rite in which drink and food is brought to
the newly married couple during the wedding night. The basis of this culinary
preparation, which varied according to local traditions, was for a long time bread
soaked in broth or spiced and sugared wine. Practically everywhere after the First
World War, this soup was replaced by a mixture of fizzy wine and chocolate carried
in a chamber pot.
Fabre (1986). In the same manner, Natalie Z. Davis has acknowledged her debt to
van Genneps Manuel in analysing the practices of the charivari in the sixteenth
century (see Davis 1975).
For a presentation of these works, see Charuty (2001).
Van Gennep devotes a separate rubric to this category in his bibliography of popular
medicine by noting, correctly, that the relationship of Christians with saints is highly
ambivalent, involving a power that is now maleficent, now beneficent. Contemporary
anthropology shows the relevance of this remark, which has been forgotten by the
historians and ethnographers of popular religion.
References
Belmont, N. 1974. Arnold Van Gennep: le crateur de lethnographie franaise, Paris: Payot.
Charuty, G. 1997. Folie, mariage et mort: pratiques chrtiennes de la folie en Europe occidentale,
Paris: Le Seuil.
2001. Du catholicisme mridional lanthropologie des socits chrtiennes, in D.
Albera, A. Blok and C. Bromberger (eds), Lanthropologie de la Mditerrane/Anthropology
of the Mediterranean, Paris and Aix-en-Provence: Maisonneuve and Larose/MMSH.
Chiva, I. 1987. Entre livre et muse: emergence dune ethnologie de la France, in
Ethnologies en miroir: La France et les pays de langue allemande, essais runis par I. Chiva
et U. Jeggle, Paris, MSH.
Cuisenier, J. (ed.). 1980. Hier pour demain: arts, traditions, patrimoine, Paris, Editions de la
RMN.
Davis, N.Z. 1975. Society and culture in early modern France, Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
de Martino, E. 1959. Sud e magia, Milan: Feltrinelli.
2005 [1961]. The land of remorse: a study of southern Italian tarentism [La terra del
rimorso], London: Free Association Books.
Dundes, A. (ed.). 1992. The evil eye: a casebook, Madison: The University of Wisconsin
Press.
Durkheim, . 1912. Les formes lmentaires de la vie religieuse, Paris: Alcan.
Fabre, D. 1980. Passeuse aux gus du destin, Critique, 402 (November): 107599.
44
Giordana Charuty
1986. Le priv contre la coutume, in P. Aris and R. Chartier (eds), Histoire de la

vie prive, Paris: Le Seuil, vol. 3.
1992. Le Manuel de folklore franais dArnold Van Gennep, in P. Nora (ed.), Les
Lieux de mmoire, Les France, vol. 2: traditions, Paris: Gallimard.
Fabre-Vassas, C. 1997 [1993]. The singular beast: Jews, Christians and the pig [La bte
singulire: les juifs, les chrtiens et le cochon] (tr. C. Volk), New York: Columbia University
Press.
Favret-Saada, J. 1981 [1977]. Deadly words: witchcraft in the Bocage [Les mots, la mort, les
sorts: la sorcellerie dans le Bocage] (tr. C. Cullen), Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Gallini, C. 1995. La ricerca, la scrittura, in E. De Martino, Note di campo: Spedizione in
Lucania, 30 sett.31 ott. 1952 (ed. C. Gallini), Lecce: Argo.
Hertz, R. 1928. Mlanges de sociologie religieuse et folklore, Paris: Alcan.
Jamin, J. 1996. Introduction to Michel Leiris, Miroir de lAfrique, Paris: Gallimard.
Lvi-Strauss, C. 1962. La pense sauvage, Paris: Plon.
Mauss, M. 1908. Review of Arnold van Gennep, Mythes et legendes dAustralie: tudes
dethnographie et de sociologie, Anne Sociologique, 10: 22628.
1909. Review of Arnold van Gennep, Les rites de passage, Anne Sociologique, 11:
2002.
Needham, R. 1967. Introduction to Arnold van Gennep, The semi-scholars, London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Privat, J.-M. 2001. Preface to Chroniques de folklore dArnold Van Gennep: recueil de textes
parus dans le Mercure de France 19051949, Paris: Editions du Comit des Travaux
Historiques et Scientifiques.
van Gennep, A. 1904. Tabou et totmisme Madagascar: tude descriptive et thorique, Paris:
Leroux.
1906. Mythes et legendes dAustralie: tudes dethnographie et de sociologie, Paris:
Guilmoto.
1909. Les rites de passage, Paris: Nourry.
1911. Les demi-savants, Paris: Mercure de France.
1920. tat actuel du problme totmique, Paris: Leroux.
193233. Folklore du Dauphin (Isre): tude descriptive et compare de psychologie
populaire, Paris: Maisonneuve (2 vols).
193858. Manuel de folklore franais contemporain, Paris: Picard (5 vols).
1943. Manuel de folklore franais contemporain, vol. 1, Paris: Picard.
2001. Chroniques de folklore dArnold Van Gennep: recueil de textes parus dans le
Mercure de France 19051949 (ed. J.-M. Privat), Paris: Editions du Comit des Travaux
Historiques et Scientifiques.
Velay-Valentin, C. 1999. Le 1er Congrs International de Folklore de 1937, Annales
Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 2 (MarchApril): 481506.
Verdier, Y. 1979. Faons de dire, faons de faire: la laveuse, la couturire et la cuisinire, Paris:
Gallimard.
Chapter 2
CANONICAL ETHNOGRAPHY:
HANOTEAU AND LETOURNEUX ON KABYLE
COMMUNAL LAW
Peter Parkes
Perhaps never was a system of self-government more radically

implemented, never has an administration relied on fewer functionaries,
nor imposed less on those governed. The ideal of liberal and effective
governance whose formula our philosophers forever seek in a thousand
utopias was a living reality for centuries in the Kabyle highlands.
(Hanoteau and Letourneux 1873 [1893] II: 1)
La Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles by Adolphe Hanoteau and Aristide

Letourneux is a unique monument of early legal ethnography. Three
large volumes, amounting to fifteen hundred pages, reported a decade
of intensive investigation among the Kabyle Berbers of Algeria in the
1860s. It is recognised to be a definitive account of their autonomous
social organisation by a distinguished line of Maghribian ethnographers,
from mile Masqueray and Robert Montagne to Jacques Berque and
Jeanne Favret. Its rare archival documentation is being redeemed by
current anthropological historians of the Kabyles such as Alain Mah
and Tilman Hannemann. Yet it is generally unknown to anthropology
beyond an intimate circle of Berber specialists.
This neglect is readily understandable, for the monograph has the
forbidding appearance of an overblown gazetteer. That was its intended
purpose, compiled by an army officer and an imperial legal councillor
just after the French conquest and pacification of Kabylia in 1857.1 Its
encyclopaedic documentation is barely leavened by cultural or historical
exegesis. The first volume is an exhaustive compendium of the
topography, geology, flora and fauna of the Jurjura massif, followed by
Peter Parkes
46
tabulated population statistics and detailed synopses of traditional

medicine, agriculture, crafts and industries. Its major anthropological
interest lies in the remaining parts, but these appear equally daunting.
A vivid but summary account of indigenous social and political
organisation prefaces a vast analytical inventory of Kabyle communal
laws exactly formatted in accordance with the Napoleonic Civil Code
followed by translations or extracts of some fifty written canons
(qanun, pl. qawanin) or itemised lists of village regulations, assiduously
collected from all the main tribes of Kabylia. This would never be relaxed
reading for an armchair anthropologist: a work of erudition, exclusively
technical, reserved for specialists (M. Hanoteau 1923: 143). As an
officially sanctioned manual for military administration it is nowadays
easily dismissed by postcolonial sensibilities as a monstrous artifice of
occidental arrogation. Yet it remains one of the most meticulously
documented accounts of communal institutions of indigenous justice
and moral order available to anthropology. It is, indeed, the canonical
ethnography of early French colonial social science.2
Conceived within a decade of Morgans League of the Iroquois, it
belongs to a foundational era of incipient field anthropology, combining
classical methods of textual-philological scholarship with the inductive
observational sciences. Informed by engaged and prolonged field
experiences, Hanoteau and Letourneux also derived their major
analytical insights from the collaborative commentaries of one primary
informant a Berber counterpart to Ely Parker among the Iroquois
(Tooker 1983, Trautmann 1987: 4350) who was well placed to
interpret their administrative and legal interests as a marabout
mediator and Muslim jurist among Kabyles.
This essay aspires to reconstruct their triadic field collaboration
during the 1860s assessing the respective contributions of a soldier,
a magistrate and a marabout, who conjointly established an original
juridical ethnography of communal law and consensual selfgovernment. It also considers the applied intentions and ambitions of
these authors, in an era of precarious military rule and intrepid
development planning in Kabylia, shortly before its fateful civilian
colonisation under the Third Republic.
Collaborative fieldwork
Over four years we neglected no available means of investigation: the study
of qanun laws, reading the reports of communal deliberations (jamaa) and
the decisions of clerics (ulama), with daily examination of public and private
practices, together with information taken from those actively involved in
these affairs prior to the French occupation [of 1857]. (I: v)3
Canonical ethnography
47
Figure 2.1. Commandant Adolphe Hanoteau at Fort-Napolon, 1861. Source:

Bernard (1930: 325).
A one-page preface to La Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles scarcely

advertises its peculiar conditions of collaborative fieldwork. However,
a more detailed memoir was published fifty years later by Maurice
Hanoteau (1923), who witnessed its last moments of compilation as a
schoolboy of twelve, visiting his father in Kabylia during the summer
holidays of 1868. Hanoteaus family also assisted two subsequent
scholars of Berber customary law, Augustin Bernard and Louis Milliot
(1933), whose access to his home archives enabled them to reconstruct
his longstanding project.4
This project began within a decade of Hanoteaus posting as a
military engineer to Algiers in 1845. A graduate of the cole
Polytechnique, he was earmarked for service within the Bureau Politique
des Affaires Arabes (or bureaux arabes), the elite military department of
indigenous administration in Algeria.5 Its director was Colonel Eugne
48
Peter Parkes
Daumas, a soldier-scholar who had earlier campaigned in Kabylia and

who was then completing its first regional history (Daumas and Fabar
1847). Hanoteau also saw military action in Kabylia during the 1850s,
but most of this decade was devoted to his linguistic training in Algiers.
Under Daumass patronage, he became associated with the distinguished
Arabist William de Slane, translator of Ibn Khalduns Histories of the
Berbers, and with other soldier-scholars engaged in writing up early field
reports on the Kabyles (e.g. MacCarthy 184748, Carette 1848).
Hanoteau soon published a pioneering series of philological studies:
original grammars of Kabyle and Tuareg Berber languages (1858a,
1860), and a remarkable anthology of Kabyle oral poetry (1867).6 His
envisioning of a similar compilation of customary law stems from this
linguistic scholarship, for Hanoteau had already transcribed a qanun
village charter as a speciment text of Kabyle dialect (1858a: 32438,
1858b). The existence of these written rulings inscribed in Arabic by
marabout clerics at village assemblies had only just been discovered.
Apart from their historical value, these rare village records offered an
invaluable means of examining underlying principles of communal
government, necessary for indirect military administration, since an
official policy of non-interference with traditional social organisation
had been proclaimed by Marshal Randon on the defeat of insurgent Ait
Iraten Kabyles in 1857. There was therefore widespread interest in
having further qanun rulings collected throughout Kabylia.7
In January 1859 Hanoteau was appointed to command a bureau
arabe outpost at Dra el-Mizan (western Kabylia), and in the following
year he was posted to Fort-Napolon, in the tribal heartland of the Ait
Iraten. As Maurice Hanoteau recalled:
Commandants enjoyed widely extended powers over indigenes. Issues that
arose were numerous and diverse political, administrative, judicial and
their resolution was always a delicate matter, since France had determined
to leave intact the traditional organization of the country. To act
conscientiously, to judge fairly, one needed to know in detail the people one
administered and the local laws by which they governed themselves
Commandant Hanoteau scarcely obtained these details without seeing them
for himself in the villages Such information was also available at Dra elMizan, where the commandants office was open to all. Some came to plead
an injustice or to defend themselves from a criminal accusation; some to
accuse fellow tribesmen, or even a French colonist; others to make appeals
for themselves, their family or their village. It would not take long to surmise
from all these claimants and plaintiffs the full scope of Kabyle legal codes.
(M. Hanoteau 1923: 13840)
But despite Hanoteaus linguistic abilities, his knowledge of the

intricacies of Kabyle customary law would depend upon a khoja
49
interpreter-secretary, the native scribe attached to each outpost. It was

the khojas responsibility to register the public acts of communal
assemblies, to prepare briefs of appeals, and to transcribe these
proceedings for monthly reports. At Fort-Napolon, this was the duty of
Si Mula n Ait u Amar, who is paid a handsome if cursory tribute in the
preface to the monograph:
We found, above all, a precious assistant in Si Moula Nat Ameur; his
education, as advanced as that of any Kabyle marabout might be, embraced
Muslim law as well as customary law; and his word in accord with his
renown and the influence of his family was respected in the councils of
his tribe. (I: v)
Maurice Hanoteau again fills in the gaps in his later memoir, for on his
fathers arrival at Fort-Napolon in November 1860, Si Mula was
immediately employed to collect qanun rulings throughout the district:
Si Moula had problems knowing what was expected of him at first. But once
he understood, he became engrossed, marshalling every effort to cooperate
towards the end pursued. He would reflect on administrative and juridical
questions, and if he knew of any fact be it the judgement of a jamaa
assembly or an article of qanun law which either confirmed or qualified a
given opinion, he would readily convey it. He was one of many assistants;
but he was the main informant, the most useful, and the most precious. (M.
Hanoteau 1923: 142)
We shall see that Si Mula would become at least an equal co-author of

La Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles as Letourneux. He was a dignitary of
Ait Amar marabouts among Ait Iraten, resident at their village of
Tamazirt near Fort-Napolon. He was also a religious cleric (alim) of
Sayyid descent, whose ancestors had emigrated from Turkey in the
seventeenth century, renowned as teachers of Arabic literacy and
Koranic education among Ait Iraten.8 In the learned tradition of his
forefathers, Si Mula had studied Maliki fiqh jurisprudence at a local
religious college. With a politically influential elder brother, Si Lunis,
he may have assisted in the capitulation of the Ait Iraten confederation
to Marshal Randon in 1857, after participating in their insurrection,
for a fine two-storey house was then built for the two brothers by French
army engineers at Tamazirt. Si Lunis and Si Mula would remain
steadfast supporters of French officers at Fort-Napolon, gaining the
highest appointments of political and judicial authority among Ait
Iraten. But in 1860, Si Mula was only beginning to acquaint himself
with the collaborative potential of Hanoteaus ethnographic ambitions.
In 1862, after four years in the field, Hanoteau was recalled to a
metropolitan posting in Algiers. His reports detailing the intricacies of
50
Peter Parkes
Kabyle social institutions, yet also the admirable simplicity of their

customary laws, had gained widespread attention among his military
and civil superiors.9 These included Louis-Adrien Berbrugger, president
of the Historical Society of Algeria and founder of its Revue africaine, as
well as Ismail Urbain, the famous half-Guyanese convert to Islam and
Saint-Simonian advocate of pluralist democracy, who was then an
influential adviser on colonial policy to Napoleon III.10 Concerted plans
were made for Hanoteau to publish his field notes on Kabyle customary
law as a series of articles in the Revue africaine. But these plans were
superseded by a far more ambitious project: The idea took shape of
treating the Kabyle question on a truly scientific footing, within a
comprehensive work embracing everything known about the
organization of that society (M. Hanoteau 1923: 143).11 Relieved from
other duties to concentrate on this programme, instructions were
posted by Hanoteau to bureaux arabes commandants throughout
Kabylia. They were to submit to him as soon as possible copies of all
the main qanun laws of Kabyle villages, ensuring that each was as
complete as possible, sending translations with transcriptions of the
original Arabic texts (letter of 4 April 1864, in Bernard and Milliot
1933: 4). Within a few weeks, Hanoteau received numerous
transcribed copies of qanun rulings (see Fig. 2.2).
It was at this juncture that Hanoteau by chance encountered Aristide
Letourneux, a magistrate at the Imperial Court of Appeal in Algiers,
Figure 2.2. Canoun des Beni Ouaguennoun. Opening column of qanun rulings
transcribed in Arabic with French translation by Captain Alphonse Meyer, military
interpreter at Dellys, 1864. Source: Bernard and Milliot (1933: Pl. IX).
51
also familiar with the Jurjura highlands of Kabylia as a keen

expeditionary field botanist. Hanoteau was already encountering
difficulties in tackling Kabyle customary law without training in
comparative jurisprudence. Letourneux, versed in French national law
as well as Muslim sharia, would be an ideal collaborator, and he readily
agreed to become co-author of the envisaged monograph.12
After two years relief from regular duties, however, Hanoteau was
ordered to return to his old field command at Fort-Napolon in
February 1866. This was a back-posting he may have requested in
order to re-establish his vital collaborative links with Si Mula. For
Letourneux had meanwhile become distracted from the project by
renewed passions for field botany that jeopardised his authorial
commitment. Only during the summer legal vacation in 1868 was he
persuaded to stay on at Fort-Napolon:
M. Letourneux, recovering his original fervour, then drafted the last chapters
on Kabyle law Every morning, the two authors worked together, almost
always with Si Moula, but sometimes with other Kabyles too Afternoons
were devoted to copy-editing, mostly done by M. Letourneux, who
occasionally verified a point in doubt by listening to Kabyles. This daily work
only ended in the evening after dinner; and it would resume early next
morning in the commandants office until it was all brought to completion.
(M. Hanoteau 1923: 146f.)
The manuscript was thus ready in late September 1868 to be submitted

to Marshal MacMahon, who had commissioned its publication by the
Imprimerie impriale. After delays of scrutiny by a beleagured war office
in Paris, its first volume was printed in 1872, the second two in 1873,
acclaimed in a rapturous notice by Ernest Renan (1873).
Participant recollection
Fifty years later, Maurice Hanoteaus memoir was vigorously written to
protect his fathers legacy from a damaging defamation. A colonial judge
in Algiers had intimated that the monograph was a mere codified
compilation of Kabyle customary laws that had been collusively
orchestrated by Si Mula and Si Lunis, and it was even suggested that the
two brothers had subsidised expenses of the research, adopting Hanoteau
and Letourneux as their tribal guests at Tamazirt (Luc 1917: 54f.).
Although this aspersion was easily rebutted, the subsequent archival
enquiries of Bernard and Milliot do indicate Si Mulas extensive
involvement in every stage of the project. They even reproduced a long
letter from Si Mula in 1885,13 responding to Hanoteaus earnest enquiries
52
Peter Parkes
about a surely improbable circumstance of Kabyle customary law: its

provisions for the inheritance of property by a hermaphrodite (Bernard
and Milliot 1933: 2730, cf. Hannemann 2002: 9093). This curiously
revealing document may give us a candid impression of Hanoteaus
relentless techniques of field interrogation, here exploiting Si Mulas
expertise in Maliki Muslim jurisprudence, which he is asked to compare
with Kabyle custom. It also identifies Si Mulas fine Arabic handwriting,
found to recur on all copies of qanun codes issued from Fort-Napolon
including a presentation copy of Ait Iraten customs inscribed in elegant
Andalusian calligraphy, dedicated to Hanoteau while he was still at Dra
el-Mizan (see Fig. 2.3). Bernard and Milliots inventories of other qanun
documents in Hanoteaus archives further demonstrate that almost all
were commissioned by him in the early 1860s.
Figure 2.3. To Whom we owe obedience Serene and Perfect Knight, Upholder of the Realm,
Glory of Warriors, Commandant of the Circle of Dra el-Mizan I render these customs in use
among Beni Iraten Dedication of Ait Iraten qanun rulings submitted to Hanoteau by Si
Mula, ca. 1859/60. Source: Bernard and Milliot (1933: Pl. V).
53
Hanoteau was probably not a hyperactive fieldworker or homme de

terrain in the later proclaimed Malinowskian mode. Rooted in the field,
he was a studious philological ethnographer, a homme de cabinet, perhaps
rarely operating off the verandah of the commandants office at FortNapolon, where he would be reliant on Si Mulas expert assistance.
Despite Maurice Hanoteaus protestations of his fathers many varied
experiences of Kabyle village life, these are not mentioned in the
monograph. A bureau arabe commandant would certainly visit his
constituencies on regular district circuits by horseback; but these
occasions, under armed escort, could have afforded few opportunities
to observe the intimacies of Kabyle village affairs that are relayed in the
ethnography. In any event, Hanoteau was determined to describe Kabyle
social institutions retrospectively, in the years just prior to their
capitulation to French authorities in 1857, for he was acutely aware of
the disruptive effects of the military presence he embodied. The
ethnography is thus reconstructive, yet also scrupulously synchronic. It
rejects all historical speculation about a barely documented Kabyle past,
reassembling its autonomous social and political circumstances within
a bare decade of its composition. Every illustrative case is therefore an
indirect report of some recently recalled incident, doubtless mainly
relayed through Si Mula. Yet its substantiation always returns to those
qanun documents, the monographss so-called pices justificatives.
Qanun rulings were certainly being written in Kabylia before
Hanoteaus arrival there, even if his collection seems to have been
largely created in response to his own orders, for several documents
were copies of prior manuscripts dated at least a decade earlier (III: 351,
44750). A classic qanun decree would be the proclamation of an
agreement about some new ruling or readjustment of customary law
that had been decided by a communal jamaa (or tajmaat) assembly. At
least one such proclamation dated from the mid-eighteenth century: a
confederational treaty that suspended womens rights to inherit
property in the interests of maintaining inter-tribal peace (III: 45154,
cf. Patorni 1895, Mah 2001: 68ff.). But most qanun rulings were
simpler tariffs of fines imposed for village offences, such as thefts and
breaches of the peace, or cursory regulations about marital affairs and
controls of sumptuary expenses. Such rulings might be collated as lists
amounting to a hundred or more items. As Hanoteau realised, the
qanun deeds of any community recorded only a fraction of its
recognised customs (ada, pl. awaid), which were otherwise committed
to oral memory by illiterate village elders (II: 101).14
The genius of Hanoteaus project was to realise that these unpromising
scraps of village law might serve as reliable epigraphic foundations for
reconstructing the entirety of Kabyle traditional society. Assembled in
54
Peter Parkes
sufficient quantities, one could discern recurrent themes and resonant

motifs that adumbrated their underlying principles as well as their regional
variants. Enigmatic qanun rulings also served as perfect elicitatory cues for
more intensive field interrogations: they were undeniable agreements of
communal law, whose subsequent justification and explication by enlisted
informants would unravel their tacit social circumstances. These included
intimate details of the vulnerable moral reputation (hurma) of a community,
otherwise scarcely accessible to outside enquiry. Hanoteau would also be
crucially assisted in this delicate unravelling of village morality by Si Mula,
an experienced marabout mediator, who may have witnessed many qanun
rulings that he later collected and copied for Hanoteau.
Their colloquies at Fort-Napolon evidently informed the
monographs introductory sketch of Kabyle society (II: 1134). This
includes vivid portrayals of a typical village (taddart) and its sof political
factions; its jamaa public assemblies, amin president and elected
council; its festivals and redistributive welfare; its complex conditions
of anaya protection over dependants; and its tribal or confederational
leadership in peacetime and in war. All of these finely evoked details are
presented just as they might have been observed by Hanoteau until,
in an abrupt concluding chapter, one is disarmingly apprised that the
entire tableau vivant was artfully reconstructed. For everything had been
transformed under French military rule:
The autonomy of the village as a corporate body no longer exists; the
political powers of its jamaa assembly have no meaning any more, and they
have all disappeared Its administrative powers are nominally intact, but
they are nonetheless subject to our governing control The roles of the
amin [assembly leader], without being officially altered, have necessarily
changed along with those of the jamaa assembly, now accountable to the
French authority for all that happens in the village, being the executive
agent of its orders These, in brief, are just some of the modifications of
Kabyle organization since the conquest that might be mentioned. (II: 133f.)
Hanoteau may have overstated these modifications, just as he understated

his own field observations. As commandant, he would be besieged by Kabyle
plaintiffs demanding his adjudication of intransigent disputes. He was
therefore an engaged participant auditor of Kabyle juridical procedures,
even if his own experiences were, alas, unelaborated as case histories.15
55
Codified compilation
The ethnographic introduction to the second volume was only intended
to give a congenial overview to its substantive documentation: those
assembled qanun rulings, whose principles of social organisation are
distilled in its massive Second Section, Droit Civil. Here one would expect
a major contribution from the jurist Aristide Letourneux, for the
treatment of Kabyle familial institutions is all exactingly framed
through the thematic grid of the Napoleonic Code civil. Even the layout
of the account conforms with its codified prototype: by Title and
Chapter, with subset paragraphs of terse judicial prose, as if these were
the deliberated decrees of some Grand Kabyle legislative assembly.
This format is easily deprecated as a preposterous imposition of a wholly
alien scheme of modern legislation, un pur plaquage artificiel (Bousquet
1950c: 448). But on inspection, its imposed matrix was perhaps not
inappropriate for organising the disparate qanun fragments and verbal
commentaries that Hanoteau and Si Mula had assembled. Each Title thus
sets out purportedly rational discriminations of natural law before
considering their variable recognition in Kabyle custom; each Chapter then
elaborates particular circumstances of Kabyle village institutions, with
footnotes on qanun rulings indicating their concordance or divergence with
Roman private law or Muslim sharia, indexing their equivalent numbered
articles in French national law. This familiar format would facilitate an
envisaged administrative application of the monograph as a field manual for
adjudicating officers. But it was also a possibly felicitous framework for
comprehending Kabyle customary law in this period; for it required its qanun
decrees to be regarded from a relatively unprejudiced rational perspective
in the enlightened spirit of Montesquieu more or less untainted by the
speculative historicism then characteristic of ethnological jurisprudence.
Some historicist speculation is unquestionably present in the
monograph, notably in the introduction to its Third Section on Penal
Law (III: 5359). This is presented as having a peculiarly progressive
civic morality and social clemency, overlaying an archaic bedrock of
personal law condoning violent retribution. Copious footnotes cite
correspondences of Kabyle legal concepts with those attested in Ancient
Hebraic, Indian, Greek, Roman and early Germanic law, again
intimating an evolved but arrested development of Kabyle communal
morality and criminal justice.16 These erudite annotations were surely
contributed by Aristide Letourneux, an acknowledged antiquarian who
would be familiar with the comparative historical jurisprudence
emerging from Savignys Rechtsgeschichte. Yet Hanoteaus firmly
imposed grid of the Code civil otherwise demanded a strictly
contemporaneous assessment of Kabyle legal discriminations that were
56
Peter Parkes
evident in the qanun documentation. Such sophisticated institutions as

civil contract, trust law and commercial partnerships are therefore all
given due analytical scrutiny, even if they had but faint
correspondences in Kabyle customary usage.17
This rigorous empirical discipline was a hallmark of Hanoteaus
philological positivism, equally characterising his earlier linguistic
scholarship, and doubtless instilled by his training at the cole
Polytechnique (where Auguste Comte once lectured to his corps of
engineers). Its principles of unadorned descriptive precision needed to be
braced against the more romantic historical imagination of Letourneux:
Colonel Hanoteau held definitely, with a determined will, to what might be
maintained as established facts and uncontestable realities, irrespective of
the past or the historical origins of the peoples he was studying. But M.
Letourneux, by contrast, begged release from this harnessing of his brilliant
imagination, for he would eagerly construct elaborate theories and systems.
Yet his collaborator would have none of that, preferring to disencumber
himself at once of all wild conjectures, whose duration tends to be
ephemeral and whose scientific value would always be contestable. (M.
Hanoteau 1923: 14849)
In the last year of their collaboration, Letourneux was thus resigned to

renouncing historicism. In a letter of February 1868 he declared being
done with all those theories that in Kabyle law are never easy to
disentangle, let alone to express clearly; from now on, it shall be enough
for me simply to state the positive facts as these are actually supported
by the [qanun] texts (Bernard and Milliot 1933: 11).
In fact, the idea of using the 1804 Civil Code as a translational grid
for the ethnography was already being pursued by Hanoteau even
before his collaboration with Letourneux. Maurice Hanoteau recalled
his fathers studious examinations of French national law as a means
of specifying and classifying Kabyle folk notions of legal trust, contract,
fraud, tort and so on (1923: 143f.). Comparison of Kabyle customary
law with Maliki fiqh jurisprudence as rendered in the Mukhtasar
commentaries of the medieval Egyptian jurist Khalil ibn Ishaq (see
184852 edition) was also being pursued by Hanoteau with Si Mula
before Letourneux was co-opted into the project (Hannemann 2002:
90f., 170ff.). Its anthropological peculiarity primarily consists in this
persistent dialogical triangulation of the divergent yet often congruent
perspectives of modern western legislation and of classical Islamic
jurisprudence with respect to Kabyle tribal custom.
Yet Letourneux assuredly made original contributions of his own,
particularly in composing the Third Section on Criminal Law, which
was his acknowledged responsibility in the final year of their
57
collaboration. Here the Code pnal proved far less serviceable than had
the Code civil for family law. The plan of this section (III: 59) was
therefore more closely adapted to indigenous schemes of qanun penal
tariffs. Of outstanding originality is the cumulative elucidation of a
polyvalent Kabyle notion: that of anaya or extended protection against
violations of physical or moral integrity (III: 7783, 10711, cf.
Daumas and Fabar 1847: 7075, Mah 2001: 10617). Hanoteaus
ethnographic sketch had indicated a shifting range of such protections
extended to vulnerable individuals by notable leaders and their kin
groups, by sof factions, or by entire tribes and confederacies (II: 61ff.).
Breaches of proclaimed anaya protection were considered heinous
offences, which justified righteous homicide, for its respected value was
a precise index of the moral credit of its collective defenders. Hanoteau
had even eulogised the heroic qualities of self-sacrifice it demanded:
However it may operate, one can scarcely deny the moral grandeur of this
institution of anaya protection; it is an original form of mutual assistance,
even stretched to the point of self-abnegation; and the heroic acts it inspires
constitute the greatest honour of Kabyles even if the necessity of such
devotion signifies an ill-developed societal state, where the individual is
obliged to step in on behalf of the law in protecting persons (II: 63)
Treatment of anaya in the final part of the monograph, however, shows

that this protection was by no means restricted to personal or
interpersonal associations. Rather, all rights of personal redress were
ultimately sanctioned by the overarching anaya protection assumed by
a village community through the popular sovereignty of its jamaa
assembly. Any infringement of its protective public order was thus a
moral affront to the communitys corporate renown (hurma), whose
scales of violation are precisely gauged in qanun penal tariffs. In
elucidating this complex moral notion, Letourneux acutely draws on a
series of case studies, otherwise all too rarely employed as evidence. As
one might expect, many cases of violent raqba feud or disputes over
hurma honour were derived from the Ait Iraten around Fort-Napolon
(III: 104f., 110), and they are often ascribed to the finely narrated
testimony of Si Mula n Ait u Amar (III: 191f., 303f.).
Critical counterpoints
We see that La Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles was a curious chimaera of
textual philology and field anthropology: an epigraphic ethnography. It
was also an applied ethnography, even a work of indigenous advocacy; for
while it archived a vanished era of former political autonomy in Kabylia,
58
Peter Parkes
it was ultimately intended to inform its future devolved administration.

Hanoteaus introduction to the second edition of the monograph even
recalled his original hopes that it might underpin a constitutional
codification of pan-Kabyle customary law (I: viii).18 The monograph
therefore had prescriptive as well as descriptive pretensions, which may
explain its carefully cantilevered evaluations: its critical counterpoints.
A recurrent antithesis is thus established between an admired spirit
of solidarity invigorating Kabyle communities and the selfish egoisms
of modern Europe (II: 1, III: 296). But this congenial contrast is always
quickly qualified by contrary recognition of the violent concomitants of
ungoverned democracy, where a spirit of equality, taken to extremes,
incites insatiable envies (II: 2). Admirable solidarities of patriarchal
kinship are similarly counterposed with an equally rhetorical
denunciation of the miserable marital status of Kabyle bartered brides
(II: 148f.). Hanoteau here declared his concern to correct overindulgent
portrayals of Kabylia as a primitive paradise of republican virtues: As
to the status of Kabyle women one must be disabused of errors
relayed by the brilliant paradoxes of our eminent writers, who
doubtless included some tactfully unnamed colleagues.19
Disparagement of tribal disrespect for womens Koranic rights of
endowment, however, surely echoed the marabout opinion of Si Mula.
A copious correspondence between Hanoteau and Letourneux
shows that both authors acutely apprehended the polemical dangers of
overly romanticised depictions of Kabyle cultural affinities with
sentimental values of French popular republicanism: what CharlesRobert Ageron would later characterise as le mythe kabyle (1960, 1968:
26877).20 Their sober perspectives rather exemplified the pluralist and
paternalist policies of Marshal Randons original programme of indirect
rule in Kabylia. This had endorsed its traditions of village government
with a view to anticipated assimilation of Kabyles to voluntary French
citizenship. Qanun rulings might then be expected to converge with civil
jurisdiction, cultivated by a mission civilisatrice of appropriate education
and technically assisted development. Hanoteau, for example, long
campaigned for a training college in industrial arts and crafts (to be
instructed by officers seconded from his own corps of engineers), which
he eventually established at Fort-Napolon in 1866.21
This broader developmental programme provides a necessary context
for evaluating the monograph. Its ideological underpinnings lay in the
industrial-socialist doctrines of Saint-Simon, instilled among many
bureaux arabes officers trained at the cole Polytechnique, but propagated
in Algiers by the redoubtable Ismail Urbain, the imperial adviser on
indigenous affairs under the Second Empire.22 For Urbain, who eagerly
promoted Hanoteaus project, recognition of Kabyle customary law
59
promised to vindicate his own boldly envisaged plans for a culturally and
legally pluralistic assimilation of all Muslim indigenes, LAlgrie pour les
Algriens (1860). Hanoteau and Letourneux may have been quizzical of
Urbains passionate indigenophilia; but they shared his liberal
preoccupation with indigenous advocacy, pitted against the rapacious
encroachments of colon settlers then lobbying for civilian administration.23
The monographs treatment of Kabyle Muslim religion is also
indicative of this truly applied anthropologie positive. A concise statement
in the first volume establishes that all Kabyles were unquestionably
devout and orthodox Muslims (I: 38084). Hanoteau was determined to
quash popular misconceptions that Islam was but a thin veneer of
assumed faith imposed on secular or pagan cultural roots, rendering
Kabylia susceptible to easy laicisation or Christian evangelisation.24 In
the second volume, however, more critical perspectives are advanced (II:
83105). These concern the role of marabout religious specialists
(imrabden), insinuated as elementary teachers and adjudicators among
Kabyles, whose spiritual influence was waning under French
administration. Far more dangerous, therefore, were expansive religious
confraternities (ikhwan) that had begun to absorb or replace this
disaffected local clerisy. Such was the Rahmaniyya Sufi order in Kabylia,
a pietist movement of moral reform that galvanised tribal insurgencies
by declaring jihad or holy war against infidel foreign occupation.25
Hanoteaus premonitions of impending discontent among such
religious leaders again attests to the vital collaborative contribution of
Si Mula, whose reports on his own Ait Amar marabout lineage are cited
as apt illustrations. They indicate a hereditary line of conservative
religious scholars, scornful of mountbank marabouts, but more wary
of the reformist pretensions of Rahmaniyya spiritual devotees, who
threatened their own established position as tribal intermediaries with
external powers. Formerly aligned with Turkish Beylik rulers, the
clerical family of Si Mula had made overtures to the French military
authorities in the 1840s, ultimately rewarded by Si Mulas appointment
as khoja interpreter at Fort-Napolon. Unlike devotees of Rahmaniyya
moral reform who would advocate the replacement of tribal customs
by sharia law traditional marabout dignitaries such as Si Mula were
more inclined to condone customary usages in the interests of
maintaining tribal peace, albeit also deliberating on their acceptable or
unacceptable divergence from orthodox Maliki Sunni Muslim law. Such
tolerant conservatism conveniently dovetailed with the gradualist
developmental programme envisaged by Hanoteau.
The whole project of redacting village decrees as approved tribal
canons may have been Si Mulas ambition all along, initiated in his
calligraphic gift to Hanoteau (see Fig. 2.3) ten years earlier. It is
Peter Parkes
60
therefore tempting to interpret many of the equilibrated opinions of the

monograph as further ventrilocutions of Si Mula: a scholarly Arabic
voice resounding through two French authors, who may have only
partially comprehended its contrapuntal techniques of dialectical
reasoning and justification for Kabyle customary usage, employing
classic rhetorical methods of Islamic legal science (ilm i-qalam). These
are apparent in Si Mulas subsequent letter to Hanoteau (Bernard and
Milliot 1933: 2730), which also displays an adept deployment of cited
references to the medieval legal commentaries of Khalil ibn Ishaq
(Hannemann 2002: 9093). But such informed juristic commentaries
are evident throughout the monograph: their analytical yield would be
cumulatively harvested by subsequent scholars of Berber customary
law throughout the Maghrib.26
Colonial transposition
The colonial deployment of the monograph would not be what any of
its authors could have wished. For its composition during the 1860s
coincided with the last decade of protective military administration in
Kabylia, which collapsed with the fall of the Second Empire in 1870.
Defeat at Sedan and a Republican colonist uprising in Algiers, matching
the Paris Commune of 1871, then catalysed a final Kabyle insurrection,
followed by punitive colonial reprisals and civilian reforms. These are
recorded in painful detail by General Hanoteau in a long appendix to
the second edition of La Kabylie (III: 455514) written after his
retirement to France:
In truth, the ancient institutions of Kabylia were shattered when our army
columns triumphed over the insurrection of 1871 In a few years, the
entire civil edifice of traditional liberties, which had resisted armies of
conquerors over thousands of years, simply collapsed. Its ruin is now
complete, and it is not without regret for a past era that lacked neither
grandeur nor glory, that I inscribe an epitaph adapted from the history of
another great lost nation: finis Kabiliae! (III: 462)
As Hanoteau had gloomily predicted, fears of impending civilian

administration in Algeria incited revolts in its eastern provinces, taken
up as a last-ditch tribal jihad by the Rahmaniyya order in Kabylia.27
Hanoteau was obliged to assist in a merciless suppression of Kabyle
insurgents in the early summer of 1871, when hundreds of Rahmaniyya
devotees were massacred in hopeless assaults on Fort-Napolon. Si
Mula and Si Lunis vainly tried to secure a treaty among Ait Iraten to
abstain from this insurrection; but the two brothers were besieged with
61
French officers in the fort, accompanied by pupils they had saved from
Hanoteaus new college of arts and crafts, which was set ablaze by
angry rebels, as was their house at Tamazirt. Their loyalty was briefly
rewarded: Si Lunis was later appointed tribal chief (amin al umana) of
Ait Iraten, while Si Mula was confirmed as tribal judge (qadi) over a
newly created administrative district of Fort-Napolon, now renamed
Fort-National.28 But a punitive war reparation of ten million francs was
imposed on the district, allowing civilian colonists to sequester huge
tracts of its indigenous territory (III: 333, Ageron 1968: 2436, Mah
2001: 212ff.).
The new Governor-General, Admiral de Gueydon, appears to have
been persuaded by Hanoteau and Letourneux to reverse an immediate
plan to revoke all of Randons immunities of indirect rule in Kabylia. For
when the monograph was published in 1873, de Gueydon abandoned
his original intention to apply full French national law throughout
Jurjura, conceding the benefits of retaining its village jamaa assemblies,
whose customary laws appeared as opportune bulwarks against further
antagonistic Islamisation (Ageron 1968: 282). Letourneux was even
asked to devise a simplified qanun codification for civilian administrators
(a commission he wryly declined). The new district of Fort-National
would be temporarily retained as an indigenous commune under
continuing military protection. But by 1880 almost all of Kabylia had
become civilian territory under the jurisdiction of French civil
magistrates (juges de paix), who struggled to adjudicate its customary
laws with often baffled reference to the monograph (Ageron 1968: 284).
Their courts, which denied normal appeal to sharia law, would be largely
ignored by Kabyles, whose village affairs continued to be regulated by
clandestine jamaa assemblies well into the twentieth century.29 By then
the imperial dream of indigenous assimilation had retrenched into the
notorious colonial doctrine of separatist association (Betts 1961),
reinforced by racism that tarnished and deformed all extant
ethnography (Lorcin 1995).
La Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles was the original prototype of what
would shortly become a prolific genre of colonial ethnographic
documentation: the tribal coutumier. By the end of the nineteenth
century, there would be many comparable collations of customary law
compiled by colonial officers operating on the tribal frontiers of British
India, Imperial Russia and the Dutch East Indies, as by all
European powers in sub-Saharan Africa.30 These dense ethnographies,
62
Peter Parkes
which underpinned a burgeoning new discipline of ethnological

jurisprudence, are scarcely appreciated by anthropologists nowadays.
Professional criticism, voiced ever since Malinowski (1926), highlights
their neglect of quotidian disputation as a negotiable matrix of social
order distinct from stipulated legislation. Colonial compilations of
customary law are thus distrusted or dismissed as artefactual
fabrications of alien administrative convenience, if not darkly
disparaged as collusive and divisive tools of imperial hegemonies.31
It seems easy to address such criticism to the foundational work of
Hanoteau and Letourneux. Bernard and Milliot (1933: 2225) already
cast worrying doubts about the distorting effects of Hanoteaus
commissioning of qanun transcripts, which may have solicited a
selective submission of normalised regional exemplars, incipiently
codified even before their analytical synthesis within the monograph
(cf. Milliot 1932: 141ff.). Georges-Henri Bousquet aimed a more
flamboyant diatribe, expressed with jocular pugnacity, at what he
pilloried as A cult to be destroyed: the adoration of Hanoteau and
Letourneux (1950c). Pitched against the colonial canonisation of the
monograph, Bousquet noted its stifling impact on subsequent
ethnography, when literate Kabyle informants relied on the dead word
of Hanoteau and Letourneux, even if their living practice contradicted
its sanctified account. Bousquet (1950b) thence elaborated an original
theory of habituated jural transactions, counterposed with the
normative regulations emphasised by Hanoteau and Letourneux,
which would be famously expanded by Pierre Bourdieu. Yet both Milliot
and Bousquet ultimately acknowledged their profound debts to the
monograph, which crucially guided their own pioneering scholarship
on Islamic juridical practice and customary law in the Maghrib.
The broader anthropological legacy of the monograph remains
difficult to assess, although a line of inspired descent to classic
ethnographies of the Maghrib is easy to trace.32 Hanoteaus project of
encouraging a constitutional recognition of customary law would be
adopted more concertedly (and controversially) in the neighbouring
protectorate of Morocco, stimulating further compilations of Berber legal
custom there.33 Their monograph inspired similar collections of
customary law in French West Africa and Indo-China; and it was
evidently known to Snouck Hurgronje and Cornelis van Vollenhoven,
feasibly instigating the Adatrecht school of Leiden and Batavia in the
Dutch East Indies.34 It would be discussed in almost all major works of
ethnological jurisprudence at the end of the nineteenth century,
featuring prominently in socialistic literature on agrarian
communalism.35 Yet its analytical insights and empirical documentation
have only recently attracted the serious scrutiny they long deserved:
notably in two magisterial surveys of Kabyle communality and
63
customary jurisprudence over a span of two centuries (Mah 2001;

Hannemann 2002), and in current ethnography (Scheele 2008, 2009)
that traces both continuities and transformations in Kabyle village
organisation and communal legislation down to presently troubled times.
A more occluded legacy of such early ethnographies lies in covert
reactions to their former authority in later academic anthropology. For
modern fieldwork was effectively reinvented from the 1920s by
disciples of Malinowski and Mauss in upstart denial of its established
precedents (Blanckaert 1996). This subversive reaction is well displayed
in subsequent ethnographies of Kabylia, such as the avowedly
Maussian analyses of Ren Maunier (1927, 1935) and Jeanne Favret
(1968), and especially of Pierre Bourdieu (1972), who all adroitly
reworked the rich heritage of Hanoteau and Letourneux while subtly
demoting its legitimacy.
The apotheosis of this last canonical transposition of the
monograph occurs in Bourdieus renowned theory of practice. This
denied almost any regulatory role for the normative order of
consensual legislation that Hanoteau and Letourneux had
documented, let alone its nuanced dialogues with Maliki Muslim law
noted by Si Mula. Kabyle social order seems to emerge as a spontaneous
outplay of competitive transactions, arising from a dispositional
calculus of patrimonial power, whose Hobbesian brutality is barely
mollified in its ritual idiom of honour and prestige. The reactive impetus
of this canonoclastic vision of anomic sociality, within the congested
terrain of Kabyle ethnography, is evident:
When I began working as an ethnologist, I wanted to react against what I
called legalism, against the tendency among ethnologists to describe the
social world in the language of rules I managed to show that in the case
of Kabylia the most codified, namely customary law, is only the recording of
successively produced verdicts in relation to individual transgressions, based
on the principle of the habitus. (Bourdieu 1990: 76f. [1987: 94f.])
Bourdieus anticanonical struggle with Hanoteau and Letourneux has

been of great provocative value to social theory, even if one may query
his bold pretension to have deciphered a deep transformational
grammar of Kabyle customary legislation: viz. one can re-generate all
the concrete acts of jurisprudence that are recorded in customary laws
on the basis of a small number of simple principles (ibid., cf. Bourdieu
1977: 16f. [1972: 209f.]). Such principles were what Hanoteau and
Letourneux endeavoured to delineate: yet scarcely as mythico-ritual
dichotomies (night/day, inside/outside, male/female), but rather as
morally coherent rulings about communal order, underpinned by the
complex jural notion of anaya protection assumed by the popular
64
Peter Parkes
sovereignty of jamaa village assemblies. These were instituted to

proclaim qanun ordinances regulating social conduct according to
known customary usages (urf, ada), in variably defensible
accommodation with Maliki Muslim jurisprudence deliberated by
marabout clerics such as Si Mula (II: 136ff.). The habitual social
practice and tactical manipulation of such usages were surely
significant (and indeed not disregarded by Hanoteau and Letourneux),
but so were the regulatory effects of their consensual legislation their
canonical rules, no less.36
This essay has simply narrated an extraordinary collaborative
venture of early French ethnographic fieldwork, reconstructing the
consonant interests and skills of three oddly combined contributors
a soldier, a magistrate and a marabout as well as the peculiar
circumstances of their cooperation in Kabylia during the last decade of
the Second Empire. For all its imperial arrogance and its unwanted
colonial consequence, La Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles should surely
be redeemed by anthropology as an exemplary ethnography of
customary law-making and communal regulation, evincing a truly
reflexive conscience commune. Despite its methodological reticence, it
Figure 2.4. Submission of the Kabyle tribes to Marshall Randon in 1857 (Viollet
Collection).
65
Figure 2.5. Hanoteau and two Tuareg, 1858. From Jacques Frmeaux, Les bureaux
arabes dans lAlgrie de la conqute, Paris, Denol 1993.
pioneered a painstaking hermeneutics of concerted textual and oral

exegeses of tribal jurisprudence. Although defeated by adverse forces
of colonial administration, its positive plans to enable a devolution of
indigenous jurisdiction were not ignoble (nor impertinent to current
national imperatives in Algeria that still have to accommodate regional
regimes of self-government). Its dedicated project of archival
documentation and elicited explication informed by an intimate and
engaged participation of indigenous experts still begs to be emulated
and elaborated today.37
Peter Parkes
66
Notes
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Judith Scheele for generous encouragement, comments and corrections.
This essay also relies substantially on the classic work of Charles-Robert Ageron for the
colonial context, and on the specialist current scholarship of Alain Mah and Tilman
Hannemann, as cited.
1. The Jurjura mountains of Kabylia form a steep massif behind the coastline of
northeast Algeria. Tribal insurgencies in these highlands culminated in their military
occupation in 1857 after fierce campaigns under Marshal Randon. See Julien (1964)
and Ageron (1966).
i
2. Kabyle qanun is derived from Greek kanon rule, law (via Arabic and Turkish), cognate
with English (and French) canon hence canonical ethnography in several senses
explored here. On the Arabic term, see Linant de Bellefonds (1978: 566f.). On the
canonical status of the monograph, see especially Berque (1956: 305ff.).
i
3. Translated passages are from the second (1893) edition of La Kabylie et les coutumes
Kabyles, referenced by volume and page number alone in this chapter. I have simplified
Hanoteaus francophone orthography of Kabyle Berber (taqbaylit) and Arabic terms.
4. For a general biography of Hanoteaus career, see Poussereau (1931). On the
following narrative account, compare Hannemann (2002: 8093, 2003: lilix).
5. On the bureaux arabes, see Ageron (1960, 1966), Julien (1964: 33341), Perkins
(1981), and Frmaux (1993); also Lorcin (1995: 7985, 13040). A broader
background of their policies is summarised by Ageron (1991: Ch. 3).
6. On Hanoteaus Posies populaires de la Kabylie du Djurjura (1867), see Goodman
(2002a, b). This foundational work of ethnopoetics also appears to have been largely
compiled and transcribed by Hanoteaus primary informant, Si Mula n Ait u Amar
(Hanoteau 1867: xii).
7. On Randons indirect rule or lorganisation Kabyle, see Ageron (1968: 277f.) and
Frmaux (1993: 52f.). Qanun rulings, noted by Daumas (1853: 227f.), were also
published by Fraud (1862: 276, 1863: 67) and Aucapitaine (1863, 1864: 7176).
8. These details are briefly mentioned in the monograph (II: 92). The family history of
Si Mula is related in a long letter sent to Maurice Hanoteau by Si Mulas son, Si Sultan
ben Si Mula, reproduced in Bernard and Milliot (1933: 57).
9. The quote is from an 1860 report by Hanoteau (Hannemann 2002: 62). Earlier
reports were publicised as extracts in the Revue Algrienne et Coloniale (Anonymous
1859), foreshadowing the ethnographic synopsis of the monograph (II: 1134).
10. On Ismail Urbain and his circle, see below (n. 22), Ageron (1968: 397414) and
Lorcin (1995: 8892).
11. The monograph would thereby crown thirty-nine volumes of the Exploration
scientifique de lAlgrie, commissioned by a founder of the bureaux arabes, Pellisier de
Reynaud, in the 1840s. Its first volume summarises their exploratory surveys of
Kabylia, especially Carette (1848).
12. On Letourneux, see the affectionate sketch by M. Hanoteau (1923: 144f.); also
Bernard and Milliot (1933: 1012). A field botanist and malacologist of world
renown, Letourneuxs discoveries of many new species in Kabylia are itemised (with
Kabyle and Arabic nomenclature) in the first volume of the monograph (I: 49234).
A keen epigrapher of Romano-Berber inscriptions, Letourneux succeeded Berbrugger
as president of the Historical Society of Algeria in 187376.
67
13. Bernard and Milliot (1933: 33, Pl. I). This letter may have been intended to provide
supplementary material for the second edition of the monograph, although it is not
used there. Hannemann (2002: 89) surmised that its date in Arabic might be a scribal
error for January 1868, but this seems unlikely since Hanoteau would then have been
resident at Fort-Naplon together with Si Mula.
14. On the composition of qanun rulings, see Masqueray (1886: 5772) and Hannemann
(2002: Ch. 5). The form of oral qanun rulings in the Kabyle language is uncertain:
transcripts made for Hanoteau (1858a: 32438, Bernard and Milliot 1933: Pl. II)
may be back-translations from Arabic transcribed by his interpreter at Dra el-Mizan,
El Haj Said u Ali (Bernard and Milliot 1933: 8). The style of these decrees, itemising
fines for offences, resembles those documented in rural communities throughout the
Mediterranean: from Spain (Behar 1986: Ch. 7) to Albania (Durham 1928: 6492,
Hasluck 1954: 26174, Gjeov 1989) and the Caucasus (Leontovich 1882, Kemper
2004). See also Scheele (forthcoming).
15. Cases of Kabyle disputation are, however, summarised in reports of the bureaux arabes
at Fort-Napolon (Gouvernement Gneral de lAlgerie n.d.), which might be collated
with the monograph. Cf. Hannemann (2003: xxxvl), Perkins (1981: 6775).
16. An often cited source on early Germanic law is Jules Michelets Origines du droit
franais (1837). Such comparisons had already been suggested in Hanoteau (1858b)
and Aucapitaine (1863); they would be elaborated by Masqueray (1886).
17. Kabyle regulations of commerce were pertinent to their extensive engagement in
petty trade, outlined in the first volume of the monograph (I: 498508). Cf. Mah
(2001: 2939).
18. Letourneux also wrote excitedly to Hanoteau of this prospect: a unified and codified
Kabyle coutume will be accepted by a million Berbers, even by French magistrates; our
idea shall make its way (letter of 1869 in Bernard and Milliot 1933: 25).
19. E.g. Daumas (1853) and Aucapitaine (1864), who had eulogised Kabyle matriarchy.
Cf. also Hanoteau (1867: 28794). The position of Kabyle women has always been
contested (Lorcin 1995: 6467): their brideprice would be similarly deprecated by
Hacoun-Campredon (1921), Morand (1927) and Lefvre (1939).
20. On this Kabyle myth, contrasting assimilable Berbers with disparaged Arabs, cf. Lazreg
(1983), Lorcin (1995) and Mah (2001: 14757).
21. Ageron (1968: 323f.). On other technical and agricultural innovations introduced by
bureaux arabes officers, see Perkins (1981: 13148) and Lorcin (1995: 83). Hanoteau also
encouraged Si Mula and Si Lunis to establish the first secular primary school in Kabylia,
which opened at Tamazirt in 1873 (Ageron 1968: 333). His elaborate plans for a credit
association to support Kabyle enterprise are detailed by Poussereau (1931: 8082).
22. On Saint-Simonism in Algeria, see Emerit (1941) and Lorcin (1995: Ch. 5). On the
colourful career of Ismail Urbain and his campaigns for indigenous Muslim rights of
citizenship, see Ageron (1968: 397414) and Levallois (1989, 2001).
23. On this conflict between civilian and military authorities, see Ageron (1960, 1966,
1968) and Lorcin (1995: Ch. 4). Hanoteaus anti-colon sentiments were strongly
stated: What our settlers dream of is a bourgeois feudalism, in which they will be the
lords and the natives their serfs (Ageron 1991: 39f.).
24. On Hanoteaus prolonged battles against Christian missionaries in Kabylia, notably
Archbishop Lavigerie, see Ageron (1968: 273f., 279f.) and Mah (2001: 18082).
25. On these religious orders, Hanoteau relied on an earlier study of de Neveu (1845),
although his disparaging account of Rahmaniyya education was based on a visit to
their mamara college (II: 9195). On the Rahmaniyya order in Kabylia, see ClancySmith (1994: 3945) and Mah (2001: 4654, 19399) citing Salhi (1979).
26. Notably Milliot (1932), Marcy (1939, 1949), Berque (1953, 1955) and Bousquet
(1950b, 1956). See now Hannemann (2002, 2005).
68
Peter Parkes
27. The Moqrani insurrection in Kabylia was documented by Rinn (1891) and Robin
(1902). Cf. Julien (1964: 453500), Ageron (1968: 37) and Mah (2001: 190
99). The following details on Fort-Napolon are mainly derived from the account of
Si Mulas son, Si Sultan ben Si Mula (Bernard and Milliot 1933: 6f.).
28. They were soon divested of these posts under Camille Sabatiers maladroit regime at
Fort-National in the early 1880s (Ageron 1968: 287 n.1, Mah 2001: 250f.). Si Mula
then transferred his services as a qadi judge to a neighbouring district. He died in
Algiers in 1890 (Bernard and Milliot 1933: 7), as did Letourneux. Close relations
persisted thereafter between the lyce-educated sons of Si Mula and General Maurice
Hanoteau, who followed his fathers career as a military engineer in Algeria.
29. On administrative reforms in the 1880s, including bungled attempts to restore a
modified form of indirect rule around Fort-National by Camille Sabatier, see Ageron
(1968: 28592) and Mah (2001: 24551). Qanun codes up to the 1920s (some
written in French) were documented by Milliot (1926) and Bousquet (1936, 1949).
30. Similar compendia of tribal-Muslim adat laws were C.L. Tuppers Punjab Customary
Laws (1881) and F.I. Leontovichs Adaty Kavkazskikh Gortsev (18823).
31. On colonial fabrications of customary law, see Snyder (1981), Chanock (1985),
Moore (1986) and Salemink (1991); for darker Foucauldian suspicions, see Mamdani
(1996), Burns (2004) and Le Cour Grandmaison (2006). On comparative
codifications of customary law a still useful collection is Gilissen (1962).
32. Via Masqueray (1886) to Montagne (1930) and Berque (1955). On Masquerays
ethnography, following respectfully in the footsteps of Hanoteau and Letourneux, see
Colonna (1983) and Ould-Braham (1996). On this distinct ethnographic lineage, see
Berque (1956: 305ff.), Favret (1968: 18f.), Roberts (2002), and Mah (2003: ii).
33. See Burke (1973: 18999), also treating the controversial dahir berbre decree of
1930. General Lyauteys programme of collating Berber izerf customary law in the
Middle Atlas from 1913 was exactly modelled on Hanoteaus earlier project (Surdon
1938: 105ff., cf. Bousquet 1950a and Ageron 1971). See now Kraus (2005) and
Burke (2007).
34. On Kabyle models in French West African judicial policy, see Christelow (1982: 14ff.)
and compare Sibeud (2002) and Shinar (2006). On coutumiers in Indo-China, see
Salemink (1991) and Parkin (2005: 201); on the Leiden Adatrecht school, see Ter
Haar (1948) and Holleman (1981).
35. La Kabylie is cited in classic compendia on comparative customary law by A.H. Post,
J. Kohler and S.R. Steinmetz. For socialistic references, see Laveleye (1874: Ch. 5, with
note 3), Kovalevsky (1879: 200ff.) and Kropotkin (1902: Ch. 4, notes 3335). Much
has been made of its citation (with Masqueray 1886) in Durkheims De la division du
travail social (Ch. 6 with note 6, see Gellner 1985); but there is little evidence that it
was seriously studied by Durkheim (see Roberts 2002: 117ff.).
36. On Bourdieus antinomian problems with such rules, see Just (2005); for his deep
familiarity with the monograph, compare Bourdieu (1958: Ch. 2). The delegitimation
of Kabyle village assemblies at the end of the nineteenth century had discernible
consequences of anomic anarchy and notorious banditry (Mah 2001: 215ff.). See
also Mah (2000) and Scheele (2008, 2009) on recent struggles to revive village
legislative powers in Kabylia.
37. An urgent archival ethnography of customary law throughout the Muslim
Mediterranean has long been advocated by Frank Stewart (1987, 198990; cf. also
Dresch 2007. Recent collections (e.g. Dostal and Kraus 2005, Kemper and Reinowski
2005) point to a resurgent anthropology of legal pluralism in Islam, which Hanoteau
and Si Mula pioneered.
69
References
Ageron, C.-R. 1960. La France a-t-elle eu une politique kabyle? Revue historique, 226:
31151.
1966. La politique kabyle sous le Second Empire, Revue franaise dhistoire dOutreMer, 53: 67105.
1968. Les Algriens musulmans et la France (18711919), Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France (2 vols).
1971. La politique berbre du protectorat marocain, Revue dhistoire moderne et
contemporaine, 18: 5090.
1991 [French edn. 1964]. Modern Algeria: a history from 1830 to the present (tr.
M. Brett), London: Hurst.
Anonymous [after A. Hanoteau] 1859. Constitution sociale de la Kabylie: extrait dun
rapport du gnral commandant la division territoriale dAlgr, Revue Algrienne et
Coloniale, 1: 120.
Aucapitaine, H. 1863. Kanoun du village de Thaourirt Amokran chez les Aith Iraten
(Kabilie), Revue africaine, 7: 27985.
1864. tudes sur le pass et lavenir des Kabyles: les Kabyles et la colonisation de
lAlgrie, Paris: Challamel.
Behar, R. 1986. Santa Mara del Monte: the presence of the past in a Spanish village,
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bernard, A. 1930. Histoire des colonies franaises et de lexpansion de la France dans le monde,
in G. Hanotaux and A. Martineau (eds), 2: LAlgrie, Paris: Plon.
Bernard, A. and L. Milliot. 1933. Les qnons kabyles dans louvrage de Hanoteau et
Letourneux, Revue des tudes Islamiques, 7: 144.
Berque, J. 1953. Problmes initiaux de la sociologie juridique en Afrique du Nord, Studia
Islamica, 1: 13762.
1955. Structures sociales du Haut Atlas, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
1956. Cent vingt-cinq ans de sociologie maghrbine, Annales ESC, 11: 299331.
Betts, R.F. 1961. Assimilation and association in French colonial theory, 18901914, New
York: Columbia University Press.
Blanckaert, C. 1996. Histoires du terrain: entre savoirs et savoir-faire, in Le Terrain des
sciences humaines (XVIIIeXXe sicle), Paris: LHarmattan.
Bourdieu, P. 1958. Sociologie de lAlgrie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
1977 [1972]. Outline of a Theory of Practice, tr. R. Nice, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. [Esquisse dune thorie de la pratique, Geneva: Librairie Droz.]
1990 [1987]. In other words, tr. M. Adamson, Cambridge: Polity Press. [La
codification, In Choses dites. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.]
Bousquet, G.H. 1936. Un qanoun kabyle contemporain, Revue africaine, 79: 86772.
1949. Documents contemporains curieux relatifs au droit en Kabylie, Revue
algrienne, tunisienne et marocaine de lgislation et de jurisprudence, 1: 9396.
1950a. Islamic law and customary law in French North Africa, Journal of the
Society for Comparative Legislation, 32: 5765.
1950b. Justice franaise et coutumes kabyles, Algiers: Imprimerie Nord Africaine.
1950c. Un culte dtruire: ladoration de Hanoteau et Letourneux, Revue de la
Mditerrane, 89: 44154.
1956. Le droit coutumier de At Haddidou, des Assif Melaoul et des Isselaten
(Confderation des At Yafelmane): notes et reflections, Annales de linstitut dtudes
orientales de luniversit dAlger, 14: 113230.
Burke, E. III. 1973. The image of the Moroccan state in French ethnological literature: a
new look at the origins of Lyauteys Berber policy, in E. Gellner and C. Micaud (eds),
Arabs and Berbers, London: Duckworth.
70
Peter Parkes
2007. The creation of the Moroccan colonial archives, 18801930, History and
Anthropology, 18: 19.
Burns, P. 2004. The Leiden legacy: concepts of law in Indonesia, Leiden: KITLV.
Carette, E. 1848. tudes sur la Kabilie proprement dite, Paris: Imprimerie Royale (2 vols).
Chanock, M. 1985. Law, custom and social order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Christelow, A. 1982. The Muslim judge and municipal politics in colonial Algeria and
Senegal, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 24: 324.
Clancy-Smith, J.A. 1994. Rebel and saint: Muslim notables, populist protest, colonial
encounters, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Colonna, F. 1983. Prsentation: introduction to the reprint of . Masqueray [1886]
Formation des cits chez les populations sdentaires de lAlgrie: Kabyles du Djurdjura,
Chaoua de lAurs, Beni Mazab, Aix-en-Provence: disud.
Daumas, E. 1853. Moeurs et coutumes de lAlgerie, Paris: Hachette.
Daumas, E. and P. Fabar 1847. La Grande Kabylie, tudes historiques, Paris: Hachette.
Dostal, W. and W. Kraus (eds). 2005. Shattering tradition: custom, law and the individual in
the Muslim Mediterranean, London: I.B. Tauris.
Dresch, P. 2007. The Rules of Barat: tribal documents from Yemen, Sanaa: Centre Franais
dArchaeologie et de Sciences Sociales.
Durham, M.E. 1928. Some tribal origins, laws and customs of the Balkans, London: George
Allen and Unwin.
Emerit, M. 1941. Les Saints Simoniens en Algrie, Paris: Belles Lettres.
Favret, J. 1968. Relations de dpendance et manipulation de la violence en Kabylie,
LHomme, 8: 1844.
Fraud, L.-C. 1862, 1863. Moeurs et coutumes kabyles, Revue africaine, 6: 27283, 429
41; 7: 6784.
Frmaux, J. 1993. Les bureaux arabes dans lAlgrie de la conqute, Paris: Denol.
Gellner, E. 1985. The roots of cohesion, Man (n.s.) 20: 14255.
Gilissen, J. (ed.). 1962. La rdaction des coutumes dans le pass et dans le prsent, Brussels:
Universit Libre de Bruxelles, tudes dhistoire et dethnologie juridique 3.
Gjeov, S. 1989. Kanuni i Lek Dukagjinit (tr. L. Fox), New York: Gjonlekaj.
Goodman, J.E. 2002a. The half-life of texts: poetry, politics and ethnography in Kabylia,
Algeria, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 12: 15788.
2002b. Writing empire, underwriting nation: discursive histories of Kabyle Berber
oral texts, American Ethnologist, 29: 86122.
Gouvernement Gneral de lAlgrie. n.d. Srie I, Bureaux arabes, cercle de Fort-Napolon
puis Fort-National, rapports, 18571880. Ss. 42I 17, 43I 17. 71 MIOM 28891,
294. Archives dOutre-mer dAix-en-Provence, France.
Hacoun-Campredon, P. 1921. Etude sur lvolution des coutumes kabyles, Algiers: Carbonel.
Hannemann, T. 2002. Recht und Religion in der Grossen Kabylei (18/19 Jahrhundert):
zu rechtskulturellen Wandlungsprozessen des tribalen Gewohnsheitsrechts, PhD
dissertation, University of Bremen (internet publication 2004).
2003. La mise en place du droit kabyle dans lAlgrie coloniale (18571868).
Introduction to the reprint of Hanoteau and Letourneux (1893), Paris: ditions
Bouchne.
2005. Gewohnheitsrecht in einer islamischen Rechtsumgebung: theoretische
Vergleichperspectiven aus der Grossen Kabylei, in M. Kemper and M. Reinkowski
(eds), Rechtspluralismus in der islamischen Welt: Gewohnheitsrecht zwischen Staat und
Gesellschaft, Berlin: de Gruyter.
Hanoteau, A. 1858a. Essai de grammaire kabyle , Algiers and Paris: Bastide/Challamel.
[unsigned] 1858b. Une charte kabile, Revue africaine, 3: 7580.
1860. Essai de grammaire de la langue tamachek , Paris: Imprimerie Impriale.
1867. Posies populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura, Paris: Imprimerie Impriale.
71
Hanoteau, A. and A. Letourneux. 187273 [1893]. La Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles.

Paris: Imprimerie Nationale (2nd ed.) 1893.
Hanoteau, M. 1923. Quelques souvenirs sur les collaborateurs de La Kabylie et les
coutumes kabyles, Revue africaine, 64: 13449.
Hasluck, M. 1954. The unwritten law in Albania, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Holleman, J.F. 1981. Van Vollenhoven on Indonesian adat law, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Julien, C.-A. 1964. Histoire de lAlgrie contemporaine: la conqute et les dbuts de la
colonisation, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Just, R. 2005. In defence of rules: Pierre Bourdieu en Grce, Journal of Mediterranean
Studies, 15: 124.
Kemper, M. 2004. Communal agreements (ittifaqat) and adat-books from Daghestani
villages and confederacies (18th19th centuries), Der Islam, 81: 11551.
Kemper, M. and M. Reinkowski (eds). 2005. Rechtspluralismus in der islamischen Welt:
Gewohnheitsrecht zwischen Staat and Gesellschaft, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Khalil ibn Ishaq, al Jundi [Sidi Khalil]. 184852. Prcis de jurisprudence musulmane, ou
Principes de lgislation musulmane civile et religieuse, selon le rite Malkite par Khalil,
traduit de lArabe par M. [Nicolas] Perron, Paris: Exploration scientifique de lAlgrie,
sciences, histoires et geographies, vols 1015.
Kovalevsky, M.M. 1879. Obshchinnoye zemlevladenie, Part 1, Moscow: F.B. Miller.
Kraus, W. 2005. Tribal law in the Moroccan High Atlas: pre-colonial legal practice and its
transformations, in W. Dostal and W. Kraus (eds), Shattering tradition, London: I.B. Tauris.
Kropotkin, P. 1902. Mutual aid: a factor in evolution, London: Heinemann.
Laveleye, E. de. 1874. De la proprit et de ses formes primitives, Paris: Librairie G. Baillire.
Lazreg, M. 1983. The reproduction of colonial ideology: the case of the Kabyle Berbers,
Arab Studies Quarterly, 5: 38095.
Le Cour Grandmaison, O. 2006. The exception and the rule: on French colonial law,
Diogenes, 53(4): 3453.
Lefvre [Bousquet], L. 1939. La femme kabyle, Paris: Sirey.
Leontovich, F.I. 18823. Adaty kavkazskikh gortsev, Odessa: G. Ulrikha (2 vols).
Levallois, M. 1989. Ismayl Urbain: lments pour une biographie, in M. Morsy (ed.), Les
Saint-Simoniens et lOrient: vers la modernit, Aix-en-Provence: disud.
2001. Ismal Urbain: une autre conqute de lAlgrie, Paris: Maisonneuve.
Linant de Bellefonds, Y. 1978. Kanun, Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.), 4: 55657.
Lorcin, P.M.E. 1995. Imperial identities: stereotyping, prejudice, and race in colonial Algeria,
London and New York: Tauris.
Luc, B. 1917. Le droit kabyle, Paris: Challamel (2nd ed.).
MacCarthy, O. 184748. La Kabylie et les Kabyles: tudes conomiques et
ethnographiques, Revue de lOrient et de lAlgrie 1: 345ff., 2: 28ff., 137ff.
Mah, A. 2000. Les assembls villageoises dans la Kabylie contemporaine: traditionalisme
par excs de modernit ou modernisme par excs de tradition? tudes rurales, 155
156: 179212.
2001. Histoire de la Grande Kabylie, XIXeXXe. Sicles: anthropologie historique du
lien social dans les communauts villageoises, Paris: ditions Bouchne.
2003. Entres les moeurs et le droit: les coutumes. Remarques introductives La
Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles, Introduction to the reprint of Hanoteau and
Letourneux (1893), Paris: ditions Bouchne.
Malinowski, B. 1926. Crime and custom in savage society, London: Kegan Paul.
Mamdani, M. 1926. Customary law: the theory of decentralized despotism, in Citizen and
subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism, Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Marcy, G. 1939. Le problme du droit coutumier berbre, La France mditerranenne et
africaine, 2: 770.
72
Peter Parkes
1949. Le droit coutumier zemmour, Algiers: Carbonel.

Masqueray, . 1886. Formation des cits chez les populations sdentaires de lAlgrie: Kabyles
du Djurdjura, Chaoua de lAurs, Beni Mazab, Paris: Ernest Leroux. Repr. (1983 Aix-enProvence: disud.)
Maunier, R. 1927. Recherches sur les changes rituels en Afrique du Nord, LAnne
Sociologique (n.s.), 2: 1197.
1935. Coutumes algriennes, Paris: Domat-Montchretien.
Michelet, J. 1837. Origines du droit franais cherches dans les symboles et formulas du droit
universel, Paris: Hachette.
Milliot, L. 1926. Les nouveaux qanoun kabyles, Hespris, 6: 365418.
1932. Les institutions kabyles, Revue de tudes Islamiques, 6: 12774.
Montagne, R. 1930. Les Berbres et le Makhzen dans le sud du Maroc, Paris: Alcan.
Moore, S.F. 1986. Social facts and fabrications: customary law on Kilimanjaro 18801980,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morand, M. 1927. Le statut de la femme kabyle et la rforme des coutumes berbres, Revue
des tudes Islamiques, 1: 4794.
Neveu, E. de. 1845. Les khouan: ordres religieux chez les musulmans dAlgrie, Paris: Guyot.
Ould-Braham, O. 1996. mile Masqueray en Kabylie (printemps 1873 et 1874), tudes
et documents berbres, 14: 574.
Parkin, R. 2005. The French-speaking countries, in F. Barth et al., One discipline, four
ways: British, German, French, and American anthropology, Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
Patorni, F. 1895. Dlibration de lanne 1749 dans la Grande Kabylie, Revue africaine, 39:
31520.
Perkins, K.J. 1981. Qaids, captains, and colons: French military administration in the colonial
Maghrib, 18441934, New York: Africana.
Poussereau, L.-M. 1931. La carrire dun officier nivernais en Algrie: le gnral A.
Hanoteau (18141897), in A. J. Pars (et al.), Mmoires sur lhistoire de lAlgrie au
XIXe sicle, Paris: Rieder.
Renan, E. 1873. La socit berbre: exploration scientifique de lAlgrie [review of
Hanoteau and Letourneux 187273], Revue des deux mondes 107: 13857.
Rinn, L. 1891. Histoire de linsurrection de 1871, Algiers: Jourdan.
Roberts, H. 2002. Perspectives on Berber politics: on Gellner and Masqueray, or
Durkheims mistake, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 8: 10726.
Robin, J.N. 1902. Linsurrection de la Grande Kabylie en 1871, Paris: Lavauzelle.
Salemink, O. 1991. Mois and Maquis: the invention and appropriation of Vietnams
Montagnards from Sabatier to the CIA, in G.W. Stocking (ed.), Colonial situations: the
contextualisation of ethnographic knowledge, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.
Salhi, M.B. 1979. tude dune confrrie religieuse algrienne: la Rahmania la fin du
XIXe sicle et dans la premire moiti du XXe sicle. PhD dissertation, Paris: EHESS.
Scheele, J. 2008. A kind of savage Switzerland: local law-giving in Kabylia (Algeria), in
Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50(4).
2009. Village matters: knowledge, politics and community in Kabylia, Oxford: James Currey.
Shinar, P. 2006. A major link between Frances Berber policy in Morocco and its policy
of races in French West Africa: Commandant Paul Marty (18821938), Islamic Law
and Society, 13: 3362.
Sibeud, E. 2002. Une science impriale pour lAfrique? La construction des savoirs africanistes
en France, 18781930, Paris: EHESS.
Snyder, F. 1981. Colonialism and legal form: the creation of customary law in Senegal,
Journal of Legal Pluralism, 19: 4990.
Stewart, F. 1987. Tribal law in the Arab world: a review of the literature, International
Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 19: 47390.
73
198890. Texts in Sinai Bedouin Law, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz (2 vols).

Surdon, G. 1938. Institutions et coutumes des Berbres du Maghreb, Tangiers: Editions
Internationales.
Ter Haar, B. 1948. Adat Law in Indonesia, New York: Institute of Pacific Relations.
Tooker, E. 1983. The structure of the Iroquois League: Lewis H. Morgans research and
observations, Ethnohistory, 30: 14154.
Trautmann, T.R. 1987. Lewis Henry Morgan and the invention of kinship, Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Tupper, C.L. 1881. Punjab customary laws, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendant of
Government Printing (3 vols).
Urbain, I. [under pseudonym G. Voisin] 1860. LAlgrie pour les Algriens, Paris: M. Levy.
Chapter 3
POSTCARDS AT THE SERVICE

OF THE IMAGINARY:
JEAN ROUCH, SHARED ANTHROPOLOGY
AND THE CIN-TRANCE
Paul Henley
Introduction
The very nature of ethnographic cinema how it is practised, how it is
talked about, where its limits are deemed to lie has been profoundly
shaped by the work of the late Jean Rouch, who died tragically in a road
accident near Tahoua, Niger in February 2004. In the course of a sixtyyear career, beginning with his first tentative ethnographic reports
published in a French colonial journal in the early 1940s and ending
with his last film, poignantly entitled Le rve plus fort que la mort and
released in 2002, Rouch produced over a hundred completed films and
almost as many published texts. While a handful of the films have been
widely distributed, reaching far beyond the confines of academic
anthropology, the great majority remain little known and extremely
difficult to see, particularly in the English-speaking world.
In France, Rouchs reputation was probably at its peak in the early
1960s. He was not only well known among anthropologists, but he was
also a national figure in French cinema and his films were regularly
reviewed in the avant-garde screen studies journal, Cahiers du Cinma
(Prdal 1996). In contrast, at this time his work was virtually unknown
in what the French like to call the Anglo-Saxon world.1 From the early
1970s, Rouchs star gradually began to wane in France and by the early
Paul Henley
76
Figure 3.1 Jean Rouch shooting in a market in the Gold Coast in 1954. Bibliothque
nationale de France, Dpartement des manuscrits, ref. 28464.
1980s, his profile was significantly diminished, both in anthropological

and cinema circles. Ironically, it was precisely at this time that he came
to be discovered by Anglo-Saxon visual anthropologists, since his views
about anthropology and cinema, and the relationship of both to
empirical reality, struck a chord with the postmodernist tendencies that
were then sweeping through Anglo-Saxon anthropology, particularly
on the other side of the Atlantic.2 But although Rouch may have been
hailed as a prophet of postmodernism in Anglo-Saxon anthropology
much to his surprise and amusement his approach was deeply rooted
in a distinctively French intellectual tradition.
The surreal encounter

Rouch first became attracted to anthropology through a prior
engagement with surrealism while he was still a teenager. There is a
story that he liked to tell about this first encounter, which involved, it
seems, something of a Damascene conversion, complete with blinding
light. It happened one spring afternoon in 1934, when the seventeenyear-old Rouch passed a bookshop in the Montparnasse quarter of
Paris. There, in the window, in a pool of light cast by the setting sun,
Postcards at the service of the Imaginary
77
was a display of two juxtaposed double-paged spreads from recent

editions of Minotaure, a journal which published the work both of the
leading surrealists of the day and anthropologists. One of these spreads,
from the second edition, showed some funerary masks worn by the
Dogon of the Bandiagara Cliffs in what is now eastern Mali, but which
was then the colony of the French Soudan. This image was but one of
many illustrations accompanying the principal subject matter of that
edition of the journal, namely a special report on the celebrated DakarDjibouti Expedition of 19311933, written by its leader, Marcel Griaule.
The other spread included a reproduction of a painting of two figures
in a dream-like landscape by Giorgio de Chirico, a painter much
admired by the surrealists. In the mind of the young Rouch, the two
images became inextricably associated and the Bandiagara Cliffs took
on the character of a fabled landscape to which he dreamed that one
day he too would be able to travel (Rouch 1995c: 410).
The many connections between ethnology (as the study of social or
cultural anthropology was then known in France), surrealism and lart
ngre the latter embracing everything from traditional African masks,
such as those featured in Minoature, to jazz, the dancer Josephine Baker
and black American boxers have been extensively commented upon by
James Clifford, Christopher Thompson and others, as well as by Rouch
himself on a number of occasions.3 The distinguished historian of
anthropology in France, Jean Jamin, has questioned the true extent of
the connections between ethnology and surrealism, suggesting that it
was more a question of two activities occupying adjacent intellectual
spaces rather than being involved in a genuine exchange. While the
ethnologists were committed to the detached observation and rigorous
analysis of cultural phenomena, the surrealists sought a highly subjective
immersion in other cultural realities, hoping to tap into the primitive
creative life forces which they imagined to be inherent in such cultures,
particularly those of Africa. According to Jamin, although there may
have been certain complicities and affinities between ethnology and
surrealism, there was no long-term or systematic transfer of methods
and concepts (Jamin 1991: 84). But while this may have been generally
true, it certainly does not apply to Rouch, whose film-making methods
continued to be informed by the precepts of surrealism right until the end
of his film-making career, long after these ideas had not only lost
whatever currency they might have once had in ethnology, but had also
fallen out of fashion in the worlds of the plastic arts and poetry.
The oeuvre of Jean Rouch as a film-maker is not only remarkably large
but also remarkably eclectic. Although the great majority of his films
were shot in West Africa, or failing that in Paris, they include both fullscale feature-length documentaries and short documentation films.
78
Paul Henley
Films about large-scale African ritual events alternate with intimate

portraits of Rouchs friends, and promotional films for West African
development agencies sit side by side with cin-poems. A major strand
of this oeuvre consists of fictional feature films, though true to Rouchs
surrealist leanings, these did not generally involve any kind of formal
script but relied instead on spontaneous improvisation around a series
of ideas that Rouch and his protagonists made up as they went along.
Initially these fiction films were anchored in Rouchs ethnographic
research, but they became progressively more fantastical and surrealist
as his career developed. In an allusion to the ethnographic origins of his
earlier work in this mode, Rouch himself referred playfully to his fiction
films as science fiction, though third-party commentators on Rouchs
work have tended to prefer the somewhat debatable term ethnofiction.
Rouch was a man of great energy, but even he could not have been
so productive a film-maker had it not been for his particular professional
circumstances. In 1947, while still engaged in doctoral research on the
religious life of the Songhay of the middle reaches of the Niger river, he
was admitted to the CNRS. Apart from a brief interlude in 195153,
when he was temporarily expelled for not having completed his thesis
largely due to competing film-making activities this research position
enabled him to go to West Africa almost every year for the rest of his
career and shoot a number of films, unencumbered by any heavy
teaching obligations. Not every one of the films that he shot on these
almost annual fieldwork missions was a masterpiece. Many were
unpretentious descriptive accounts of religious ceremonies, notably of
spirit possession rites in which he had a particular interest and which he
himself estimated to feature in some fifty of his films (Taylor 2003:
140). Quite a number of his films remained unfinished and to this day
exist only as rushes or unmarried prints. Some were experiments that
failed. But even if all these minor, incomplete or unsuccessful works are
discounted, it remains the case that Rouch was and is by far the most
productive film-maker, living or dead, to have made ethnographic films.
The films that he made in the early part of his career, especially those he
made in a particularly creative period between 1950 and 1960,
established a new standard in the history of ethnographic film-making
that continues to inspire ethnographic film-makers the world over.
79
The joking relationship

Although Rouch was entirely self-taught as a film-maker, he did receive
a formal anthropological training. In the academic year 19401941,
with Paris already under the German occupation, Rouch enrolled on
an extramural course given by Marcel Griaule in the basement of the
Muse de lHomme. Germaine Dieterlen, Griaules partner in both
personal and professional life, supported the lectures with a series of
magic lantern slide shows. At the time, Rouch had no formal
involvement with either anthropology or film-making. In fact, he was in
his final year as an engineering student at the elite grande cole, Ponts et
Chauses, but the memory of the episode in front of the Montparnasse
bookshop evidently still burned brightly in his mind.
The relationships that he formed with Griaule and Dieterlen through
this course would be of crucial importance in the shaping of his future
career as both anthropologist and film-maker. Shortly afterwards, in
order to fulfil his dream of travelling to West Africa as well as to escape
from wartime France, Rouch took a job as a road-building engineer in
Niamey, capital of the French colony of Niger. Here he came across
spirit possession first-hand among his labourers and began his first
ethnographic research of the phenomenon, aided by a questionnaire
prepared for him by Dieterlen and sent out to him by a roundabout
route. Later, in 194445, after a couple of years combining engineering
work and private study in the Institut franais dAfrique Noire in Dakar,
he joined the Free French forces in Africa and participated in the
liberation of France and invasion of Germany. After the war, he
returned to France and enrolled at the Sorbonne to study for a doctorate
in anthropology under the supervision of Griaule.
In the immediate post-war period, Griaule was under something of a
cloud. Unlike most leading anthropologists, many of whom had taken
refuge abroad during the war, Griaule had chosen to remain behind and
co-operate with the Vichy government. He not only accepted a Chair at
the Sorbonne but also, having been an aviator in his youth, a
commission as a colonel in the air force. However, despite his personal
aversion to everything associated with the Vichy regime, Rouch elected
to study under Griaule because, he claimed, Griaule and his group simply
had more fun than the other leading Africanists with whom he might
have worked.4 There were probably some more pragmatic reasons too:
Griaule was the leading French authority on the middle Niger where
Rouch wanted to work and, with Dieterlen, he had supported Rouchs
own first amateur ethnographic research during the war years. It could
also have been important that Griaule was sympathetic to film-making,
as he had made two films among the Dogon in the 1930s.5
80
Paul Henley
Yet although there may have been a number of good reasons for
Rouch to study with Griaule, there always remained a certain ambiguity
in Rouchs attitudes towards his mentor, involving a curious mixture of
disdain and respect. Rouch liked to present this as an extrapolation of the
traditional joking relationship between the cliff-dwelling Dogon, whom
Griaule had studied, and the Songhay and the other peoples of the
lowland fluvial plains of the Niger whom he himself had worked with.
But it seems very likely that it was also the result of a certain dissonance
in their political views, not only in relation to collaboration during the
war years, but also with regard to the French colonial project in Africa.6
Griaule passed on to Rouch his particular take on the intellectual
inheritance that he had received from his own mentor, Marcel Mauss.
As Clifford has described, from a methodological point of view, Mausss
approach involved a clear differentiation between the process of
ethnographic description and the process of theoretical explanation. In
the Maussian methodology, the first stage in any research project should
consist of the systematic accumulation of large numbers of
documents, namely bodies of ethnographic data. These documents
could be culled from a broad variety of sources, both historical and
anthropological, textual as well as verbal. Indeed, everything and
anything could be grist to the ethnographers mill, for, as Germaine
Dieterlen once remarked, the most clumsy design scratched on a wall
with a fingernail could provide a clue to ideas about the structure of the
universe (Dieterlen 1988: 252). This process of accumulating
documents should be as objective as possible and free from a priori
explanatory concerns. The documents could then be subjected to
rigorous scholarly exegesis within the framework of indigenous concepts
and linguistic categories. But the elaboration of exogenous theoretical
explanations or arguments in terms of comparative ethnography were
processes that should happen later, a posteriori, rather than in the process
of accumulating the documents in the first place.
Although some of the theoretical conclusions that Mauss drew from
the minute analysis of ethnographic documents have been the source
of great inspiration to subsequent generations of anthropologists,
contemporary accounts suggest that, in his lectures, Mauss often got
so immersed in the ethnographic detail that he never quite arrived at
the elucidation of the theoretical conclusions (Clifford 1988a: 123
25). Rouchs recollection of Griaules lectures as a series of
disaggregated ethnographic titbits suggests that they too may have
suffered from the same shortcomings (Rouch 2003b: 1034). More
generally, in this particular anthropological school, it seems that there
was a distinct tendency for detailed ethnographic description to be
prioritised and appreciated for its own sake, while theoretical
81
explanation and generalisation were treated as matters of a second

order of elaboration that in the ideal case should eventually follow, but
in actual practice might not do so.
Certainly this was true of Rouchs textual anthropology. His doctoral
dissertation on the Songhay was submitted in 1952 and later published
under the title La Religion et la magie songhay, first in 1960, and then in
a substantially annotated second edition in 1989. The original
dissertation was completed shortly after the publication of Dieterlens
classic work, Essai sur la religion bambara, and it was clearly heavily
influenced by this model.7 Not only the general approach, but even the
structure and layout of Rouchs work follow those of Dieterlens work
very closely. That is, Rouch provides a highly detailed but entirely
descriptive account of Songhay beliefs in which each element or aspect
of Songhay traditional religion is described sequentially and in isolation
the general cosmology, the myths of origin associated with particular
cult activities, the various roles or offices involved, the texts chanted,
the forms of dance, the types of musical instrument and so on. The only
explanations that are offered for these practices are in terms of local
legends or beliefs, often quoted verbatim. At the end of the book, in a
conclusion of less than three pages, Rouch makes no attempt to
identify any general theoretical consequences of his study. He declines
to present Songhay religious ideas and practices as ideologically related
to particular social or political structures. Analyses in terms of either
the comparative ethnography or history of West Africa as a whole are
not merely eschewed but ridiculed, albeit humorously. Instead, Rouch
chooses to celebrate in defiance of considerable evidence to the
contrary, to which he himself even alludes the original and unique
character of Songhay religion.8
But if Rouchs general intellectual formation can be traced back
ultimately to Mauss, his ideas about the actual practice of anthropology
in the field were more directly influenced by the methodology of Griaule
himself. For although Mauss actively advocated fieldwork, his own
investigations were entirely bibliographic. Griaule, in contrast, was
highly committed to fieldwork in practice as well as in principle. His
ideas about how to conduct fieldwork are laid out very explicitly in his
Mthode de lethnographie. This slim handbook was not published until
1957, the year after his death, but it draws on his experiences in
working with the Dogon since the 1930s. The approach that Griaule
proposes here is very different from that developed around the same
time by Anglo-Saxon anthropologists, notably by Bronislaw
Malinowski, which, since the 1960s, has become the orthodoxy in
social and cultural anthropology generally, even in France. Whereas
Malinowski proposed that the fieldworker should plunge into the life
82
Paul Henley
of the natives, usually alone, becoming a relatively unobtrusive

participant-observer engaged in the day-to-day life of a community,
Griaule advocated the formation of teams of fieldworkers, organised
along quasi-military lines who would not only maximise the collection
of data within any given time period but at the same time triangulate
the results that they were obtaining. Far from the discreet observation
of life as it is lived with minimal interference, as in the Malinowskian
approach, Griaules method was highly pro-active, involving intensive
interrogatory interviews based on systematic questionnaires. Rather
than observing the subjects interacting among themselves, Griaule
preferred to work with a select group of elite informants, using bilingual
intermediaries rather than the native language.9
Rouch gives a rather droll account of the fieldwork routines of
Griaule and Dieterlen as he observed them while visiting their camp at
Sanga, at the foot of the Bandiagara Cliffs, in 1950. First thing in the
morning, Griaule would give all members of the team their tasks for the
day. While he and Dieterlen worked through questionnaires with their
established informants and other researchers in the team were
dispatched elsewhere, groups of traditional musicians would be
summoned to perform so that they could be filmed by Rouch and his
film-making partner and sound-recordist on this particular expedition,
Roger Rosfelder, also a student of Griaule. Alternatively, Rouch and
Rosfelder would be sent off to film daily routines in a nearby Dogon
village. At noon, the whole team would meet up in the company of the
Dogon informants and interpreters and exchange the information
gathered in the morning. On the basis of these discussions in which,
Rouch emphasises, the Dogon played an active part Dieterlen would
typically develop an inspired series of further hypotheses which Griaule
would then order into a new series of questionnaires to be used in the
afternoon. With perhaps just a touch of irony, Rouch compares this
approach to the Socratic method of successive dialogical
approximations to philosophical truth.10
The fieldwork approach that Rouch himself would develop as both a
film-making and a text-making anthropologist shared certain similarities
with that of his mentor. Like Griaule, Rouch returned faithfully to the
same field sites in West Africa over a prolonged period. Indeed, Rouch
liked to quote Griaule and Dieterlens view that one needed at least twenty
years of first-hand experience of a given society before one could begin to
achieve a deep knowledge of its systems of thought (e.g. Rouch 2003b:
111). Like Griaule, Rouch tended to rely on a key group of informants
and worked largely through the medium of French, perhaps because, as
he himself confessed, he was not very good at languages.11 In his
straight anthropological fieldwork, he often used formal questionnaires,
83
both during his doctoral research and in the migration studies that he
carried out in West Africa in the 1950s (Rouch 1956: 37). Also like
Griaule, Rouch tended to focus his attention on what might be called the
public cultural rhetoric of the groups whom he studied ethnographically.
That is, the great majority of his films are about public ceremonial
performances of one kind or another, and there is very little emphasis on
private domestic life and the routines of the everyday. Partly for this
reason, Rouchs films mainly concern the public world of men, the more
domestic world of women being relatively neglected.12
Although Rouch never used interviews of any kind in his films, one
can also perhaps detect, as Clifford has done, a certain continuity
between, on the one hand, what he calls Griaules dialogical method,
in which interrogatory questions were aimed at provoking the subjects
into revealing answers, and on the other, Rouchs idea that the camera
could act as a catalyst to provoke his subjects into revelatory
performances (Clifford 1988b: 77). Indeed, it is tempting to argue that,
in the same way that Griaules pro-active methods contrasted with the
more passive participant observational methods of Anglo-Saxon
anthropology, so too did Rouchs pro-active cinematographic methods
contrast with the more low-key methods of direct or observational
cinema as practised by his Anglo-Saxon film-making contemporaries.13
Shared anthropology
If there were certain similarities between Griaules and Rouchs
fieldwork methods, though, there were also profound differences, mainly
related to their very different attitudes towards their subjects. For
Griaules dialogical method, notwithstanding the positive connotations
of this way of describing it, was essentially antagonistic, being based on
the initial working assumption, stated repeatedly in the methodological
handbook, that the informant was lying. In an extended legal analogy,
Griaule suggests that the informant should be considered the equivalent
to the guilty party in a court of law, while the remainder of the society
should be considered his accomplices. In order to combat an
informants congenital tendency to lie, Griaule recommended that the
researcher compared variously to a prosecution lawyer, judge and even
a bloodhound should use whatever trick or stratagem was necessary to
circumvent the informants defences. Although Griaule may have
developed a profound respect for African culture, coming to regard
Dogon cosmology as the equal of that of ancient Greece, his
methodological recommendations suggest that he had no respect for the
Africans themselves as individuals.14
84
Paul Henley
Griaules aggressive and unscrupulous attitude, shocking to a modern

sensibility and undoubtedly the product of a colonial mentality whereby
all indigenous knowledge was fair game, could not be further from Rouchs
own attitudes. Shortly after his arrival in Niger to take up the post of roads
engineer in December 1941, and in defiance of the Vichy governors
disapproval of familiarity with Africans, Rouch became friendly with a
young local man, Damour Zika, and appointed him as his assistant.
Damour was a member of the Sorko sub-group of the Songhay, whose
specialist metier was fishing the waters of the Niger. It was he who first
introduced Rouch to spirit possession through his grandmother, Kalia, a
priestess of one of the local spirit possession cults. Damour was the first
and most significant of a group of Africans whom Rouch subsequently
gathered around himself and who accompanied him whenever he went to
Africa. Later additions to this group included Lam Ibrahim Dia, a Fulani
cattle-herder, Illo Gaoudel, also a Sorko fisherman, and Tallou
Mouzourane, a Bella cattle-herder and general go-fer. Somewhat later,
Moussa Hamidou, who was from the Zerma, a group closely related to the
Songhay, also joined the gang. These men helped Rouch in a variety of
different ways: they conducted surveys for his migration studies, crewed
on his documentaries and took a leading part as actors in his ethnofictions.
They also drove his Land Rover, carried his equipment and generally acted
as his local fixers. In return, Rouch not only paid them salaries while they
worked for him but shared the profits of his films on a fifty-fifty basis. He
also supported them in many other ways: he arranged for Damour to be
trained as a medical auxiliary and later as a pharmacist, which allowed
him, in local terms, to achieve great wealth and status; Lam became a
professional driver after having learnt to drive with Rouch and used his
part of the income from the films to buy himself vehicles; through his
cinema work with Rouch, Moussa was able to pay for all his sons to be
educated as professionals; when Rouch met Tallou, he was an orphan
suffering from leprosy, so Rouch arranged for him to be cured and then
took him under his wing, supporting him for the rest of his life.15 When
Rouch died in the tragic road accident in February 2004, travelling in the
same car with him, though fortunately not seriously hurt, was Damour,
still accompanying Rouch some sixty-two years after they first met.
These attitudes of respect for and engagement with his subjects were
made manifest in various ways in Rouchs works, both textual and
visual. Thus, in the introduction to his doctoral thesis, Rouch advises
the reader that he has omitted some of the secret knowledge to which
he felt privileged to have been made party since he had promised the
Songhay that he would not divulge it. The ethnographer is not a
policeman who extorts matters about which there is a desire neither to
tell him nor show him (Rouch 1989: 1718). This is certainly a far cry
85
from Griaules analogy of the ethnographer as a bloodhound of the

social fact, desperate to break down his informants resistance by
whatever means necessary.
Similar attitudes are evident in Rouchs film-making methods. In the
early 1950s, he began making a point of regularly screening his films
to their subjects. Rouch liked to trace this feedback practice back to the
example set by Robert Flaherty, the so-called father of ethnographic
documentary, who, during the making of Nanook of the North in the
early 1920s, had screened his rushes to his subjects in order to decide
what they should film the next day. But Rouch went very much further
than this, giving his African collaborators a much greater role in
devising the content of his films than Flaherty ever gave to Nanook and
his companions. Flaherty asked the Inuit to adjust their house
constructions, subsistence activities, their costumes and even their
personal identities to the requirements of his film. In contrast, Rouch
was reluctant to ask his subjects to dress up or behave in any special way.
Instead he would simply ask them to improvise along whatever lines they
themselves thought fit (Colleyn 1992: 4647, Rouch 1995a: 88).
Rouchs feedback procedures were also much more elaborate than
those of Flaherty. He did not merely screen his rushes to his subjects in
order to plan the next days shooting: instead, feedback screenings
became the very cornerstone of his way of working. Often he would
return, months or years later, not with the rushes, but with the
completed film and screen that to his subjects. Like Flaherty, Rouch
appreciated the pragmatic advantages that could arise from such
screenings. When he first began his ethnographic research, Rouch had
tried giving his written works to the Songhay, but had quickly discovered
that they had no use for them, even when they were read out loud by the
village school-master. On the other hand, when he started screening
his films, not only did the Songay understand his objectives more
clearly, they became his active collaborators (Rouch 1995b: 224).
At the simplest level, this collaboration merely consisted of
commenting on the ethnographic content of the films. This proved
particularly valuable many years later, in the late 1960s and early
1970s, when Rouch and Dieterlen came to make their series of films
about the Dogon Sigui festival and had very little idea about what was
going on in the actual moment of shooting. By listening to the
comments of the subjects during the feedback screenings, as well as to
those of a ritual specialist, Amadign Dolo, whom they took back to Paris
to work with them in the editing suite, they learnt a great deal about the
symbolic significance of particular forms of dancing, the many items of
ritual paraphernalia, the reasons for particular sequences of events and
so on, none of which they would otherwise have understood.
Paul Henley
86
However, although Rouch readily acknowledged the pragmatic

advantages to be gained from screening his films, he also thought of
them in ethical terms, believing that ethnographic film-makers had an
absolute duty to screen their films to their subjects. He liked to think of
these screenings as a form of audiovisual countergift a very
Maussian term offered in exchange for the support he had received
from the subjects during the production process. In this way, he
suggested, ethnographic film-makers could avoid acting as if they were
entomologists capturing exotic specimens.16 Instead, their work could
form the basis for promoting mutual understanding and respect
between observer and observed:
This is the start of what some of us are already calling shared
anthropology. The observer is finally coming down from his ivory tower;
his camera, tape recorder, and his projector have led him by way of a
strange initiation path to the very heart of knowledge and, for the first
time, his work is not being judged by a thesis committee but by the very
people whom he came to observe (Rouch 1995a: 96).
However, these feedback screenings were only the start of a longer-term

process since the shared anthropology that Rouch practised involved
not merely the audiovisual countergift of screening the films to the
subjects, but also their direct engagement in the process of making the
films themselves. Much more important than the feedback per se a
relatively passive activity was the highly active collaboration that
followed thereafter. For Rouch discovered that, at the end of a feedback
screening, one or more members of the audience would often come up
to him and suggest an idea for a new film. These could be people who
had been directly involved in the first film, or other members of the
audience who had concluded that a film about their activities would be
even more interesting than the film that Rouch had just shown. In this
way, the screening of one film could lead to the making of another in
which the subjects who proposed the idea were not merely protagonists
but, as we might say today, stakeholders in the making of a new film.
Postcards of the imaginary

This commitment to the idea of a shared anthropology as far back as
the 1950s (even if he did not give it precisely this name until the early
1970s) anticipated by more than two decades the dialogical
anthropology that, under the influence of postmodernism, became
fashionable in Anglo-Saxon anthropology from the late 1970s
onwards. But although Rouchs methodology was certainly marked by
87
this and a number of other apparently postmodern traits and

although he firmly rejected the great twentieth-century metanarratives of Marxism, Freudianism and structuralism he had arrived
at these positions not through antipathy to modernism as such but by
a series of quite different routes.17 As a result, although there were
certainly some similarities between Rouchs practices and those
advocated by Anglo-Saxon postmodernists, there were also some
significant differences.
As far as the technology of film-making itself was concerned, Rouch
was actually very modernist in his ideas, believing enthusiastically in
the potential of technological advance to transform human experience
for the better. In the early part of his career, drawing on his own
engineering background, he collaborated actively with camera and
sound-recording design engineers to develop a system of mobile,
lightweight cameras and portable audio tape-recorders that could
operate in tandem with one another in such a way as to produce images
in which actions and sounds would be perfectly synchronised.
Nowadays, such synchronised images are entirely commonplace since
they are achieved automatically by video technology. But in the late
1950s and early 1960s, the achievement of synchronised images using
portable equipment became a sort of holy grail for many
documentarists, and many technical experiments took place, not only
in France among Rouch and his associates but also in North America,
notably among the so-called Direct Cinema group of documentarists
headed by Robert Drew and Richard Leacock, as well as among a group
of film-makers working for the National Film Board of Canada (Rohmer
and Marcorelles 1963: 1622, Mamber 1974).
Prior to the development of this new technology, the only way to
realise full synchronisation of sound and image particularly of
speech, which was by far the most difficult form to achieve was by
means of equipment that was far too heavy to be portable. Therefore, if
a film-maker wanted synch sound, he or she had to bring the subjects
to wherever the equipment was located and ask them to perform there,
with obvious negative consequences for the spontaneity, authenticity
and range of the behaviours that could be filmed. Following the
development of portable synch sound systems achieved more or less
simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1960s, albeit
using slightly different technologies documentary film-makers were
able to follow their subjects as they moved around their particular
private social worlds, allowing them to decide for themselves exactly
what they should say or do in front of the camera.
In North America, the documentarists of the Direct Cinema group
sought to use this new portable technology to maximise their own
88
Paul Henley
effacement while shooting, interfering as little as possible in the

behaviour of their subjects. In this way, they hoped that they would be
able to film their subjects behaving just as they would have behaved had
the camera not been there. Rouchs attitude to the new technology was
very different. Although he appreciated the greater indexicality that fully
synchronous sound brought to his images and also the greater possibility
for spontaneity on the part of the subjects that the new technology
allowed, he certainly did not aspire to self-effacement, nor hope to film
his subjects behaving as they would have been had his camera not been
there. On the contrary, Rouch believed that the presence of the camera
would inevitably affect the performance of the subjects, however
discretely it was operated. But far from devaluing the quality of the
material that was filmed, he thought that this provocation of
extraordinary behaviour increased its value. This was because, in putting
on a special performance for the camera, the subjects would reveal more
about themselves, and particularly about the inner thoughts, dreams
and fantasies of their imaginaries. What has always seemed very
strange to me, he commented in an interview he gave in 1964, is that
contrary to what one might think, when people are being recorded, the
reactions that they have are always infinitely more sincere than those
they have when they are not being recorded (Blue 1996: 26869).
This idea that, beneath the surface of social behaviour, there is
another and more significant reality to be discovered in the minds of
the subjects is consistent with a long tradition of thought in French
anthropology. This intellectualist strand can be traced back through
Griaule and Dieterlen to Mauss, but it is also expressed in the priority
given to langue over parole in structuralist thinking. But while this
tradition might certainly have influenced Rouch, the primary
inspiration for this idea appears to have been his youthful encounter
with surrealism. For, paradoxically, although the new technological
advances greatly increased the fidelity of the copy of the world offered
by the cinematographic apparatus, it was its ability to bring to the
surface what was normally hidden that was most appreciated by Rouch.
As he put it in a 1967 interview:
For me, cinema, making a film, is like surrealist painting: the use of the most
real processes of reproduction, the most photographic, but at the service of
the unreal, of the bringing into being of elements of the irrational (as in
Magritte, Dal). The postcard at the service of the imaginary. (Fieschi and
Tchin 1967: 19)
However, it was not only its capacity to provoke a spontaneous

performance on the part of the subject that Rouch appreciated about
the new technology: he also appreciated the fact that, by its very
89
mobility, it allowed a much greater subjective immersion on the part of

the film-maker in the world of the subject. In this connection, Rouch
enthusiastically endorsed the analogy drawn by Edgar Morin, the codirector of Chronicle of a summer, who suggested that, with the aid of the
new technology, Rouch could become a sort of filmmaker-diver who,
unencumbered by equipment, could plunge into real-life situations.
Here, he could discover virgin territory, a life that possesses aesthetic
secrets within itself .18
However, for Rouch this subjective immersion in the world of the
subjects was not just a straightforward technical-operational strategy:
it also involved a transformation in the state of mind of the film-maker.
If film-making had the power to provoke the subjects into entering the
world of their imaginaries and revealing their innermost secrets, it
could also lead the film-maker to immerse himself in the world of the
imaginary and produce a performance of his own. The key to Rouchs
views on this matter was his notion of the cin-trance.
The cin-trance
Rouchs most systematic discussion in print of the notion of the cintrance is in an article that was first prepared for a celebrated CNRS
conference, La Notion de personne en Afrique noire, that took place in 1971.
Here he discusses a series of ideas that had come to him earlier that year
in the course of making a short film, Les Tambours davant: Tourou et Bitti.19
This film was shot in a Zerma village about fifty miles north of Niamey,
capital of Niger. It consists almost entirely of a single sequence shot an
unbroken take of approximately eleven minutes lasting the full duration
of a 16mm film magazine. The subject of the film is a spirit possession
ceremony in which the villagers seek the aid of the spirits in preventing
locusts from destroying their new millet crop.20 Arriving at the village on
what was already the fourth day of the ceremony, Rouch and his soundrecordist Moussa Hamidou discovered that the mediums had not been
able to go into trance. This was despite the strenuous efforts of the
musicians to attract the spirits by playing their signature music on the
monochord violin and various types of percussion instrument. The latter
included the traditional drums alluded to in the title of the film, the tourou
and the bitti, which the spirits were known to favour particularly. By four
pm, as the light was beginning to fade, Moussa suggested to Rouch that
they should at least take the opportunity to film the tourou and the bitti
since these drums were played with increasing rarity.
After a couple of preliminary shots outside the village, the sequence
shot begins on the sun and then pans down to enter the village, passing
90
Paul Henley
a herd of tethered sacrificial goats on the left and, on the right, a

disconsolate male medium still awaiting inspiration, before crossing the
small earthen plaza and approaching the orchestra. The musicians
redouble their efforts as the camera glides over them, revealing the
range of their different instruments, one by one. At this point, the music
begins to peter out and the camera starts to withdraw, when suddenly
there is a sudden cry of Meat! and the medium goes into trance as he
is possessed by the spirit of Kure the Hyena. The priests of the cult, the
zima, then approach and engage Kure in a bantering dialogue, offering
him meat in the form of sacrificial animals, in exchange for grass, a
good harvest. At this point, with the camera still turning, an old woman
hops across the plaza, shivering all over because she has been possessed
by the spirit of Hadyo the Fulani slave. The zima continue their
negotiations with Kure, who is now threatening to leave unless he gets
blood. But, as it is nearing the end of the magazine, the camera
withdraws to the edge of the plaza. From here, it ends on a wide shot
showing the young people looking on, before finally panning up again
to the now-setting sun.
A number of different elements of Rouchs film-making praxis come
together in this short film. Although he began to shoot with merely
descriptive ethnographic objectives, the action develops into something
much more interesting as a result of the presence of the camera. For,
Rouch claimed afterwards, it was the fact that he was shooting a film that
served to provoke the adepts to go into a trance state. 21 As such, the film
represented a good example of the positive benefits that can arise from the
change in reality brought about by the presence of the camera. However,
the film also exemplifies Rouchs understanding of the play between
subjectivity and objectivity that is involved in making a film in his
particular way. Close to the beginning, over one of the preliminary shots
outside the village, he explains on the commentary track that the film is
an attempt to practise ethnographic cinema in the first person. This is
followed by a cut to black with the title un film de Jean Rouch discreetly
displayed in one corner. Only then does the sequence shot proper begin,
starting off in travelling-shot mode with Rouch commenting over it, To
enter into a film is to plunge into reality, and to be, at once, both present
and invisible. Thus the film is presented as an unexpurgated slice of time
involving a plunge into reality, but at the same time as a view of this
reality that is both intensively subjective (ethnographic cinema in the first
person) and authored (un film de Jean Rouch).
It was directly as a result of shooting Tourou et Bitti that Rouch first
began to develop his concept of the cin-trance. He later described how,
when he and Moussa Hamidou put down their equipment at the end of
the take, they were trembling with exhaustion, aware that they had just
91
been through a powerful experience. However, Rouch did not attribute

this to the physical exhaustion that might reasonably follow from
concentrating intensively on shooting a ten-minute sequence shot.
Rather, he thought that it was due to the fact that the engaging rhythm
of the tourou and bitti drums had not merely sent the two adepts into
trance but the two film-makers as well. While the adepts had been
possessed by the spirits Kure and Hadyo, he and Moussa had gone into
a cin-trance, possessed by what he would later describe as a sort of
enthusiasm which cannot be defined but which is essential to poetic
creativity. This was comparable, he suggested, to the German concept
of Stimmung, a term which literally means humour, in the sense of a
frame of mind, or a tuning as of a musical instrument, but which,
Rouch claimed, defies translation in this more poetic sense.22
On other occasions, he referred to this state as a form of grace, a
condition that he associated not with any Christian notions but with
Nietzsches concept of the Dionysian namely creative activity that is
spontaneous and intuitive rather than rational. This condition cannot
be guaranteed, he suggested: in fact, it is relatively rare. If it is not
present, Rouch believed, one might as well give up filming because
nothing truly significant is going to be revealed (Fulchignoni 1981: 8
9, also Fulchignoni 2003: 150). But on the basis of his own experience,
Rouch claimed that when one entered this state, one was liberated from
the weight of anthropological and cinematographic theory and became
free to rediscover what he called la barbarie de linvention a phrase that
also defies any simple, literal translation but which one might render
here as raw creativity (Rouch 1997: 226).
In effect, then, in Rouchs view, film-making could only be truly
successful if it involved performances on both sides of the lens: while the
subjects were provoked by the circumstances of film-making into a
performance revealing the contents of their imaginaries, the film-maker
entered a trance-like state in which his most elemental creative abilities
would be released. Moreover, these performances had to be in harmony
with one another. Over the years, Rouch used many different analogies
to describe this harmonisation of performances between film-maker and
subject. Sometimes he compared it to a ballet, at other times to a matador
improvising his passes before the bull (Rouch 1995a: 8990). In the ideal
case, the conjunction of these performances produced something greater
than the sum of their parts, similar, Rouch suggested in a characteristic
clutch of metaphors to the transporting moments of a jam session
between Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong or, perhaps even closer to
his heart, the flashes of revelation that could arise from the electrifying
effects of an encounter between strangers, as described by the surrealist
poet, Andr Breton (Fulchignoni 1981: 31, also Fulchignoni 2003: 186).
Paul Henley
92
Privileged truths
There was also another, very different ingredient to Rouchs notion of
the cin-trance. The fact that he refers to this trance-like state not just
as a trance, but as a cin-trance is a sign of the influence on his thinking
of the ideas about the nature of cinematographic reality associated
with the Polish-Russian film-maker, Dziga Vertov. Best known for his
1929 film Man with a movie camera, Vertovs work appears to have been
an enthusiasm that Rouch first took up in the course of making
Chronicle of a summer with Edgar Morin in 19601961.23 Rouch seems
to have found in Vertovs work an endorsement of his own view that
the cinematographic apparatus offered a new and privileged way of
representing the world:
Dziga Vertov understood that the cinematographic way of looking was
highly distinctive, employing a new organ of perception, the camera, which
bore little relation to the human eye, and which he called the cin-eye.
Later, with the appearance of sound, he identified a radio-ear in the same
way, as an organ specific to recorded sound Taken as a whole, he called
this discipline cinma-vrit (cinema-truth), which is an ambiguous
expression since, fundamentally, cinema cuts up, speeds up, slows down,
thereby distorting the truth. For me, however, cinema-truth has a specific
meaning in the same way that cin-eye does, designating not pure truth,
but the truth particular to recorded images and sounds: cin-truth. (Rouch
1997: 224)
The term cinma-vrit has a chequered history in the literature on

documentary film-making. For a period, in North America particularly,
it was understood to denote a documentary-making practice that
aspired to reveal an entirely objective truth about the world. As such, it
came to be used to refer to the work of the Direct Cinema film-makers,
who, as described above, aspired to use the new synchronous sound
technology to reduce their effect on the action that they were filming to
a minimum, so as to provide their audiences with an account of the
world that was as objective as possible. What exactly was meant by the
term cinma-vrit when applied to this North American group continues
to be a matter of debate, but as far as Rouch is concerned, the passage
quoted above makes it quite clear that, for him at least, the denotatum
of this term was never some chimerical objective or absolute truth but
rather a distinctive form of truth that was particular to the cinema.
But while Rouch and Vertov may have shared this view about the
nature of cinematographic reality at a very general theoretical level, at
the level of actual practice, there seems to be very little in common
between their respective approaches to film-making. Where the visual
93
aesthetic of Rouchs films was generally realist and, once the

technology allowed, based on the long take and a normal, progressive
chronology, Vertovs approach, at least as represented by Man with a
movie camera, was based on the flamboyant use of montage and a
complete disregard for any conception of realism or a normal
chronology. Another fundamental difference concerned the
circumstances of shooting. Both Rouch and Vertov laid great emphasis
on recording life sur le vif, that is directly as it is lived. But whereas there
is an almost voyeuristic quality to Vertovs praxis, with the camera often
intruding clandestinely on the privacy of its subjects, in Rouchs case,
the process of filming normally took place within a well-established
relationship with his subjects.
But the difference between Rouch and Vertov that is perhaps the
most significant in this context concerns the precise nature of the truth
made possible by the cin-eye. For Vertov, the term cinma-vrit
referred primarily to the process of perceiving the world: the cin-eye
could go anywhere and see anywhere. It could fly in the air with
aeroplanes, watch from beneath as a train thundered overhead,pry into
a ladys boudoir. In the editing suite, these images captured by the cineye could then be transformed in all manner of ways: they could be cut
up, speeded up or slowed down. In this way, humanitys vision of the
world was transformed. For Rouch, on the other hand, it was not so
much the perception of the world but the world itself that was
transformed by the cinematographic process as the presence of the
camera provoked the subjects into revelatory performances that were
different from their normal forms of behaviour.
Rouch seemed either not to notice these fundamental differences, or
to believe that they were not as significant as they might appear. For, in
the article presented at the CNRS conference, he theorises his notion of
the cin-trance through an extraordinary fusion of Vertovian ideas
about cinematographic reality with Songhay-Zerma ideas about soulmatter and the transformations that this undergoes when a person is
possessed by a spirit. Rouch explains that the Songhay-Zerma believe
that every individual has a quality known as bia, variously glossed by the
Songhay themselves as reflection, shadow or even soul. Rouch, on
the other hand, refers to it as a double, a term often used in the
anthropological literature of West Africa to describe this phenomenon
which, in a variety of different forms, appears to be a common feature of
the religious belief systems of the region.24 In death the double, which is
immortal, leaves the body, but even in life it can take off on its own while
its owner is dreaming or under certain other circumstances. In the
course of possession, the adepts double is displaced or submerged by the
double of the spirit. While possessed, adepts are no longer themselves
94
Paul Henley
but become like the spirits that have possessed them, dancing in ways
that are suggestive of particular attributes or behaviours that are
conventionally associated with those spirits. In effect then, they become
the physical incarnation, literally, of the double of a spirit.
Rouch suggests that there is an analogy here between the condition, on
the one hand, of adepts submerged by the double of the possessing spirit
and, on the other, of film-makers who carry the cin-trance to its ultimate
conclusion, becoming completely immersed in the reality they are filming
and thereby entering their own trance of creativity. In the same way that
the Songhay adepts possessed by a spirit imagine themselves to be entering
a world that is different to that of everyday experience, so too do possessed
film-makers enter a different reality when turning on the camera.
Whereas the adepts double is taken over by the double of a spirit, the
film-maker is taken over by Stimmung, poetic creativity. It is this analogy
that Rouch is alluding to when he refers to cinema as the art of the
double, suggesting that, just as in the case of spirit possession, it similarly
involves a transition from the world of the real to the world of the
imaginary (Fulchignoni 1981: 2829, also Fulchignoni 2003: 185).
It is also here that Rouch discerns a connection with the Vertovian
notion of cinma-vrit. He suggests that this alternative reality, this domain
of poetic creativity into which the possessed film-maker enters when in
the cin-trance, is none other than the world of cinema truth. When the
film-maker is in the cin-trance, everything he or she does is determined
by the particular qualities of this distinctive world. For this reason, in
describing his own actions while in a state of cin-trance, Rouch attaches
Vertovian prefixes to all the verbs. Thus when he films he cin-looks, when
he records sound he cin-listens and while editing he cin-thinks as he
cin-cuts. In fact, he becomes totally identified with this cin-persona:
With a cin-eye and a cin-ear, I am cin-Rouch in a state of cin-trance
engaged in cin-filming ... That then is cin-pleasure, the joy of filming
(Fulchignoni 1981: 8, also Fulchignoni 2003: 150).
Moreover, as this ideal state of grace can only be achieved if there are
effective performances on both sides of the lens, his film subjects too
should become involved in this world. Rouch claimed that since his
subjects understood perfectly well what he was doing as a result of his
many feedback screenings, they reacted to his film-making as they
would do to those who are possessed by spirits, namely by lending
themselves to the performance on its own terms. Thus, as he cinobserves, they allow themselves to be cin-observed (Rouch 1997:
22425). In the most extreme case as he suggests may have happened
in the filming of Tourou et Bitti in response to the film-makers cintrance, the subjects may go into their own kind of trance.
95
Shared anthropology and the cin-trance reconsidered

As we have seen in this chapter, Jean Rouchs practice of shared
anthropology took two forms: one, relatively passive, involved feedback
screenings at which the subjects would provide ethnographic comment
and, ideally, suggest ideas for new lms: the other, more active, involved
direct collaboration in the making of the lms and, in the ideal case,
the orchestration of performances between lm-maker and subject so
as to bring to the surface of experience a privileged domain of truth.
There is certainly a common ground between the collaborative
approaches to anthropology generally advocated by Anglo-Saxon
postmodernists from the 1980s onwards and Rouchs idea of shared
anthropology when considered in its relatively passive form, namely the
dialogical exchanges around the feedback screenings. But in its active
form there is an extra, performative dimension to Rouchs idea of shared
anthropology that is absent from most Anglo-Saxon understandings of
dialogical anthropology. For, in the conventional Anglo-Saxon
formulation, dialogical anthropology consists of a process in which
researcher and subjects engage in a verbal dialogue in order to arrive at
some commonly agreed construction of the subjects social world in
which the political, intellectual or cultural biases that either or both
parties might have brought to the fieldwork encounter have in some
sense been negotiated. In the Rouchian formulation, on the other hand,
both parties are conceived as undergoing a transformation as each puts
on an almost theatrical performance for the other, thereby creating a
particular kind of knowledge that is a direct result of the encounter itself.
Moreover, for Rouch, this orchestration of performances could occur
whether or not the researcher was armed with a camera:
Once in the field, the simple observer undergoes a change. When he is at
work, he is no longer the person who greeted the Elders at the entrance to
the village. To resort to the Vertovian terminology again, he ethno-looks,
he ethno-observes, he ethno-thinks, while those before him undergo a
similar change once they have come to trust this strange visitor who keeps
returning: they ethno-show, they ethno-speak, they might even ethnothink ... (Rouch 1997: 227)
In Rouchs view, the knowledge that arises in such situations far from
being dismissed as false because it is an artifice of the encounter, as it
might be by Anglo-Saxons of a classically empiricist persuasion should
be considered more privileged and more valuable than any form of
objective, detached observation that only reveals the surface of things.
This extra dimension to the active form of Rouchs understanding of
shared anthropology, to which the cin-trance is central, can be traced,
96
Paul Henley
I would suggest, to Rouchs early encounter with surrealism. For

although he may have chosen a Vertovian vocabulary to describe the
cin-trance, the idea that in order to gain access to an otherwise hidden,
privileged domain of truth, it is necessary to free oneself from intellectual
preoccupations, put ones trust in chance inspiration and reconnect with
some more deep-seated, primitive well-spring of creativity has clear
echoes with a number of key surrealist ideas and methods, of which
automatic writing is merely the best known. But whether we consider the
pedigree of the cin-trance to be surrealist or Vertovian, in either case it
is an idea that stems from the 1920s. Does it then represent a method
that is still relevant to anthropology today, some eighty years later?
Any experienced documentary film-maker will probably recognise,
at least to some degree, the state of mind that Rouch describes by the
term cin-trance. Some film-makers may even be able to identify with
the joyful sense of unbridled creativity perhaps of Stimmung or
Dionysian grace which Rouch associates with this condition. I am
certainly aware from my own experience of a similar state of mind that
can arise when one has been filming an event over a prolonged period,
particularly a long and repetitious ritual event, in a situation in which
one knows the protagonists well and feels confident of ones role as a
film-maker. Under these circumstances, banal considerations of both
technique and theory can fall away, and everything can seem almost
miraculously to work, including not just ones own handling of the
equipment but also the movements and reactions of the subjects within
the frame. A certain complicity is established between film-maker and
subjects, giving rise to a sense that both parties are conspiring to
produce a sequence that is not only well-executed, but also reveals
certain things about the ideas or attitudes of the subjects that had
previously remained hidden.
But even though one might freely admit that the notion of the cintrance refers to an entirely recognisable condition, the idea that one can
arrive at a privileged truth by this means is a proposition that is very
difficult for any anthropologist formed in the Anglo-Saxon tradition,
myself included, to accept. The cin-trance may indeed generate
performances on both sides of the lens that give rise to revelatory snapshots or postcards of the inner state of mind of the subjects. But, in
common with many other Anglo-Saxon anthropologists, I would argue
that in order to be truly valuable to anthropology these revelations cannot
be taken at face value but rather must be located and interpreted not
immediately perhaps, but eventually as ideological manifestations of a
particular network of social relations and cultural understandings.25
One should also be wary of uncritically saluting the politically
progressive nature of Rouchs idea of shared anthropology, be it in the
97
active or the passive form. Some African film-makers associated with

Rouch, even some of those whom he supported early in their careers,
have been critical of his work, considering it irredeemably colonialist,
even if in a largely benign paternalist manner (Haffner 1996,
Hennebelle 1996). Clearly, these views have to be understood within the
complex entanglements of the last period of the French colonial
presence in Africa. But they should make one wary of laying too great a
burden of expectation on the notion of shared anthropology. At the
end of the day, although his collaborators may have played a highly
active part in creating the films, Rouch remained the overall author: they
may have received screen credits, but the films still bore the legend un
film de Jean Rouch. Although Rouch always preferred the term filmmaker, so as to avoid the title director, with all that this implied in
terms of directing the activities of a team, in actual practice his
collaborators ended up being the protagonists or the technicians, while
he remained the director in the sense that it was he who organised the
films, gave shape to them and distributed them afterwards. As Jean-Paul
Colleyn commented in his obituary of Rouch, within the inequalities of
NorthSouth relationships the idea of an entirely shared anthropology,
based on a genuinely collective authorship, was always going to be
something of a fiction and continues to be so, even under present
circumstances, almost half a century after the formal end of European
colonialism in West Africa (Colleyn 2004: 540, also Colleyn 2005).
But even while we should recognise this in more sober moments, we
should be careful not to be too presentist in our assessment of Rouchs
work. We should not underestimate the hurdles of both a cultural and
political nature that Rouch had to overcome to make collaborative films
with Africans of relatively marginal status in the still-colonial era of
the 1940s and 1950s. Nor should we forget that the idea of
surrendering any degree of authorship to the subjects of study was far
ahead of the practice of the majority of even the most progressive of
his anthropological contemporaries, in both France and the AngloSaxon world. In short, even if Rouchs ability to practise a fully shared
anthropology was limited by the particular conjuncture of political
conditions under which he was working, this does not diminish the
challenge that his example still poses to the film-makers of today.
Paul Henley
98
Notes
1. See Forbes (1996). By Anglo-Saxon, the French generally mean those who are both
English-speaking and of European extraction, i.e. primarily people from the US, Britain,
southern Africa and Australasia. This classification does not take into account the
personal, cultural or ethnic affiliation of individuals, so someone who is, say, a Scottish
Jew would also be Anglo-Saxon. In the context of academic anthropology, even the
Polish-born Bronisaw Malinowski can be placed in the category Anglo-Saxon because
he was European, mostly published in English and spent most of his career in Englishspeaking countries. I shall retain the term here in that sense.
2. Mick Eatons early edited collection of articles played an important role in introducing
Rouch to English-speaking audiences (1979) as did the special editions of the journals
Studies in visual communication vol. 11, no. 1 (1985) and of Visual anthropology vol. 2,
nos. 34 (1989), edited by Steven Feld and Jay Ruby respectively, and, somewhat later,
Paul Stollers monograph, The cinematic griot (1992).
3. See, for example, Clifford (1988a, 1991), Price and Jamin (1988), Richardson
(1993), Thompson (1995), Douglas (1995), de Huesch (1995), Bate (2007) and also
Rouch (1995c).
4. See Rouch (2003b: 110). Rouch often referred to the Griaules smile and once
compared studying ethnography with him as being like a game of blind-mans-buff
that made him laugh so much, it almost made him ill (Rouch 1989: 10).
5. Piault (2000: 11416). Griaule was also a very talented photographer, as evidenced
by the magnificent photographs in the appendix to his major work, Masques dogons. He
had also played an active part in the development of aerial photography (Bate 2007).
6. In contrast to the ambiguity in his attitudes to Griaule, Rouch always retained the
highest regard for Germaine Dieterlen. When they were both in Paris, they spent a
great deal of time in one anothers company, particularly after Rouchs first wife, Jane,
died in1987. When Dieterlen herself died in 1999 at the age of 95, Rouchs closest
associates report that he was cast into a deep depression and never quite recaptured
his celebrated joie de vivre again.
7. Dieterlen (1988). This book was first published in 1950 and was based on her doctoral
thesis.
8. Rouch (1989: 3201). These ideas concerning the primary importance of collecting
ethnographic documents in as objective and rigorous a fashion as possible would
later come to influence an important strand of Rouchs film-making methodology,
particularly when he worked with Dieterlen in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the
production of a series of films about the Sigui, the major ritual cycle of the Dogon
(see Henley 2007).
9. See Griaule (1957). The locus classicus for Malinowskis fieldwork method is the
Introduction to his Argonauts of the Western Pacific, first published in 1922.
10. Rouch (2003b: 112). See also the first few pages of Dieu deau (1988, originally
published in 1948), in which Griaule describes the scene as he and his three
colleagues pursue their interrogatory investigations in the immediate vicinity of their
field station, first thing in the morning on the day after their arrival.
11. Rouch (1995b: 228); see also Taylor (2003: 14041).
12. When challenged about the relative absence of women in his films, Rouch explained
that he had found it quite impossible for a European man to film African women, since
this would not be permitted by the local people (Georgakas et al. 2003: 217).
13. For a discussion of direct cinema, see Mamber (1974) and Winston (1988, 1995);
for a discussion of observational cinema, see Young (1995) and Henley (2004).
14. See particularly Griaule (1957: 59). Clifford (1988b: 80ff.) suggests that, having been
initiated into the arcane parole claire in the latter stages of his work among the Dogon,
99
Griaule underwent some sort of conversion, becoming more respectful of the Dogon
and considering them to be sage doctors rather than base liars. However, Griaules
handbook was published some ten years after his supposedly transformative
encounter with the blind hunter Ogotommli.
15. See Jutra (1960: 40) on Rouchs support of Tallou. Otherwise, most of this
information comes from the two excellent films on Rouchs African associates: Rouchs
gang (1993) by Steef Meyknecht, Dirk Nijland and Joost Verhey; and Friends, fools,
family: Rouchs collaborators in Niger (2005) by Berit Madsen and Anne Mette
Jrgensen. In addition to this immediate gang, Rouch also helped the careers of
many other African associates of his: Oumarou Ganda, Moustapha Alassane and Safi
Faye, all of whom became significant figures in West African cinema, were not only
first introduced to cinema by acting in Rouchs ethnofictions but were also
encouraged by him in their later careers to become film-makers in their own right.
16. Rouch (1995a: 96). The reference in this passage to ethnographic film-makers acting
as entomologists is probably an allusion to a celebrated remark by Sembne
Ousmane, the Senegalese feature film director, who, in a debate that took place in
1965, claimed that Africanists such as Rouch look at us like insects (see Cervoni
1996).
17. Rouch disdained both Marx and Freud on the grounds that they were thinkers who
exploited other peoples dreams rather than being dreamers themselves (Taylor 2003:
132; see also Rouch 1995c: 41112).
18. Morin (2003: 230231, 264 n. 3). There is an intriguing echo here of Malinowskis
famous observation in his methodological preface to Argonauts of the Western Pacific
that it was through his plunges into the life of the natives that he discovered that
the behaviour, their manner of being ... became more transparent and easily
understandable than it had been before (1932: 22).
19. The article was first published in the proceedings of the conference in 1971.
Convenient republications are to be found in the second edition of Rouchs major
work on Songhay religion (Rouch 1989: 33749) and in the more recent collection
of his ethnographic essays (Rouch 1997). An abbreviated version is added to his
interview with Enrico Fulchignoni, published in 1981 (Fulchignoni 1981). Both the
original article and the Fulchignoni interview have been translated and republished
by Steven Feld (see Fulchignoni 2003: 18285, Rouch 2003a).
20. In the film commentary, Rouch refers to sauterelles, grasshoppers, as causing the
problem, though in describing the film elsewhere he says that it was chenilles
processionnaires, army caterpillars (Rouch 1989: 18586n). It is only too likely that
the unfortunate villagers were suffering from both.
21. Rouch (2003a: 101). But see also his somewhat more sceptical discussion in Colleyn
(1992: 4142).
22. Rouch (1989: 186n). Rouch explains that this term was used by such diverse artistic
figures as the early nineteenth-century German Romantic poet Friedrich Hlderlin,
the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the early twentieth-century surrealist artist
Giorgio de Chirico, creator of the image that had been part of Rouchs own
Damascene encounter with anthropology. See also Fulchignoni (2003: 186).
23. Rouch (1968, 1995a: 8283). By the 1960s, Vertov was a largely forgotten figure,
even though he had died only in 1954. However, the publicity given to his ideas by the
French cinema historian Georges Sadoul served to revivify an interest in his work (see
Sadoul 1963).
24. See Rouch (1989, especially pp. 3839), also Stoller (1995, passim).
25. Although I have attributed these sceptical views, obviously stereotypically, to AngloSaxons, it was evident at the conference out of which this volume arose that many of
the French participants had similar reservations about this aspect of the Rouchian
Paul Henley
100
approach. Equally, there are certain Anglo-Saxon anthropologists who might

disagree with the view that I propose here: see, for example, Paul Stollers arguments
about Rouch as a radical empiricist (1992: 20218).
References
Bate, D. 2007. Everyday madness: surrealism, ethnography and the photographic image,
in J. ten Brink (ed.), Building bridges: the cinema of Jean Rouch, London: Wallflower Press.
Blue, J. 1996. Jean Rouch: interviewed by James Blue, in K. Macdonald and M. Cousins
(eds), Imagining reality: the Faber book of documentary, London and Boston: Faber and
Faber. Originally appeared in Film Comment 2 (2), 1964
Cervoni, A. 1996. Une confrontation historique en 1965 entre Jean Rouch et Sembne
Ousmane, in R. Prdal (ed.), Jean Rouch ou le cin-plaisir: CinmAction, 81: 1046.
ditions Corlet.
Clifford, J. 1988a. On ethnographic surrealism, in J. Clifford, The predicament of culture: twentiethcentury ethnography, literature, and art, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
1988b. Power and dialogue in ethnography: Marcel Griaules initiation, in J.
Clifford, The predicament of culture: twentieth century ethnography, literature, art,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
1991. Documents: a decomposition, Visual Anthropology Review, 71: 6283.
Colleyn, J.-P. 1992. Jean Rouch, 54 ans sans trpied, CinmAction, 64: 4050.
2004. Jean Rouch, presque un homme-sicle, LHomme, 171172: 53742.
2005. Jean Rouch: an anthropologist ahead of his time, American Anthropologist,
1071: 11215.
de Heusch, L. 1995. Pierre Mabille, Michel Leiris, anthropologies, in C.W. Thompson (ed.),
LAutre et le Sacr: surralisme, cinma, ethnologie, Paris: LHarmattan.
Dieterlen, G. 1988. Essai sur la religion bambara (2nd ed), Brussels: ditions de la Universit
de Bruxelles.
Douglas, M. 1995. Rflexions sur le renard ple et deux anthropologies: propos du
surralisme et de lanthropologie franaise, in C.W. Thompson (ed.), LAutre et le Sacr:
surralisme, cinma, ethnologie, Paris: LHarmattan.
Eaton, M. (ed.). 1979. Anthropology, reality, cinema: the films of Jean Rouch, London: British
Film Institute.
Fieschi, J.-A. and A. Tchin. 1967. Jean Rouch: Jaguar, Cahiers du Cinma, 195: 1720.
Forbes, J. 1996. Jean Rouch et la Grande-Bretagne, in R. Prdal (ed.), Jean Rouch ou le cinplaisir: CinmAction, 81: 13637. ditions Corlet.
Fulchignoni, E. 1981. Entretien de Jean Rouch, in P.-E. Gallet (ed.), Jean Rouch: une
rtrospective, Paris: Ministre des Relations Extrieures and Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique.
2003. Jean Rouch with Enrico Fulchignoni: cin-anthropology, in S. Feld (ed.),
Cin-Ethnography, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Georgakas, D., U. Gupta and J. Janda. 2003. The politics of visual anthropology, in S. Feld
(ed.), Cin-Ethnography, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Reprinted from Cinaste, 8: 4 (1978).
Griaule, M. 1957. Mthode de lethnographie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
1985. Dieu deau: entretiens avec Ogotemmli, Paris: Fayard. First published in
1948.
Haffner, P. 1996. Les avis de cinq cinastes dAfrique noire, in R. Prdal (ed.), Jean Rouch
ou le cin-plaisir: CinmAction, 814: 89103. ditions Corlet.
101
Henley, P. 2004. Putting film to work: observational cinema as practical ethnography, in

S. Pink, L. Kurti and A.I. Afonso (eds), Working images: methods and media in
ethnographic research, New York and London: Routledge.
2007. Jean Rouch and the legacy of the pale master: filming the Sigui, 1931
2003, in J. ten Brink (ed.), Building bridges: the cinema of Jean Rouch, London:
Wallflower Press.
Hennebelle, G. 1996. Jean Rouch et lthique du cinma ethnographique, in R. Prdal
(ed.), Jean Rouch ou le cin-plaisir: CinmAction, 81: 7679. ditions Corlet.
Jamin, J. 1991. Anxious science: ethnography as a devils dictionary, Visual Anthropology
Review, 7(1): 8491.
Jutra, C. 1960. En courant derrire Rouch I, Cahiers du Cinma, 113: 3243.
Malinowski, B. 1932. Argonauts of the western Pacific: an account of native enterprise and
adventure in the archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea, London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul.
Mamber, S. 1974. Cinema verite in America: studies in uncontrolled documentary, Cambridge,
MA and London: MIT Press.
Morin, E. 2003. Chronicle of a film, in S. Feld (ed. and tr.), Cin-Ethnography, Minneapolis
and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Piault, M.-H. 2000. Anthropologie et cinma: passage limage, passage par limage, Paris:
ditions Nathan.
Prdal, R. 1996. Bibliographie, in R. Prdal (ed.), Jean Rouch ou le cin-plaisir. CinmAction,
81: 22736.
Price, S. and J. Jamin. 1988. A conversation with Michel Leiris, Current Anthropology,
29(1): 15774.
Richardson, M. 1993. An encounter of wise men and cyclops women, Critique of
Anthropology, 13(1): 5775.
Rohmer, E. and L. Marcorelles. 1963. Entretien avec Jean Rouch, Cahiers du Cinma, 144:
122.
Rouch, J. 1956. Migrations au Ghana (Gold Coast): enqute 19531955, Journal de la
Socit des Africanistes, 26: 33196.
1968. Le film ethnographique, in J. Poirier (ed.), Encyclopdie de la Pliade:
ethnologie gnrale, Paris: Gallimard.
1989. La Religion et la magie songhay (2nd ed.), Brussels: ditions de la Universit
de Bruxelles.
1995a. The camera and man, in P. Hockings (ed.), Principles of visual anthropology
(2nd ed.), Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
1995b. Our totemic ancestors and crazed masters, in P. Hockings (ed.), Principles
of visual anthropology (2nd ed.), Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
1995c. Lautre et le sacr: jeu sacr, jeu politique, in C.W. Thompson (ed.), LAutre
et le Sacr: surralisme, cinma, ethnologie, Paris: LHarmattan.
1997. Essai sur les avatars de la personne du possd, du magicien, du sorcier, du
cinaste et de lethnographe, in J. Rouch, Les Hommes et les dieux du fleuve: essai ethnographique
sur les populations songhay du moyen Niger 19411983, Paris: ditions Artcom.
2003a. On the vicissitudes of the self: the possessed dancer, the magician, the
sorcerer, the filmmaker, and the ethnographer, in S. Feld (ed.), Cin-Ethnography,
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
2003b. The mad fox and the pale master, in S. Feld (ed.), Cin-Ethnography,
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Originally published in
French in 1978.
Sadoul, G. 1963. Actualit de Dziga Vertov, Cahiers du Cinma, 144: 2334.
Stoller, P. 1992. The cinematic griot: the ethnography of Jean Rouch, Chicago and London:
102
Paul Henley
1995. Embodying colonial memories: spirit possession, power, and the Hauka in West
Africa, New York and London: Routledge.
Taylor, L. 2003. A life on the edge of film and anthropology, in S. Feld (ed.), CinEthnography, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Originally
published in Visual Anthropology Review, 71: 92102 (1991).
Thompson, C. 1995. De Buuel Rouch: les surralistes devant le documentaire et le
film ethnographique, in C.W. Thompson (ed.), LAutre et le Sacr: surralisme, cinma,
ethnologie, Paris: LHarmattan.
Winston, B. 1988. Direct cinema: the third decade, in A. Rosenthal (ed.), New challenges
for documentary, Berkeley and London: University of California Press.
1995. Claiming the real: the documentary film revisited, London: British Film
Institute.
Young, C. 1995. Observational cinema, in P. Hockings (ed.), Principles of visual
anthropology (2nd ed.), Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Chapter 4
ERIC DE DAMPIERRE AND THE ART

OF FIELDWORK
Margaret Buckner
The aim of this chapter is not to circumscribe the work of Eric de

Dampierre that would be a task too daunting for this author but to
shine a light on some of its various aspects, especially those that are
related to his eldwork in Africa. In order to limit the danger of reducing
his thought, I will use his words albeit translated into English to let
him speak for himself. My personal acquaintance with Dampierre began
in 1982, when I was a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Bangassou,
Central African Republic, the town where Dampierre carried out his
eldwork. By the time my three-year Peace Corps stint was up, I had
enrolled at the University of Paris-X (Nanterre) to pursue graduate
studies in ethnologie under his direction.
Early life
Eric de Dampierre was born on 4 July 1928 to an aristocratic family.
His father was French, his mother Belgian, and he had an older sister.
He must have been very gifted as a student, for he graduated from
secondary school as a bachelier in philosophy when he was sixteen years
old, received his license s lettres (the equivalent of an American
Bachelor of Arts) at age eighteen and a second license en droit at age
nineteen, and then graduated from the lInstitut dtudes politiques of
Paris (Sciences Po Paris) as a twenty-year-old. He was a prolic reader,
not only in French, but also in English, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin
and Greek. He read literature, the classics, philosophy, history, sociology,
104
Margaret Buckner
Figure 4.1. Eric de Dampierre at Madabazouma, thirty kilometres from Bangassou,

Central African Republic. Date unknown. Courtesy of Laboratoire de lethnologie et de
la sociologie comparative (UMR 7186, CNRS), Universit Paris-Ouest.
political science and anthropology, among others. In 194849 he

completed his compulsory military service, rst in Casablanca, then in
Villacoublay (France).
At twenty years of age, he published his rst article, Sociomtrie:
note tymologique (Dampierre 1948). The paper explored the origin
of the word sociometry, which a certain Dr Moreno claimed to have
coined in 1943 (Moreno 1943). Dampierre, however, traced it to an
105
Austrian, F.X. de Neumann-Spallart, who used the term during a

session of the International Institute of Statistics in Rome in 1887.
Dampierre then cited August Chirac, who said he had invented the word
rst, and who developed his ideas in a published article (Chirac 1897).
This rst publication, at age twenty, showed Dampierres extremely
conscientious use of terms, and also his meticulous care in nding and
critiquing the original sources. He continued to trace words and
concepts even or rather, especially after he went to Africa. For
example, in 1984 he wrote an extremely detailed study of the word
nguinza, now meaning money, concluding it was probably brought to
Central Africa by Senegalese riemen (Note de recherche n 17).1
By 1949, he had become involved with UNESCO, probably thanks to
his acquaintance with Alfred Mtraux, who at that time was director of
the Department of Social Sciences at UNESCO. Dampierre participated
in an interdisciplinary study of a French commune in the Paris suburbs
and he wrote the report in 1949; it was published in 1956 under the title
Malvire-sur-Desle: Une commune aux franges de la rgion parisienne
(Dampierre 1956). The study resulted from a conference held at the
Royaumont Abbey in September of 1948 on the comparative method in
social sciences, and a follow-up meeting in May 1949. The researchers
were trained in history, sociology, philosophy, psychology and social
psychology. The report is a classic example of community studies carried
out at the time. It describes Malvire-sur-Desle (a ctional name) in all
its social, economic and political complexity, and shows how the various
factions in the community interacted or not. In the methods section,
Dampierre explains that the research team basically moved into the
village, frequented cafes and bars, attended religious services, went to the
movies and dances, and helped organise local festivals. Two months later,
when the study officially began, residents were accustomed to seeing the
researchers, and were inviting them to their homes for meals. The
sociologists worked both with written documents and by carrying out
ethnographic eldwork. Dampierre, in this report and in others, does not
treat sociology any differently from anthropology, and shows that good
eldwork can and should be carried out in both elds.2
In 1950, at age twenty-two, he left for the United States as an
Exchange Fellow at the University of Chicago, where he was a member
of the Committee on Social Thought. There he interacted with scholars
such as Leo Strauss, Robert Redeld and John Nef. He also rubbed
shoulders with the anthropologists there and was impressed by the foureld approach of American anthropology, as opposed to the divisions in
France between ethnology, (physical) anthropology and prehistory.
One of his earliest manuscripts, dated September 1951, perhaps
written while he was in Chicago, is entitled Sur deux diffrents types
dhrtiques (On two different kinds of heretic). In stark contrast to all
106
Margaret Buckner
of his other papers, this one has not a single footnote, citation or
reference. Thus Dampierre writes:
Man, the first animal to want to discover his place in the universe and to
search relentlessly for the meaning of his existence, uses in that search two
types (Ideal-Typus) of thinking: dogmatic thinking and scientific thinking. ...
In dogmatic thinking, truth is already there at the start, before it is
discovered by man. It could be a revelation from God, ... a rational essence,
... or the meaning of history. In all these cases, man needs the key to the
treasure; it is either given to him, or he must find it, or he must make it. In
scientific thinking, there is no dogma. To continue with the metaphor, man
must seek not the key to the treasure, but the treasure itself, though it never
appears to him immediately. He constructs it himself, by abstracting it from
reality and mentally organizing it. That is scientific theory. While dogma is
the truth that is given to me, science is the truth that I verify, and thus that
I create. ... Dogma is by its very essence unchangeable, perfect, and finite ...
The dogmatic heretic is burned at the stake. [Progression is possible, but it
is progression in the revelation of the truth.] ... Science is, on the contrary,
imperfect, cumulative and infinite. The scientist does not seek to translate
reality, he abstracts it to master it. ... He invents concepts, and the richer his
imagination, the stronger his power of abstraction, the better his theory. ...
Progress is inevitable. ... The scientific heretic inaugurates new theory. ...
The heretic of yesterday is the doctor of tomorrow. (1951, passim)
Thus, well before Robin Horton and others, Dampierre described in his own
way how a traditional worldview differs from modern scientic thinking.
Back in France in 1952, he resumed his studies and research under
the direction of the sociologist Raymond Aron. Aron denes the aim
proper to sociology as the combination and reunion of the study of the
part with the study of the whole (Aron 1968: 10). It was this aim that
Dampierre followed. He was interested in how each society organises
itself, based on its own principles, and in how societies hold together, how
all the different participants play their respective roles. His goal was to
understand Society by discovering how societies work, how individuals
form a society, what holds the group together and what keeps it going.
In 1952, Dampierre became a researcher for the CNRS (Centre
national de recherche scientique) and was assigned to the Centre
dtudes sociologiques in Paris. In that same year, he launched and
edited for Plon, a well respected publishing house in Paris, the series
Recherches en sciences humaines. Over the next twenty years or so, a total
of thirty-three books were published in the series under Dampierres
direction, which included the rst French translations of such scholars
as Max Weber and Leo Strauss.
And so, by the time he made his rst trip to Africa in 1954 at age
twenty-six, he was extremely well read in several languages and in
107
several disciplines, had earned several university degrees, had published

articles and edited journals and books, had hobnobbed with leading
social scientists in Chicago, had worked closely with sociologists and
Africanists in Paris (for example, Michel Leiris, Andr Schaeffner and
Denise Paulme) and had carried out interdisciplinary projects in the eld.
Fieldwork in Central Africa

In the preface to Un Ancien Royaume Bandia (1967), Dampierre writes
about his rst mission to Bangassou, a town in the east of what is now
the Central African Republic:
In 1954, a French government agency asked myself and a colleague to go
find out why the Nzakara, who were thought to have been dying out over the
past half-century, were having so few children. It was a time when
government administrators, who often had difficulty posing the right
questions, still didnt know the answer. It was also a time when sociologists,
unaware of their limits, wouldnt think of turning down an opportunity to
work, no matter how uncertain the resources of their discipline.
Nzakaraland had never known researchers before us. It is no longer very
common to be the first researchers to arrive anywhere in Africa. We had to
scout things out before we could build a research project. That first year, we
never took our boots off. And we still had to answer the question. It is not too
far-fetched to suggest that there is no greater, more difficult or complex problem
to address, whose meaning escapes us so mercilessly, than the problem that
touches the meaning that humans attach to giving life. At the end of our first
period of fieldwork (19541955), we were not able to satisfy those who had
sent us, and, besides, their interests had already shifted to other matters.
Whether the difficulties were resolvable or not, we learned much by
addressing them. Moreover, I developed respect for the way this old Zande
society worked and affection for its political warriors, its intrepid poets, its
witches, its noble diviners. (1967: 11)
Dampierre was hooked from the start, and returned to Bangassou in

19571958. He surmised that the Nzakara were in no way practising
collective suicide by refusing to have children, as some had suggested.
He asked that a physician go to Bangassou to explore medical reasons
for the drop in natality. That physician was Dr Anne Laurentin, who in
196061 discovered that venereal diseases were probably causing
infertility. She also took up ethnographic studies of her own.
That rst trip to Bangassou, commissioned by ORSTOM (Office de la
Recherche Scientique et Technique dOutre-Mer), was the maiden
108
Margaret Buckner
mission of the MSHO (Mission sociologique du Haut-Oubangui or

Sociological Mission of the Upper Ubangui). The EPHE (Ecole pratique
des hautes tudes) and then the CNRS nanced successive periods of
eldwork for the MSHO in 19571958 and 19641965, then annually
from 1966 to 1979, and again annually from 1981 to 1987. Dampierre
also went to Bangassou in 19601961. The MSHO had an office in the
basement of the Muse de lHomme in Paris, next to the office of Michel
Leiris and other Africanists. In the early 1980s, the MSHO joined the
Laboratoire dethnologie et de sociologie comparative on the campus of
the University of Paris X-Nanterre. The MSHO had a post office box
(number 98) at the Bangassou post office at least until the mid-1990s.
Dampierre established a research station on the outskirts of the
town of Bangassou, at the home of a former plantation owner, Godeste,
which also became the name of the station. The house, which sat in a
clearing surrounded by forest, was made of stone, with a thatched roof;
it had two large rooms and a small annex for washing. About twenty
yards from the house, there was a smaller, round house that had a spare
bedroom and a large shady porch that served as dining area. The station
became Dampierres second home, and he returned regularly for
periods of several months until the late 1980s. He more or less adopted
an extended Nzakara family to help run the research station, including
a housekeeper, a cook, a driver, a mechanic, a groundskeeper and a few
others. He would stop in at their village on the way to Bangassou, load
them all into his Land Rover and drive them to Godeste, where they
would make themselves at home for the season. An aristocrat, he felt
at home among the class-conscious Nzakara, a people who shared his
interest in making living an art.
With Godeste as his home base, Dampierre travelled the length and
breadth of Nzakaraland, stopping in at villages and getting to know
especially the elders who lived there. He also made excursions into
Zandeland, going at least as far east as Mboki. On a few occasions, he
would bring elders and musicians to the Godeste research station. One
such festival of music and poetry took place on 19 November 1971; he
supplied transport, room, board and drink to several renowned Nzakara
harpist-poets so they could all relive the music, language and courtly
ambience of yore.
Dampierre involved as many researchers as possible from other
disciplines and backgrounds, inviting them to spend time at Godeste.
The list of guests and colleagues includes botanists, a geologist, a
musicologist and a linguist, as well as other anthropologists. But
eldwork was not enough. He had to join in peoples lives and build
relationships; people were not just objects of study but collaborators,
friends and family, and he felt quite comfortable among them. In an
109
earlier publication (Dampierre 1956), he had listed getting to know the

locals and participating in village life as a technique to gain better
knowledge about them. In Africa, it no longer seemed that establishing
a warm relationship with ones fellows was a means to an end; it
became, instead, an end in itself. He was already ready to help, both
monetarily and logistically; in emergencies his Land Rover often served
as the local ambulance. He taught sporadically at the lyce at
Bangassou; he encouraged students there to pursue studies in sociology
and ethnology, and sought nancial backing for them to continue their
studies in Bangui and eventually Paris.
Fieldwork philosophy
For Dampierre, ethnology and sociology are really one and the same. He
studied French villages and Nzakara villages using the same techniques
and methods: a combination of historical documents, interviews and
conversations with local people about their past and present, and
detailed observation of behaviour, practices, and institutions. All three
(historical documents, oral history, ethnography) reinforce each other.
He had always been interested in social dynamics, in how and why
societies change over time. To understand social and cultural processes
and dynamics, a historical perspective is essential. Many, if not most, of
his descriptions of Nzakara society of the nineteenth and early twentieth
century are based on historical documents. His major work, Un Ancien
Royaume Bandia, has a 70page review of historical sources (tude critique
des sources). But he combined historical accounts with an understanding
gained from living among the Nzakara, learning their language, listening
to their poets, learning their proverbs and observing their customs and
traditions. In his dissertation defence, Dampierre explains:
The method I used in this work is perhaps not completely recommended.
Our British colleagues, who rightly insist that the ethnologist should observe
behavior rather than listen to what people say or read old texts, warn us not
to read the past into the present or read the present into the past. But that is
exactly what I have done, while taking special precautions. The first, and
the most important, is to do fieldwork before reading historical documents.
One is often surprised to find, after five or ten years, new meaning in
documents that at first seemed absurd, wrong, or crazy. One must, of course,
make the necessary transpositions, and, from the very beginning,
understand how such or such behavior would have appeared to the
innocent explorer or administrator. To that first effort I have added a second:
to treat the European context and the African context in counterpoint. The
contrasting interpretations of the treaty between [King] Bangassou and
110
Margaret Buckner
Vangele [Belgian explorer] provide a good example. Furthermore, one must

spend a long time in a place in order to grasp the African reality behind the
administrative accounts (1968: 12).
He wove together written history and oral history to piece together the
past, to sketch out past events that led to current social organisation. He
had faith that oral history, properly gathered and interpreted, could be
more reliable than second-, third-, and fourth-hand accounts recorded
by European travellers and administrators. In a very slim book, Des
ennemis, des arabes, des histoires (1983), Dampierre refutes the generally
accepted historical account that the Arab slave-trader Rabih invaded
the Nzakara kingdom twice, vanquished the royal army and pillaged
the territory. He demonstrates that skilfully gathering oral traditions
yields better results than consulting the frequently erroneous accounts
of European explorers. His concluding paragraph summarises the role
of the ethnographer or oral historian:
I have attempted here, after critically reviewing the sources, as all good
historians should, to reconstruct the collective experience of partial
testimonies, scattered in space and time, and to understand that experience
through its reflection in the mirror of the outsider. In a society without
writing, asking piecemeal questions in privacy gets only useless information
or answers that most please the interrogator. That is why continuously
questioning the elders can only be useful over a lifetime and done in public.
One must learn to get old. Contrary to what one often feels obliged to write,
bringing that experience to the surface has nothing to do with tradition. That
very action, for the society that wants or accepts it, can actually preserve
tradition. We need to know how to use tradition to uncover what refutes it.
Such is the work of the mandrels, those modest intermediaries. (1983: 41)
Like Nzakara poets, Dampierre uses a metaphor to describe his role in

the process: that of a mandrel. A mandrel is a cylindrical, rotating shaft
that serves as an axis for a larger rotating part. He saw himself as a tool
allowing the various partial memories of Nzakara experience to take shape
in a coherent history, thus enabling the Nzakara to solidify their tradition.
Dampierre emphasised his point about the necessity of long-term
eldwork by offering a counterexample, in the form of an epigraph, on
the same page: We were so successful that at the end of two hours, the
Pygmy had been sketched, measured, feasted, showered with gifts and
submitted to a detailed interrogation (Schweinfurth 1875: 113).
Using documents and texts from individual perspectives is something
he had long thought about. In an early publication, Le sociologue et
lanalyse des documents personnels (1957), Dampierre proposed that
using personal documents [autobiographies, personal letters, diaries,
drawings, unguided interviews faithfully transcribed], for the same time
111
and effort, provide much richer material than most other techniques
used in social science (1957: 444). One must remember, he continued,
that personal documents may not be sincere, may not be pertinent and
may be affected by direct stimulation or solicitation. They also represent
only one point of view. But they can be useful to ethnologists who are
trying to reconstruct an indigenous culture from the inside. In the same
paper, Dampierre offers instructions on how to use such documents
fruitfully, while avoiding the traps. In the eld, he collected many kinds
of personal documentation, both written (for example, by school-age
Zande refugees living at the refugee camp in Mboki) and tape-recorded
(especially life histories and historical narratives).
Dampierre learned the language one of the rst French
ethnographers to do so and he learned it well. People told me that he
spoke Nzakara like an elder, which was a compliment indeed. Dampierre
was versed in phonology and linguistic theory, and he set about
compiling a Nzakara dictionary. His understanding of the language
allowed him not only to question and converse with the Nzakara but
also to pay attention to peoples unsolicited, spontaneous comments,
to how they formulate their ideas and to their choice of phrases and
gurative expressions. Many of his ndings are based on what he heard
people say, as well as what they never said. For example, when
discussing musical instruments, he states, To have been made by a
child is a way for an object not to exist (1995: 68); in other words,
saying that something was made by a child is saying that it is irrelevant.
Besides being a means to an end, Dampierre also considered the
language as an end in itself. The language serves as a window into the
culture. He used features of the language to support his ideas about the
Nzakara mode of thought and aesthetic. In a paper written in 1983
(Note de recherche n12), he exposed the Nzakara catgories de
lentendement in a structured table similar to studies of Greek categories.
We would spend hours discussing possible English, French and other
translations for Zande words, always itting through the pages of the
Lalande Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie.
Dampierre was drawn to the poetry and music of the Nzakara and
Zande harpists. He travelled the length and breadth of Nzakara country
to record the best harpists, lugging the Nagra, and later the Uher, tape
recorders, along with microphones, batteries, cables, extra reels and so
on. He often encountered obstacles, such as technical malfunction,
poor weather, illness, absences and funerals. He learned Nzakara poetry
inside out, the double speech, the allusions, the idiomatic expressions,
the gures of speech. Many of the examples in the dictionary he was
compiling come from the poems. Throughout his books and articles, he
refers to snatches of song that, through allusions and proverbs, reveal
112
Margaret Buckner
the inner workings of Nzakara society. Dampierre himself used

language poetically. It is evident in his translations of oral literature
and texts, as well as in his writings. He published two volumes of
Nzakara poetry (1963, 1987),3 which he rendered into French poetry.
As anyone who worked with him knew, Dampierre was extremely
observant, down to the nest details. Nothing escaped his interest. His
observations were eclectic, all-inclusive, involving every facet of discourse
and behaviour, from greetings to building houses to playing the harp to
ghting battles. No person, practice, technique or word was irrelevant.
He talked with all members of society, commoners and nobles, young and
old, men and women; studying them in isolation is pointless, for their
interaction is what holds a society together. Though he had tremendous
admiration for Evans-Pritchard, Dampierre bemoaned the fact that he
had not been able to include women in his eldwork.4
He sought guiding principles that held through different practices and
institutions. For example, in Note de recherche no. 1 (1974), he argues
that playing kisoro, a Zande and Nzakara board game, actually re-enacts
the strategy and tactics of Zande armies as described by Evans-Pritchard
(1971). The game board consists of four rows of eight holes; each
adversary has two rows and thirty-two men. Among the principles:
territory is never conquered by force. Victory belongs to the side that
weakens the enemy to the point of having no more warriors. Both sides
play at the same time; there is no handicap at the start of a battle, and
each side has an equal chance to win. The manoeuvres are parallel, but
each adversary moves his men independently of the others movements.
Captured men are immediately incorporated into the captors army.
Strategy involves taking advantage of the imbalances of the opposing
army in order to capture the most men, while at the same time not
exposing ones own army to attacks of the adversary. The best tactic is to
move the most men quickly, which tends to re-establish the starting
positions by redistributing ones army, and to take the most men to
increase the size of ones army. Thus, studying the way the Nzakara
played kisoro also involved studying Nzakara and Zande military tactics.
Similarly, he saw an analogy between the keys on a sanza (thumb
piano, an idiophone) and kinship (1982). As he watched a sanza-player
work, he asked him questions and listened thoughtfully to his responses.
Through these technical conversations there gradually emerged a
representation of the sounds and the scale. The series of keys is called
the lineage. The bridge (chevalet) is called the mother-in-law carrying
children. The six keys on one side are all slightly lower than the six keys
on the other side: the elder and younger lineages. The keys are named:
the fathers (one on each side), the mothers (three on each side,
including the favourite, the head wife, the big wife who works for the
113
head wife, and two lesser wives; then four children, in birth order.
Gilbert Rouget (1982) then studied the intervals between the keys
notes, and found that key number 7, the big wife, the one who always
does whatever she likes, also sticks out musically, being asymmetrical.
Political organisation of the Bandia kingdoms

Not surprisingly, since he was a graduate of the Institute of Political
Science, Dampierres early research focused on the political
organisation of the Bandia kingdoms in the upper Ubangui and Uele
basins. His main question was the social foundations of political
authority. He was well acquainted with Max Webers three types of
legitimate rule: legal or rational authority, charismatic authority and
traditional authority (Weber 1958 [1922]). He seemed to use the
Bandia kingdom in Nzakaraland as a living example of Webers
traditional authority. He was especially interested in how the Bandia
clan, foreigners in Nzakaraland, established their political power, and in
how they made the Nzakara need them. He addressed this question in
his dissertation defence:
Every once in a while, we see appear in history what historians call a military
autocracy. Not long ago, P. de Vaux (1967) described the secret of the
Horites in Genesis: Once they infiltrated Palestine they seized power in the
principal Palestinian cities and, without imposing their language or their
customs, they quickly assimilated into the native populations. Those are
people who resemble our Bandia. But how did it happen? By what
mechanisms, by what needs, by what liberties? Can one truly explain power
without analysing dependence? For power is in part violence, and the
exercise of violence, like the exercise of war, is not an easy object of
sociological study. Looking through the other end of the telescope is, I feel,
more fruitful. How are the bonds of dependence in a given society woven,
organized and hierarchized? That indeed makes a good object of study.
(1968: 3)
Evans-Pritchard (1971) had studied the political organisation of the

Vungara dynasties in central and eastern Zandeland. Dampierre
analysed the political organisation of the three Bandia dynasties in
western Zandeland and Nzakaraland, and, in particular, the kingdom
of Bangassou. Out of ten or so Zande kingdoms, Evans-Pritchard
studied the one farthest east (that of King Gbudwe, Vungara) and
Dampierre studied the one farthest west (that of King Bangassou,
Bandia); between them, they thus covered the two ends of the
geographical spectrum.
114
Margaret Buckner
Ethnically, the Zande and Nzakara are very closely related; the two
groups are so close that early explorers called the Nzakara the Western
Zande. They have virtually identical kinship systems, social and
political organisation, and belief systems (witchcraft, oracles, magic
and diviners). The Nzakara and Zande languages are still close enough
to be mutually comprehensible for some native speakers; it is estimated
that they diverged no more than 500 years ago. Between the Nzakaraspeaking kingdom of Bangassou and the western-most Zande-speaking
kingdom, Rafai, the language boundary is fuzzy, with many bilinguals;
there is also much intermarriage.
Though the Zande and Nzakara shared a similar social and political
organisation, there was a crucial structural difference between the two
ruling dynasties. The Vungara were a native Zande clan who grew to
dominate their own people and then expanded eastward to incorporate
and Zande-ise foreign peoples. Conversely, the Bandia were foreign
Ngbandi-speakers who came north and adopted the Nzakara and Zande
language and customs even as they established political domination.
In a nutshell, the Vungara moved out, the Bandia moved in. This
inversion led to further distinctions between the two dynasties. For
example, the Vungara kingdoms were very unstable; a twenty-year
period saw a new set of kingdoms. The Bandia, on the other hand, had
three very stable kingdoms. The Vungara princes, especially in the
newer, easternmost regions, were each others worst enemies, while
among the Bandia there was much less royal fratricide. While the Zande
kingdoms (especially the eastern ones) were made up of diverse peoples,
the Nzakara and western Zande were more homogenous.
In Azande History and Political Institutions (1971), Evans-Pritchard
argued for the classic progression from hunters and gatherers to
agriculture, which produced a surplus; the surplus was used by the
Vungara for political advantage. The Vungara kings and princes, by
using permanent battalions of young warriors and the temporary
labour of adult men to work their elds, and also by receiving tribute
from the surrounding area, were able to control very large amounts of
food, which they then redistributed in a way that strengthened their
authority. The Vungara courts also assured stability, military protection
and justice for peoples who until then had been small-scale,
autonomous groups. Food was given generously to feed the courtiers,
the battalions and their leaders, and the people who came to the court
for redress of wrongs or with requests of the king. Evans-Pritchard
states that the king gave bridewealth (in the form of marriage spears)
to anyone who asked. He also gave wives to loyal governors, military
leaders and others who had shown him great service or loyalty. The
number of subjects of a given king was directly related to the kings
115
hospitality, military strength and justice. Wars were fought to acquire

subjects, who would contribute to the kings stores and his labour and
military pools.
Dampierre, however, in Un ancien royaume bandia (1967) and
another publication (1971), describes a very different scenario for the
Bandia conquest. In ancient Nzakara (and Zande) society, lineages were
equal and wives were exchanged between lineages. No lineage was any
better than any other. The circulation of women was strictly limited to
marriage transactions. Families exchanged sisters and became allies.
Each lineage was simultaneously wife-giver and wife-taker. In this
system, a rgime de la parentle, allies were assured (1971: 267). When
the Bandia arrived, they adopted the Nzakara and Zande system of
kinship and alliance, but they co-opted the system and used it to their
advantage. The Bandia were foreigners and needed to get into the good
graces of the local Nzakara and Zande population. They did this by
supplying wives not to their relatives but to their clients (subjects).
Women went from being exchanged by lineage elders to being
distributed by Bandia rulers. No longer was equality at the heart of the
exchange. By controlling the circulation of women, the Bandia
developed clienteles at the expense of the traditional, egalitarian lineage
system. A surplus of women and their distribution by the dominant
clan are the keys of the new system, which, though it creates allies, is
much better equipped to create subjects (1967: 29495). Gradually,
allegiance replaced alliance. Residence was no longer based on kin
groupings, but on client groupings.
To continue to be givers of wives, the Bandia needed a surplus of
women. Annual wars were fought not to expand territory or to
incorporate more subjects into the kingdoms, but to bring back women
and girls to give away as wives to subjects as the Bandia pleased.
Dampierre was explicit about the reasons for the wars: The maximum
acquisition of women became the means of government and renewed
the symbolic pomp of power (1967: 273). When the Europeans
arrived, the well dried up. There were no more wars to capture women
to distribute. And because the Europeans upheld the right of women to
be married by compensation only, the Bandia were no longer able to
distribute women as needed to maintain their authority; they lost their
clients, without whom they ceased to be patrons.
A later paper, Les ides-forces de la politique des Bandia travers les
propos de leurs souverains (18701917) (1998), further contributes
to our understanding of the Bandia kingdoms. In it, Dampierre
examines the kings own words to see how they themselves regarded
their power. For example, King Djabir said to Commandant Francqui, I
cannot yet tell you which of my two sons will be designated by my people
116
Margaret Buckner
to succeed me; certainly the best will be chosen, and whatever my

people decide will be for the best (1998: 7). In his commentary,
Dampierre explains that the king is chosen by a royal council, approved
by the royal family and acclaimed by an assembly of adult men. Second,
King Bangassou said he is the master of people, not the guardian of
borders (ibid.). Dampierre comments that the notion of borders is
totally foreign to African political life. In a third example, King
Bangassou said to Bonnel de Mzires: You see the Kengu [Mbomu]
River? It is big because the other streams ow into it. It is the same with
my chiefs: if they didnt need my gifts, they would no longer come to me
and I would be nothing (ibid.: 8). Dampierre explains that the power
of a Bandia king only becomes authority when he renounces violence
and sets about meeting the needs of those who have sworn him
allegiance. In other words, the king commands only because he
redistributes food, goods and especially wives.
Dampierre was as interested in the demise of the Bandia kingdoms as
in their origin, and he also traced the breaking up of traditional Nzakara
society. He once observed that the Zande, because they adopted new
practices so readily, bent as they adapted to the modern world, whereas
the Nzakara, intent on defending their traditions, resisted and broke. He
was saddened by the rupture he observed taking place between Nzakara
elders and Nzakara youth, especially those who went to school.
In his article Coton noir, caf blanc (1960), he describes in detail
how the introduction of the plantation system was apparently the most
immediate source of conicts and of the breaking up of traditional
society. The paysannat system (used for coffee cultivation) brought about
important changes in cultural practices and modications in the
network of daily social relations. Traditional grouped elds were
replaced by the strip plantation system. The new system accentuated
the injustices of the gendered division of labour: men had nothing left
to do, since, traditionally, women did the work in the elds. The new
plantation system also upset the time frame for rotating elds:
traditionally plots were planted for three or four years, then left fallow
until the seventeenth year. Now, new plots would be cleared and planted
each year, and would not be used again for seventeen years. Finally,
Dampierre commented on a more subtle aspect of the change: a
paysannat system implies the existences of paysans, or peasants, in other
words, farmers who grow a surplus that will be sold in a market. But
there can be no peasants until there are citizens (residents of a city);
there can be no countryside without a city, since they are indissolubly
tied together by a double ow of exchanges. The countryside cannot do
without the city, and the city cannot do without the countryside.
Populations in the Mbomu did not yet have needs. The Nzakara did not
117
produce more than they needed for their own subsistence, their
traditional obligations and their taxes. Moreover, they often left some
of their crops unharvested. The products of the city reached them only
in the form of cloth and aluminium basins. Why would they want to
double their income?
In this paper and others (for example, the chapter in Un ancien
royaume bandia entitled A model pillage economy), Dampierre analyses
in detail the motives and practices of the colonial powers and the trading
companies, in particular the Socit des Sultanats, which sucked the
land dry. He shows once again that a process or situation cannot be
understood without considering the historical context and all the actors
involved. In fact, in his dissertation defence (1968), he even considers
the reasons for colonisation in the rst place, and especially the
specicity of the French colonial context, by citing philosophers such as
Renan and colonial administrators such as Jules Ferry. The French
colonist, according to Ferry (1892), believes he is carrying out an act of
civic virtue by leaving the land of his birth, and sees his motherland less
as a benefactor than as having an obligation (cited in Dampierre 1968:
5). On the other hand, as Aron (1951: 70) says, the characteristic that
all imperialist policies have in common is that they nd their origin in the
political ambitions that chancelleries camouaged (or rationalised) by
invoking realistic motives (cited in Dampierre 1968: 6).
Nzakara poetry
As mentioned earlier, Dampierre was drawn to the musical poetry of
the Nzakara and Zande. That societys music and oral art became a
second research theme. At rst, he collected texts of the poems sung
by harpists as they played to learn the language better and work on a
Nzakara glossary, but the poetry appealed to him in its own right. Each
song is a unique event, improvised on the spot, without recognisable
beginnings or endings. The poets were often minstrels at royal courts;
their social and political commentary was keen. The poems are full of
word-play, humour, irony, satire and stinging criticism veiled in
metaphor. They also express the complaints and the desires of everyday
life. Finally, they are a chronicle of court life. He published Potes
Nzakara (1963) after spending many long months perfecting the
translations of the harpists songs with the help of his Nzakara
collaborator Robert Bangbanzi; it was the rst collection of texts to be
published in the Nzakara language. The translations were all the more
difficult in that French and Nzakara are very different languages, and in
addition the texts were poems.
Margaret Buckner
118
Besides the words of the songs, Dampierre bent his interest to the
music itself, and to the instrument. He spent several years tracking
down Zande harps that had found their ways into European museums.
He corresponded with lute-makers, art historians and curators around
the world. His two last books, Harpes zande (1992) and Une esthtique
perdue (1995), are dedicated to harps, harp music and harpists, and
have received enthusiastic reviews from international specialists.
Thinking in the singular

A truly overarching theme that seemed to anchor Dampierres eldwork
is the Nzakara-Zande way of seeing and thinking the world in terms of
the singular, in terms of more or less. In his 1984 book, Penser au singulier,
he proposed that the Nzakara pensent au singulier think in the
singular. Everything on earth has a singular existence. Nothing is
identical, or equal, to anything else. Each thing or being is viewed in its
difference (1984: 11). The Nzakara language cannot express identity. In
other words, A and B cannot be identical, or equal, though they can be
similar. Thus, two shadows made by the same person are aberrant and
signs of disorder. No two people are identical, or equal. Among other
things, this explains why the birth of twins two identical beings is
such a disruptive event. It also explains why counting human beings is
rude. It implies they are interchangeable, that each has the same value
and characteristics as another. King Bangassou knew how many
battalions he had, but not how many men fought in them. Lengths,
distances, volumes and periods of time are not measured using abstract
measurements. Distances are described in terms of days of walking, or
number of streams crossed. Time is described by using points (sunrise,
noon, sunset and so on). Quantities and surfaces are never divided into
equal parts, for there must always be a remainder. Symmetry is avoided.
Besides being different, or as a result of being different, each thing or being
is ranked or ordered. Notes on a musical scale, lineages, brothers, wives
... each occupies a place on an ordered scale and is thought of in that
order. He observed this way of seeing the world in everyday life: women
selling palm oil at the market (the remainder was their prot), dividing
a piece of food, building a roof or teaching mathematics at the lyce.
Dampierre observes that thinking in the singular permeates the
Zande-Nzakara aesthetic in rhythms, voice, musical scales, sculpture
and performance. Harpists, singers and sculptors look for asymmetry,
for individual, singular performances, for remainders rather than for
symmetry and regular rhythms, intervals or features. And, perhaps
especially, no two harps or performances should ever be identical.
119
In Une esthtique perdue (1995), one of his last publications, he calls

the Nzakara (and Zande) a society of irreducible individualists. He
emphasises that this same way of thinking in the singular inuences
all Nzakara (and Zande) thought, discourse and practices. He asks: isnt
an aesthetic, whatever its source, necessarily totalizing (totalisant)? He
seeks to describe an aesthetic of the singular, which I think is at work
in several areas: rhetoric, sculpture, music (1995: 14).
From morning to night, all Nzakara thinking heads think in terms of more
and less, of excess and deficiency (... and also elder and younger, father and
son, head wife and favorite), just as pre-Socratics who would have
understood why Plato replaced the One and the Infinite of Pythagorus with
the One and the Dyad of the Greater and the Lesser (1995: 16).
In Accord entre deux harpes, accord entre deux voix en Afrique

quatoriale (Note de recherche n 29, 1994), he relates this principle to
the voice, especially in chantefables, the cycle of Trickster tales that
alternate sung parts and spoken narrative:
Not only does the singing voice oppose the speaking voice, but it is sung at
an octave of the normal speaking voice. [...] The head voice, sometimes a
falsetto (throat voice, voix de faucet), is opposed to the chest voice. [...] In
chantefables, this head voice designates the intervention of a supernatural
operator, either to transpose the action from the everyday world to a special
world of marvels, or to bring the action back to the everyday world. [...] Head
voice and falsetto could be considered variants of an octave voice, though it
is more complex. An octave voice alone would be considered the same as
a normal voice.
I would propose the following hypothesis: with regard to Nzakara court
music, the conscious discussion among musicians keeps coming back to an
antinomy between the impossible unison and the obvious antiphony
(octave consonance), between the impossible same and the Other that passes
for the same. To escape this unsolvable antinomy, the best solution is the
Dyad of more and less, of Excess and Deficiency. (1994: 23)
A footnote ties the Nzakara to the Greeks (something he did often); he

cites Aristotles comment that mixed is always more agreeable than
homogenous.
He also tied thinking in the singular to rhythms: there is always
something left over; rhythms are staggered, they always have a gap, a
lag, an irregular interval.
For the Nzakara and Zande, the distinction is there, in the fine analysis of the
repetitions. But distinction is not difference, distinction is not a relationship,
because all true relations imply the analysis of the particular and would
120
Margaret Buckner
reveal some level of participation of the being. We remain faced with the
Dyad to create formulas, fleeing all strictly equivalent relations. That notion,
described in the mind of a [Greek] philosopher, is found again, in the
societies of the Upper-Ubangui, shaping the daily, lived experience, starting
with that of musicians. (ibid.: 18)
Then, in one of his last papers, Le reste pimore (Note de recherche n

33, revised version, 1996), he makes perhaps his clearest description
of thinking in the singular:
I continue searching for the basis of the practices described in Penser au
singulier and Une esththique perdue concerning the rejection of equal sizes,
the rejection of symmetrical areas and the rejection of commensurate
durations. The rejection correlates with the emphasis put on remainders,
which are not truly remainders since no exhaustive procedure to reach a
limit was sought. These remainders, which make calculations troublesome,
are conceived of by Zande and Nzakara as a privileged property of nature
that only human will can, in certain cases and under certain conditions,
get rid of.
These practices in the Upper-Ubangui, which lead to the explicit
formulation of thinking in the singular, render vain illusory, even
scandalous by nature all relations of identity, whatever they may be.
(1996, passim)
Finally, in Les ides-forces de la politique des Bandia travers les propos

de leurs souverains (18701917) (1998), Dampierre shows how the
singular had been enacted politically and how it came to an end by a
political act. Here he summarises the important change that was
brought about consciously by Bandia rulers:
In the 1880s, Bangassou declared by an oath before the shrine Bendo and
not at the ancestors shrine that from now on he would reign over an
immense people, made up of foreigners from all over. It was a historic
moment: the oath before Bendo is the equivalent of a reform of Clisthenes.
The sovereign solemnly renounces the ancestral foundations of his
authority. He renounces treating people in the singular organized by descent
and alliance, kin ties and clienteles. Lineage affiliation will no longer be the
organizing principle of his people. [...]
Bendo is the refusal of natural determinism, the subversion of
superdetermined order. It is the inauguration of civil society. The lineages
rebelled. The kings own sister turned the Bendo shrines upside-down, to
save the throne of her father, Mbali.
This inversion of accepted values could only have been carried out by the
king. The decision created identical subjects, and, in particular, treated
Arabs, Whites, and Blacks on the same level. Bendo, the friend of women,
the protector of harvests, had presided over the identification of everyone
121
with everyone. A universalist rule had appeared. The singular, which is

ignorant of the distinction between the particular and the universal, had
lived politically. (1998: 1314)
It is this idea of thinking in the singular that guided Dampierres

research and writing since the early 1980s. The idea was born of and
borne out by his observations and experiences during long, repeated
periods of eldwork among the Nzakara.
Dampierres legacy
First and foremost, thanks to his skilled, intense, long-term eldwork,
Dampierre helped preserve the history, language, knowledge and music
of the Nzakara for the Nzakara themselves. He showed that he was
conscious of that contribution in the introduction to Un ancien royaume
bandia (1967):
Akabati, Zangandu, Nukusa, Kaali, Gbesende, Vugba, Sayo and others who
offered me hospitality have now died without knowing that, in talking with
me, they were also writing their peoples history. Their sons, all too conscious
of their past because they want to be someone else, are reclaiming that
history out of fear of never knowing it. If, nevertheless, this book, by some
dreadful trick of history, could transmit to the sons the knowledge of their
fathers, it would take its place among the uncertain fruits of those few, very
rare years in human history: those few years in which our common
civilization impoverished because become one, but infinitely rich in a
history it endlessly recreates while at the same time making a project of its
future encounters and immediately but impertinently relates the complex
splendour of societies that live in the present, content with their origins, but
discovering, for the first and the last time, the face of the outsider in the
hearts of their children. (1967: 12)
Dampierre laid the groundwork for us to follow. In the preface of Une

esthtique perdue, he challenges us to continue to search for what makes
the Nzakara and Zande society so distinct:
We hope that these [...] projects will be completed. As of now, it clearly seems
that the ideas elaborated elsewhere to explain the sculpture and music of
central Africa do not allow us to understand the particularity/uniqueness
of Zande society. That should not be surprising: different analyses for
different societies. It must be said that, after a century of work, the deepest
workings of this society of irreducible individualists still escape us. [...] We
must one day undertake head-on a study of Nzakara and Zande rhetoric. It
goes without saying that what is said must be qualified by the discourse
122
Margaret Buckner
situation and context. But we must also ask ourselves a less obvious
question: can an entire society wish daily for the same and its contrary in
order to escape the vicissitudes of human life? [...] This edited collection,
preceded and followed by other works, is only a milestone on a very difficult
road, on a wild goose chase whose first entrant was E. E. Evans-Pritchard.
[...] We know that others will have to join us, others that the generous and
rigorous analysis of the ways of African aesthetics also sometimes keep from
sleeping. (1995: 1011)
The office of the Mission Sociologique du Haut-Oubangui, currently

attached to the Laboratorie dethnologie et de sociologie comparative
at the University of Paris-X (Nanterre), is one of Dampierres most
impressive legacies and is a monument to his eldwork. He collected
published and unpublished works dealing with the general area of the
Upper Ubangui as well as neighbouring peoples. He deposited there for
the use of interested researchers miles of recorded tapes (both music
and narrative, in Nzakara, Zande and, more rarely, Sango), hundreds of
photographs (both historical and those he himself took in the eld), the
complete genealogical records of the various lineages of the Bandia clan
going back some fourteen generations, a map collection, a plant
collection, a French-Nzakara dictionary and dozens of indexed eld
notebooks. Because he used historical sources so painstakingly yet
successfully, he was very much aware of the importance of leaving
proper records of his own observations and experiences; his eld
notebooks all fty or so of them are numbered, paginated, indexed
and cross-referenced, furnishing evidence and examples for his
published works and unpublished papers.
Finally, Eric de Dampierre will be remembered for and by his students
and colleagues at both the Department of Ethnology and the Laboratoire
dethnologie et de sociologie at the University of Paris X. As director of
those institutions, and then as an elder, he instilled in all of us the
importance of thorough, careful eldwork. Long, repeated periods in the
eld were crucial, as was learning the language. He was sceptical of
ethnographers who went only once to the eld, did not stay long, and
did not learn the language well. His principles were passed on through
his graduate seminars and supervision of dissertations. The emphasis
on eldwork that he instilled in ethnology at Nanterre lives on.
As the Nzakara would insist, he was a man hors par without equal.
123
Notes
1. Dampierre wrote a total of thirty-eight notes de recherche (research notes) of varying
lengths and on a variety of subjects. Six were later revised and published. They are
located in the office of the Mission sociologique du Haut Oubangui, at the University
of Paris-X (Nanterre).
2. Dampierre continued working on UNESCO projects even after he began carrying out
fieldwork in Africa. In 1959, he was named programme specialist at UNESCO and
was responsible for the section on human rights and the struggle against racial
discrimination. In 1960, he travelled to Jerusalem and to the Negev for UNESCO to
undertake sociological research on irrigation in arid zones.
3. Poetes nzakara (2 volumes, 1963, ms.; Poetes nzakara II is a finished manuscript but
was not published); also Satires de Lamadani (1987, text and cassette).
4. Dampierre had only compliments for Evans-Pritchards ethnography of the Zande society,
which has been so magnificently studied since 1927 by E.E. Evans-Pritchard, whom I
could not sufficiently praise for his scrupulous exactitude (1967: 247). He read
everything Evans-Pritchard had written about the Zande. He sent Evans-Pritchard a draft
of at least some chapters of his dissertation, and he visited him on at least a few occasions.
References
Aron, R. 1951. Les guerres en chane, Paris: Gallimard.
1968. Main currents in sociological thought I, Garden City, NY: Doubleday and
Company. Translation of first half of Les tapes de la pense sociologique, Paris:
Gallimard, 1967.
Chirac, A. 1897. Sociomtrie, Revue Socialiste, 6(34) (October).
Dampierre, E. de. 1948. Sociomtrie: note tymologique, Echanges sociologiques, 2: 6366.
1951. Sur deux different types dhrtiques, unpublished ms., 5 pp.
1956. Malvire-sur-Desle: une commune aux franges de al rgion parisienne,
LInformation gographique, 20: 6873.
1957. Le sociologue et lanalyse des documents personnels, Annales, 12: 442
54.
1960. Coton noir, caf blanc, Cahiers dtudes africaines, 2: 12847.
1963. Potes nzakara, vol. 1, Paris: Julliard.
1967. Un ancien royaume Bandia du Haut-Oubangui, Paris: Plon.
1968. Prsentation de theses soumises la facult des letters de lUniversit de
Paris en vue du grade de docteur s letters, unpublished manuscript.
1971. Elders and youngers in Nzakara kingdom, in Kinship and culture, F.L.K. Hsu
(ed.), Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 24670.
1982. Sons ans, sons cadets, Revue de musicologie, 68: 3259.
1983. Des ennemis, des arabes, des histoires, Paris: Socit dEthnographie.
1984. Penser au singulier, Paris: Socit dEthnographie.
1987. Satires de Lamadani, Paris: Armand Colin (2 vols, with cassette).
1992. Harpes zand, Paris: Klincksieck.
1994. Accord entre deux harpes, accord entre deux voix en Afrique quatoriale,
Note de recherche, no. 29, 14.
1995. Une esthtique perdue, Paris: Presses de lENS.
1996. Le reste pimore, Note de recherche no 33, 13.
1998. Les ides-forces de la politique des Bandia travers les propos de leurs
souverains (18701917), Africa, 53(1): 116.
124
Margaret Buckner
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1971. Azande, History and Political Institutions, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ferry, Jules 1892. Rapport sur lorganisation et les attributions du gouverneur general de
lAlgrie, Paris: Imprimerie nationale.
Moreno, Dr. 1943. Sociometry and the cultural order, Sociometric Monograph, 2: 318
(cited in Dampierre 1948).
Rouget, G. 1982. Note sur laccord des sanza dEbzagui, Revue de musicologie, 68: 33044.
Schweinfurth, G. 1875. Au coeur de lAfrique, 18681871: voyages et dcouvertes dans les
rgions inexplores de lAfrique centrale, vol. 2, Paris: Hachette.
Vaux, P. de. 1967. CR [Compte rendu?], Academie inscr. et belles-lettres (cited in Dampierre
1968).
Weber, M. 1958 [1922]. The three types of legitimate rule, Berkeley Publications in Society
and Institutions 4(1): 111.
Chapter 5
WHAT SORT OF ANTHROPOLOGIST

WAS PAUL RIVET?
Laura Rival
Few anthropologists today know who Paul Rivet was. Even in France,
where he played a central role in shaping the discipline during the
interwar years, the name of Paul Rivet evokes only vague memories:
Rivet, the Director of the Museum of Mankind? Rivet, the
Americanist? Didnt he write that controversial book on the origins of
American Indians? The name is known, but no one seems to remember
Rivets theoretical contribution or teaching.
Rivet was a medical doctor, military officer, field naturalist, collector,
physical anthropologist, ethnologist, linguist, a builder of academic
institutions and a politician indeed, a success in all these professions.
He became an anthropologist while working in the field in the
Ecuadorian Andes. His five years of fieldwork little resembled the classic
ethnographic fieldwork that Malinowski was to undertake in the
Trobriands ten years later, but they nevertheless determined the range
of issues, methods and theoretical questions he was to explore
throughout his long career. Even though he may have been practically
erased from the disciplines collective memory today, Rivets work
shaped and influenced the development of post-Second World War
social anthropology in France, including Lvi-Strausss structuralism.
Moreover, his holistic and humanist vision of anthropology as the
science of humankind, as well as his political commitment to educating
the public about the value of cultures other than their own, are
surprisingly relevant today. Indeed, as I suggest in the conclusion, they
are perhaps even more relevant today than at any time since his death
in 1958.
Laura Rival
126
Figure 5.1. Paul Rivet. From obituary in Journal de la Socit des Americanistes, 1959.
Paul Rivets multi-stranded career

The second of six children, Paul Adolphe Rivet was born on 7 May
1876 in Wasigny, a small village in Lorraine.1 He started school near
Nancy, in the village of Blnod-les-Toul, where his father, a soldier who
had lost his right arm during the Franco-Prussian war, worked as a tax
collector. From him, Rivet learnt to be a fervent patriot deeply
committed to equality of citizenship and human rights (Dussn de
Reichel 1984: 70). His primary education completed, Rivet enrolled in
the grammar school at Nancy, where he excelled in literature and poetry
and passed the baccalaureate in philosophy with distinction
(dHarcourt 1958, Pineda Camacho 1985, Zerilli 199193). Despite
127
his obvious talent for literature and philosophy, this son of a modest
provincial family decided against preparing the entry exam for the Ecole
Normale Suprieure (Laurire 1999: 109). Although he was not
particularly attracted to medicine and had no ambition to serve in the
French army as his grandfather, uncle and father had done before him,
he chose, mainly for financial reasons, to become a military doctor
(Chevasse 1958: 106). Rivets unusual twin training in French
humanism and medical science gave him the encyclopaedic breadth he
was to deploy so fruitfully throughout his long academic career. One
can also assume that his employment as medical warrant officer in the
Paris cavalry from 1898 to 1901 helped him develop the discipline and
organisational skills for which he later became so famous, not least as
Director of the Muse de lHomme.
As is often the case in anthropological careers, serendipity played a
large part in Rivets choice of Ecuador as the country in which he would
conduct field research. By pure chance he was given an opportunity to
accompany the second French geodesic mission, charged with remeasuring the equatorial meridian. As the mission involved
collaboration with the Acadmie des Sciences de Paris, Rivet was able
to receive some scientific training at the Musum National dHistoire
Naturelle (MNHN) before departing, especially in anthropometric
methods. Far from being unusual, Rivets expertise in comparative
anatomy and his passion for natural history were shared by other
members of the geodesic mission, and, indeed, by many early twentiethcentury anthropologists (Stocking 1992b: 1732). Len (1958: 307)
nicknames them science missionaries.
In Ecuador, where he was to spend the next five years of his life, Rivet
travelled indefatigably, attending patients and collecting numerous and
diverse materials. Free medical services were obviously very popular
and were consciously used by the geodesic mission as an efficient means
of enlisting the locals goodwill. A zealous field naturalist, Rivet
collected plant and animal specimens, archaeological finds (bones,
pottery and so on), indigenous artefacts, oral traditions and
vocabularies of many of the languages spoken in Ecuador at the time,
and took anthropomorphic measurements.
In the first two years of his stay, Rivet mainly collected species for
the MNHN, contributing equally to entomology and botany. The
specimens were sent for identification to leading scientists based in
France, elsewhere in Europe or the United States. The breadth of his
collections is reflected in the fact that more than thirty animal species
were named after him.2 His botanical collections also contained many
new species and varieties. Very soon, the anthropological collections he
sent back to Paris roused the interest of scholars at MNHN. However,
128
Laura Rival
Rivet had to fight hard not to have them treat him as a simple field
surveyor and collector. He had personally funded the expeditions, and
the collections were the fruit of his personal efforts. He aspired to the
status of full researcher, and was determined to be the one who would
classify, study and analyse the objects now stored at the MNHN, which,
as far as he was concerned, belonged to him (Laurire 2006: 23639).
In July 1906, having won the battle, he was officially detached from
the Armys geographical services to work at the MNHN as an
independent scholar under the supervision of Ren Verneau and
Ernest-Thodore Hamy. He soon became a member of the Socit des
Amricanistes de Paris (in 1907), even serving as its general secretary
for several months the following year, a post to which he was to be
formally elected in 1922 and which he was to occupy for more than
thirty years, until his death in 1958. He received much praise and
scientific recognition in 1908 for his collections, exhibited in the
zoology galleries of the MNHN. In 1909, when Verneau took up the
Chair of Anthropology at the MNHN in succession to Hamy, Rivet
became his research assistant.
Soon after, Rivet published one of his most important scientific
papers,3 which offers a systematic refutation of the theories and
methodologies that defined physical anthropology at the time. While in
the field, he had collected complete anthropometric measurements for
300 Indians (mainly adult men) and had also measured at least 60
skeletons in cemeteries. His ancient bone collection comprised 350
skulls and about 500 bones, including 400 long ones. Back in Paris, his
intention had been to write a substantial anthropological study of the
American Indian race with his MNHN colleague, Raul Anthony. The
paper was to explain the scope, origin and history of the internal
diversity of the race. However, the systematic study of the empirical
data he had gathered led him instead to reject the premises of
anthropometry. Skull measurements, he concluded, lead to the
arbitrary classification of humans in entirely fictitious groupings. The
human types so determined have nothing real in common, only the
arbitrary trait used as a basis for their classification.
In 1910, ideological disagreements between the MNHN and the
Socit dAnthropologie de Paris over anthropometric measurements
and the scope of anthropological research reached crisis point, which
prompted Rivet and Verneau to resign. A year later, Rivet created a new
learned society based at the MNHN, the Institut Franais
dAnthropologie, of which he became the archivist-librarian. Durkheim,
Hertz, Mauss, Lvy-Bruhl and many others immediately joined the new
Institut, which sought to redefine anthropology in its widest sense. No
longer a mere synonym for physical anthropology, anthropology was to
129
be based on a federative integration of all the disciplines involved in

explaining the human phenomenon, chiefly linguistics and
ethnography (Dias 1991: 24650). The Instituts main function in the
eyes of its members was to fight against sterile specialism and to facilitate
the circulation of new ideas and knowledge in all the domains that
interested broad-minded anthropologists (Laurire 1999: 111).
Published in 1912, LEthnographie ancienne de lquateur,4 ostensibly
co-authored by Rivet and Verneau, but in reality very much Rivets
work, was awarded several prizes. Based on an abundance of sources
which are not simply listed but also commented on and integrated fully
into the text the book provides a comparative analysis of the large
archaeological collections that Rivet brought back from Ecuador. It is
still widely regarded as a masterpiece of rigour in the methodical
description of pre-Colombian material culture.
Rivets subsequent publication plans were curtailed by the outbreak
of the First World War.5 Throughout the war, he worked with the same
energy, method, discipline and sense of organisation, this time to reform
the medical care of wounded soldiers and, later on, the running of a
military hospital in Salonika, where he also managed to find the time to
organise scientific expeditions and prepare naturalist collections for the
MNHN. After the war,6 Rivet almost resigned from the Socit des
Amricanistes de Paris over political issues. A number of its French
members wanted to see German-speaking scholars banished from the
Socits membership list. Rivet, who strongly believed in international
scientific cooperation and knew how much America owed to German
and Austrian scientists, fought hard against the motion and won.7
In the 1920s, Rivet increasingly turned his attention to linguistics.
He had already authored or co-authored 22 communications on South
American indigenous languages between 1907 and 1919, but the 21
works published between 1920 and 1925 are more comparative and
more ambitious in scope, especially the chapter on American languages
he wrote for Meillet and Cohens Langues du monde (Rivet 1924).
On 6 August 1925, after months of preparatory work and lobbying
by Lvy-Bruhl, the French ministry for colonial affairs agreed to fund
the creation of an Institut dEthnologie within the University of Paris.
Rather like the British government, the French government
institutionalised and funded modern anthropology when it became
convinced that anthropology could play a positive role in the
administration of the colonies. Lvy-Bruhl invited Marcel Mauss and
Rivet to become the institutes general secretaries. The Instituts role
was to train professional ethnologists,8 introduce anthropological
findings to civil servants assigned to the colonies and educate the public
about the invaluable contribution to civilisation made by the
130
Laura Rival
populations, societies and cultures found in the French colonies and

beyond. According to Laurire (1999: 114), Lvy-Bruhl and Mauss
delegated to Rivet the task of organising and administering the Institut.
The close collaboration between the three men, who shared the same
socialist political ideals and humanist values (Pineda Camacho 1985:
8, Jamin 1989: 282), led to the institutional association of three
Parisian research and teaching centres: the Sorbonne (under LvyBruhl), the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (under Mauss), and the
MNHN (under Rivet). Through their association, the three scholars
hoped to facilitate the federation of three complementary theoretical
approaches to the study of mankind, or sciences de lhomme as they are
still referred to in France: philosophy (under Lvy-Bruhl), sociology
(under Mauss) and anthropology (under Rivet). This they saw as a
necessary condition for strengthening a modern French
anthropological project firmly anchored in a common methodology,
namely ethnographic fieldwork (Allen 2000).9
In 1928, Rivet was elected to the MNHN Chair in Anthropology, the
title of which he immediately attempted to change to that of the Chair
of the Ethnology of Modern and Fossil Men. Rivets appointment
revived the muted, yet persistent intellectual dissensions between those
who favoured a broad, holistic anthropology programme and those who
were eager to maintain physical anthropology as a separate, if no longer
hegemonic discipline. The following year Rivet, who had obtained
agreement that the Trocadro be attached to his chair, became the
director of the museum, where he created a library of ethnology. Faced
with the challenge of holding so many different offices
simultaneously,10 Rivet chose to concentrate on the MNHN and the
Trocadro, leaving Mauss and Lvy-Bruhl fully in charge of the Institut
dEthnologie. By then, and perhaps as a result of this unintended
division, it was decided that the University of Paris would offer two
different qualifications in anthropology, a certificate in ethnology
awarded by the Science Faculty (Facult de Sciences), and another
awarded by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Facult de Lettres).11
Rivet, who continued to advocate ethnology as a total science giving
equal importance to physical anthropology, linguistics and
ethnography (defined as the study of past and present material culture),
became increasingly convinced that such a project required the
upgrading of the old Trocadro Museum, which he finally achieved in
1937 with the creation of the Muse de lHomme.
As Jamin (1989) and Laurire (2006: 518), who refer to Rivet as a
scholar and a politician, both note, the various aspects of Rivets multifaceted career and his different projects to develop Americanist studies
on an international scale, participate actively in progressive politics and
131
popularise anthropology as a science in the service of universal

civilisation, that is of a true humanism became increasingly merged from
the mid-1930s onwards. Having responded favourably to Lvy-Bruhls
offer to join the Socialist Party (SFIO), Rivet soon involved himself in
formal politics. In 1934, he founded the Comit de Vigilance des
Intellectuels Antifascistes with the physicist Langevin and the philosopher
Alain, and acted as its first president. A year later, in 1935, Rivet became
the first politician to be elected on a Popular Front list as councillor for the
City of Paris and the Regional Council of the Seine (Lottman 1982: 78),
inaugurating a long and distinguished political career.
Rivet also continued to contribute to the expansion of the Socit
des Amricanistes. Under his presidency, various collaborative projects
with European and North American Americanists were planned or
undertaken, and links with researchers, informants and
correspondents multiplied throughout South America, where he
travelled and taught with increasing regularity. In her biography of
Julian Steward, Kerns (2003: 224) mentions that Rivet was involved
with Lowie as early as the late 1920s in an encyclopaedia project on
Americas cultures and societies.12 By the time US funding became
available in the early 1940s, France could no longer, for obvious
reasons, participate in the project, which became exclusively associated
with its sponsor, the Smithsonian Institution. If Julian Steward became
the encyclopaedias general editor, it was a former student of Rivet,
Alfred Mtraux, who wrote many of the ethnological entries.
When the Vichy regime fired him from the directorship of the Muse
de lHomme in 1941, Rivet accepted an invitation from the Colombian
president, allowing him to escape from the Gestapo just in time.
Between 1941 and 1943, he helped develop the National Institute of
Ethnology (Instituto Etnolgico Nacional),13 the Ethnological Institutes
of the Universities of Cauca, Antioquia and the Atlantico, and the
Colombian Society of Ethnology (Sociedad Colombiana de Etnologa).
He also trained the first Colombian social anthropologists (including
Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff), participated in the foundation of Bogots
ethnographic museum, mounted several fieldwork expeditions (de
Friedemann 1984) and worked closely with Paulo Duarte, the leading
Brazilian archaeologist, who had been his student.
Rivets best-known book, Les origines de lhomme amricain, was
published in 1943, and his major Bibliographie des langues aymar et
kicua completed in 1954, four years before his death. The Muse de
lHomme, which he considered to be his most important scientific
achievement, survived him for nearly five decades, until the creation of
the Muse du Quai Branly in 2006. Rivet was in many ways stimulated
by the Victorian ambition of using anthropological knowledge to
Laura Rival
132
reform society (Stocking 1987: 32429), and the museum he directed

constituted, in his eyes, a perfect synthesis between research, education
and politics. Aimed at popularising ethnological science in a way that
would valorise the material cultures of so-called primitive societies and
elevate them to the rank of civilisations, the collections of the Muse
de lHomme were designed on the one hand to educate the French
public against racist ideologies and prejudice, and on the other hand to
signal to officials and elites that the duties and responsibilities of good
government equally apply to all citizens.
Paul Rivets fieldwork

In line with much of the anthropological writing of his time, Rivets
early work deals essentially with the questions of origins and historical
change. The almost complete absence of concern for issues of structure,
function or meaning is striking. Yet even though he uses his
observations of contemporary indigenous cultures more as a source of
facts to extrapolate about the aboriginal past than as a basis from
which to examine particular forms of social organisation, the
ethnographic interest in the diversity of human ways of life is never
entirely absent from his writings. An examination of his first field study
of indigenous people (Rivet 1903), his essay on the Jibaros (Rivet 1907
8), and his 1906 programmatic report will illustrate both his
anthropological interests and his methodological approach.
The Quechua Indians of Riobamba (1903)
A medical doctor14 doubling as a field naturalist, Rivet came into
contact with many patients during his two first years in Ecuador. As a
matter of policy, he treated not only the geodesic mission staff but also
many influential Ecuadorians, local scholars and, on occasion,
indigenous people and mestizos from the rural communities he visited
during his collecting trips (Dussn de Reichel 1984: 7071). He talked
to many people, but never directly to the Indians themselves. Although
he did interact with indigenous contracted labourers and patients, most
of his ethnography comes from observing the Indians at a distance
through layers of stereotypes. What kind of ethnographic observations
did he make, then, in the highlands of Ecuador? An examination of his
first field study with indigenous people, the Quechua Indians of
Riobamba (Rivet 1903), gives us some clues.
The article starts with a detailed geographical description of the
Riobamba region, followed by a discussion of whether the Indians of
the Riobamaba region actually are an adequate unit for anthropological
133
analysis. What differentiates these Indians from their neighbours? Rivet

argues that, although a full study of their customs and physical makeup (through anthropometric measurements) would be needed to
conclude with certainty that they indeed form a distinguishable
biocultural unit, they seem to possess enough traits in common to be
treated as a separate group. Group here is not used in the social or
political acceptation of the term, but rather to refer to a population made
up of individuals sharing a common physical appearance, due partly to
their shared biology and partly to their shared material culture.
Rivet proceeds to describe systematically and with clinical accuracy
the physical appearance of men and women (clothing, adornment,
hairstyle), dwellings (including furniture, tools and sleeping
arrangements) and the yards around them, where children play and
domesticated animals live. He observes that compounds are fenced and
gives the scientific names for all the plant species making up the hedges.
The different species of animals found are also listed. He then goes on
to describe the peoples food preferences, the ways in which food is
prepared and consumed, and womens work, in particular the
preparation of maize beer. The detailed description is followed by a
diagnosis: these Indians live an extremely impoverished way of life,
which has been forced upon them by history. Their amenities are basic
and rustic, the pervasive filth and lack of hygiene a constant source of
illness, but their diet is frugal and healthy. In this early ethnographic
experience, Rivets training as a medical doctor clearly shapes and
channels his field observations, guiding his assessments of local health
conditions, remedies and attitudes to western medicine. He shows a
great interest in and appreciation of indigenous cultural achievements:
their physical endurance, their capacity for hard work, their local
knowledge of plant remedies. If the Indians of Riobamba are not
resistant to malaria or smallpox and die at a young age, it is because
they refuse to be vaccinated, live far from medical centres and do not
look after themselves properly. They use harmful treatments such as
throwing themselves into icy cold rivers when they have a high fever, or
rubbing guinea pigs onto their bodies for purposes of ritual cleansing.
Their witch doctors are charlatans who exploit their ignorance and part
them from the little cash they are able to earn. Here ends the individual
ethnography, as he calls it (Rivet 1903: 64), of the Indian of
Riobamba, who, despite the abject poverty in which he is forced to live,
manages just about to retain some human dignity.
The second section of the article deals with the regional
configuration created by the two co-existing, but not mixing,
biocultural populations found in the Riobamba valley. Before examining
the social networks that unite the Indians, Rivet examines the reasons
134
Laura Rival
for the profound chasm that exists between the Indians and the whites
(1903: 6465). What amazes him most is that, while the Incas
succeeded in imposing their language and customs on the local
indigenous population in less than fifty years, Spanish culture, even
after three centuries or more, has not fully penetrated, much less
replaced, the Indian cultural heritage. The two races live side by side,
but without mixing and with minimal communication, the whites
concentrated in the urban centres, the Indians dispersed throughout
the countryside. The Indians may have adopted Catholicism, but their
animistic way of practising the Old World religion has very little to do
with what the priests and missionaries intended to teach them.
He then outlines the different types of political organisation found in
the valley, compares hacienda-bonded and free communities, and
discusses the power and authority of self-appointed chiefs (he names a
few). Here, the reader is left to wonder how much his own childhood,
spent on the historically disputed border between France and Germany,
which is rife with cultural and political divisions, and his military
training have influenced his ethnographic understanding. The
unfamiliar landscape and the human settlements are looked at
strategically, and political alliances and divisions mapped out. At several
points in the text, Riobamba indigenous customs and institutions are
compared with Arab practices.
Rivet goes on to examine the patterns of authority within the family
before describing family life (1903: 6567), for instance the affectionate
ties between husband and wife. Pre-marital sexual life, marriage
negotiations, wedding rites and various family relations are then
described succinctly. Stress is put on the common human desire to
found a family, and cultural differences are played down. This passage
demonstrates again Rivets sharp observational skills (for instance, his
penetrating description of how women care for their drunken
husbands), but also his almost total lack of interest in any why
question. Although exotic practices are accurately noted and exposed
without a trace of moral judgement, they never become a source of
wonder. It is the generically human experience that retains Rivets
attention throughout.
The style in which the third section is written is entirely different. It
is as a socialist that Rivet analyses the category Indian as a political
construction inherited from the colonial order. The analysis is aimed at
uncovering the particular political and economic relationships, not
between humans pertaining to different races but rather between
landowners and labourers. Three categories of Indians are differentiated
and analysed, and the Spanish terms (concierto, apegado and suelto or
libre) defined. Concierto Indians, the most exploited (Rivet actually says
135
unfortunate), are debt-bonded to large hacienda landowners. The debt

contract is described, as are the working conditions. Although legally
freer than concierto Indians, apegado Indians in fact live almost as
precariously and inhumanly as their debt-bonded brothers, for they have
no way of themselves producing or selling the products of their labour
on the market. Suelto Indians sell not only their labour force but also
farm products (e.g. crops, eggs, cheese), products they collect (e.g.
firewood or grasses, whose scientific names are given) and the artefacts
they make (e.g. ropes made with the fibre of certain plants, whose
scientific names are also listed). If they are not much better off
economically than the Indians in the two other categories, it is because
suelto men end up wasting all the cash they earn.
The last section is dedicated to indigenous religiosity. Rivet starts with
the assertion that, in their religious practices as in their linguistic
behaviour, the Indians, although a vanquished race, have successfully
resisted the victors (1903: 74). The sketchy mention of religious beliefs,
superstitions, funerary rituals, the cult of the dead and life-cycle rituals
that follows is aimed at supporting the general argument that, despite
missionisation and colonisation, the Indians are essentially pagans who
still believe in mountain spirits, assimilate the figure of Christ to the
hacienda landlord and let the priests exploit and oppress them shamelessly
(ibid.: 7475). Unsurprisingly, it is in the treatment of religious beliefs,
where the native point of view and the indigenous symbolic meanings
must form the central focus of the inquiry, that Rivets lack of
ethnographic empathy is most disturbingly evident. The problem is not so
much that Rivet did not talk directly with Indian informants about their
religious ideas and practices (he had no means of establishing the
necessary relations of trust without total immersion) but rather that he
is incapable of imagining that the Indians of the Riobamba valley may
have their own reasons to believe what they believe in, or to act the way
they act. To him, they are simply superstitious, ignorant people living in
a backward and profoundly racist country. With his nave and simplistic
conclusion that religion is a powerful ideology used to keep the Indian
masses in servility, Rivet fully reveals himself as the Third Republic
thinker he is, totally imbued with the superiority of his scientific
aspirations to rationality, progress and enlightenment. Scientific
knowledge is a weapon against not only religious mystification and
ignorance but also poverty and inequality. The destitution and social
immobility in which the Indians live, he concludes, should in no way be
attributed to racial inferiority, for they result from three centuries of harsh
treatment and enslavement (ibid.: 78).
Rivets primary interest in the human condition, wherever he
happened to find it, comes across vividly in this first study, perhaps even
Laura Rival
136
more so in the absence of an interest in cultural difference. Rivet may

have lacked cultural empathy, but certainly not social empathy. He did
not choose to research a complex and depressing situation, but simply
tried to analyse it as a witness, without exoticising the very poor Indians
he knew.15 This first study also shows Rivets unusual interest in the
complex history of mixed-race and acculturated populations, or what
today would be called in France les mtissages culturels, or the mestizo
mind (Gruzinski 2002, Castelain et al. 2006).
The Jibaro Indians (19078)
Rivet organised expeditions apart from those of the geodesic mission
and travelled to the eastern and western slopes of the Andes, where he
met and studied independent and isolated Indian populations such as
the Tsachilas (Rivet 1905). Like any other traveller, he became
fascinated with the famous Jibaros and planned to spend at least nine
months in their territory, a project he ultimately could not carry out
(Laurire 2006: 192). He nevertheless wrote a substantial essay on
Jibaro culture, mainly based on secondary sources, and on the few
direct observations he had made himself while measuring and
interviewing travelling Jibaros.
The study, which compiles approximately thirty references in various
languages and includes a number of personal observations, as well as
answers to questionnaires Rivet sent to missionaries and traders, is
justified on the ground that, even though the Jibaros are universally
known among travellers as a fiercely independent, pure and original
Indian race, no ethnographic synthesis of their culture exists as yet
(Rivet 1907: 338, 349). After a brief exposition of the facts justifying
the treatment of Jibaro culture as a separate, distinct and homogeneous
biocultural unit, Rivet presents the highly detailed data he compiled in
nine different sections: historical background, geographical
distribution, census data, physical anthropology, material culture,
family life, social life, religious life and psychic life. Material life is
subdivided into the house, agriculture and husbandry, food, weapons,
musical instruments, daily life, and hunting and fishing; family life into
gender relations, childrens education, marriage, birth and death; social
life into social organisation, commerce and warfare; religious life into
traditions, divinities, witchcraft, afterlife, totemic beliefs, celebrations,
superstitions and medicinal recipes; and finally, psychic life into general
knowledge, counting, arts, moral life, cultural personality and
reflections on the races future.
The historical section is based almost entirely on Federico Gnzalez
Surezs Historia General de la Repblica del Ecuador.16 In Rivets
characteristic ethnographic style, direct observations are complemented
137
with descriptions of collected materials and annotated summaries of

secondary sources. Archaeological data are used to complement or
illustrate historical works, and direct field observations juxtaposed with
responses to questionnaires sent to intermediary informants. Often,
questionnaires are used to expand the ethnographic inventory by
covering facts on which no direct observation was possible, instead of
being used to offer a complementary perspective on the same object of
analysis. This leads to a problematic division of labour between direct
and mediated observation: whereas the ethnographer (Rivet) specialises
in the direct observation and collection of concrete material items, the
intermediary informant, being deemed more intimately familiar with
the Indian, is asked to contribute the sociological, intellectual, moral
and symbolic data.
The stereotypical generalisations offered in the sections on the
family, social institutions, religious beliefs and Jibaro personality are
drawn from what people who know the Jibaros told Rivet. Except for a
few corrective comments, where Rivet uses his direct knowledge to
correct stereotypes that he finds erroneous or exaggerated (1907: 608
9), there is no questioning of the sources. Moreover, and perhaps more
disturbingly, wonderful ethnographic facts are noted in the course of
descriptions of material culture or daily life and just left at that. These
facts, so fascinating for the modern ethnographer, are never
commented upon or analysed. There is absolutely no attempt on Rivets
part to raise a question or to call upon the native point of view;
ethnographic facts do not awaken his imagination. For instance, he
states in passing (ibid.: 601) that Jibaro men put their left fist in their
mouths each time they tell myths or tribal war stories. A beautiful, very
graphic drawing by one of his colleagues from the geodesic mission
even illustrates the scene (ibid.: 600). The same indifference greets
other facts, such as the magical practices surrounding the sale of a gun
to a white trader (ibid.: 602) or the high rate of female suicide among
the Aguaruna (1908: 239).
In contrast with his manifest disinterest in cultural aspects that
cannot be catalogued, Rivet is unstoppable when it comes to giving the
scientific names of the plants used, describing artefacts or praising
techniques, technologies, bodies of practical knowledge and other types
of indigenous material achievement.17 The same goes for his expert
appreciation of the Jibaros diet, physical beauty, strong constitution,
economic self-sufficiency and preventive measures against smallpox
epidemics. He has, of course, no time or sympathy for remedies
grounded in superstition or beliefs in witchcraft.
Zerilli (199193: 390) sees in this essay the richest and most
ethnographic of all Rivets works. Laurire does not share this point of
Laura Rival
138
view (2006: 193), nor do I. What this essay illustrates so well, however, is
the ways in which the natural scientist-cum-anthropologist (Stocking
1992b: 20) used indirect informants in the collection of ethnographic
data (Rochereau 1958, Pineda Camacho 1996). While still employed by
the geodesic mission, Rivet had no choice but to rely on the information he
could obtain from priests, military officers, local scholars or traders. What
started as a practical way of gathering data on places and people he was
curious about but could not visit himself became a way of working, even
a methodology. Like his predecessors (cf. Dias 1991: 8283), Rivet thought
that good ethnography did not depend on field professionals, and that good
questionnaires filled in by knowledgeable correspondents were sufficient.
Observation and classification could remain two separate activities as long
as the anthropologist had a vast network of secondary informants with
whom he could correspond regularly. Rivets pragmatic methodological
approach was particularly successful for researching Amerindian
languages. He not only amassed great quantities of linguistic data (mainly
vocabulary lists) but also co-authored scores of publications with indirect
informants and co-researchers formally trained in linguistics.
As we know today, what works for the collection of material items
and factual information may be totally inappropriate for both the
sociological study of systems of action (Leach 1957: 119) and the
reconstruction of psychic life fixed in language, art, myth and religion
(Stocking 1992b: 37). However, Rivet was not studying indigenous
social classifications: his task, as he saw it, was to survey the field by
gathering basic ethnographic descriptions that could be mapped onto
the South American continent and methodically classified. That Rivet
remained uninterested in the general structure of society and the native
point of view until the end of his life explains why his 19411942 field
research in Colombia was similar in almost every respect to the
fieldwork he had carried in Ecuador at the beginning of his
anthropological career. Accompanied by his Colombian students, he
sailed through various remote regions to collect anthropometric
measurements, blood samples, archaeological artefacts, numerous
items of material culture and vocabulary lists (Pineda Camacho 1996,
Laurire 2006: 81718). Here too, fieldwork was aimed at constituting
the material archives of disappearing cultures.
Origins and migrations of the American Man
Rivets early publications, authored in his capacity as a medical doctor
attached to the French geodesic mission, well illustrate both his
anthropological interests and his methodological approach. They touch
on many burgeoning domains (from studies of prehistoric skeletal
remains, to studies of diseases, indigenous languages, religious beliefs,
139
artefact use and economic activities, and physical features or

biomedical conditions), and combine field data reports or syntheses of
previously published work (often in Spanish) with comparative
analyses. Of the nineteen articles written between 1901 and 1908 (as
listed by Len 1958), eleven deal with contemporary groups and
customs, three concern pre-Columbian cultures and five involve general
comparative discussions. These early publications give a good indication
of how Rivet decided, under Mons. Gnzalez Surezs influence, to stop
surveying the natural environment and start studying the origins of
South Americas aboriginal populations, as well as the trajectory of preColumbian civilisations, which involved researching the continents
archaeology, physical anthropology and folklore. As Uribe (1996: 52)
remarks, Rivet thus shifted his interests from natural history to human
culture, but without changing his basic methodology: collecting,
classifying and comparing.
His foremost interest in origins and migrations is clearly stated in
the 1906 programmatic report (Rivet 1906: 236), which starts with
several pages dedicated to the geography and history of the Andean
region, where the geodesic mission had taken the majority of its
measurements. In fact, twice as much space is dedicated to history as to
geography, while just a few pages towards the end provide some
ethnographic information. Why so much importance given to history?
Because, replies Rivet (ibid.: 232), the traveller can easily reconstruct,
beneath the cultural manifestations of Inca civilisation, the traces of
anterior and original local civilisations, as the bewildering diversity of
ancient burial arrangements existing in the Ecuadorian Andes testifies.
Spanish empire-building, exactly like Inca empire-building, took place
in the inter-Andean valley, where, as a result, the population is racially
mixed, in contrast with the lowlands, where racial purity is almost
absolute (ibid.: 233, my translation). The ethnological problem,
concludes Rivet, is therefore far more complex (and more interesting)
on the high plateaus.
The ethnological research summarised in the rest of the article
consists in numerous archaeological excavations and anthropometric
measurements more than two hundred subjects of both sexes and all
ages. These two different modes of direct empirical data collection one
aimed at reconstructing the past of human and cultural diversity, the
other at understanding the nature of contemporary diversity are
complemented by two types of secondary sources: the published work
of historians, and interviews with outsiders in daily contact with the
Indians, essentially priests, military officers and traders. The American
Man was, from the beginning, Rivets most systematic ethnological
concern. He asks in the 1906 report the questions he will answer in Les
140
Laura Rival
origines de lhomme amricain: What can todays diversity of physical

appearance, language and material culture tell us about the origins of
indigenous cultures? Where did the American Indians come from
originally? Although he cannot address these questions fully as yet, he
tries to account for what he is already calling mtissage. For him,
hostility between the two races (conquerors and vanquished) explains
why Andean Indians have not lost their identity, despite centuries of
Hispanic influence. The races have mixed biologically, but not
culturally. Civilised by the Incas and still speaking their Quechua
language, the mixed-blood Indians continue to resist hispanisation
stubbornly (1906: 233).
The continuities in Rivets intellectual development are noteworthy.
Even earlier, in the journal he kept during the transatlantic cruise from
France to Ecuador (Zerilli 199193), Rivet revealed his curiosity about
the mechanics of intercultural communication. The facts he observed,
described and meticulously recorded during stopovers in the Caribbean
illustrate his profound interest in biological and cultural hybridity, as well
as their social and political consequences. In Martinique, for example, he
reflected on the condition of Christianised blacks, who have remained
fetishist at heart (les ngres catholiques rests ftichistes). And until the
end of his life, for instance in the teaching he delivered in Colombia (a
country even more racist and conservative than Ecuador) on the
remarkable civilisational achievements of indigenous cultures, he
continued to develop with passion and eloquence the themes of universal
humanism and racial equality (Dussn de Reichel 1984), two ideals he
saw as inseparable from an anthropological reflection on mtissage.
That Rivet was a diffusionist is clearly revealed by his fascination for
origins, his interest in historical migrations, miscegenation and linguistic
diversity, and his (over-) use of historico-comparative methodology.
Whereas most diffusionists, especially those associated with the Vienna
School of ethnology (Haekel 1956), emphasised a peoples historicity
with reference to their spatial distribution and the spatial and temporal
diffusion of their material culture, Rivet chose to classify people in terms
of linguistic distribution, which he saw as scientifically more accurate
and more rigorous. His analysis of South American languages was
modelled on the philological work produced by the linguists who had
reconstructed the Indo-European family. Boas, who had adopted the
same model at the start of his research on North American languages,
soon departed from it, as Stocking explains: By 1920 [Boas] position ...
had changed drastically, and he was inclined to believe that diffusion of
morphological traits could modify the fundamental structural
characteristics of a language (Stocking 1992a: 86).
141
The legacies of Paul Rivets vision for anthropology

As I have tried to show in the previous section, Rivet was not simply a
frenetic empiricist, as Claude Lvi-Strauss called ethnologists from
previous generations to highlight the unique nature of his own
conception of fieldwork as a revelatory experience of radical
displacement (Johnson 2003: 9, 169). Nor was his way of doing
fieldwork simply the result of circumstantial constraints or lack of
maturity, as his last spell of fieldwork in Colombia amply demonstrates.
Rivet was bent on collecting a certain kind of empirical data in the field,
as a result of both his training and his own understanding of
anthropology. A careful reading of Dias (1991) amply supports a view
of Rivets work as being entirely in line with previous attempts in
France: firstly, to define anthropology as broadly as possible; secondly,
to oppose racist rankings of human cultures by showing that languages
are better guides to the study of lasting cultural differences than
physical traits are; thirdly, to have museum collections accepted as
major research tools and to treat material culture as the embodiment of
a peoples cultural creativity and technological achievements; and
fourthly, to demonstrate through a range of scholarly studies that great
civilisations had developed in the New World, a continent of which so
little was known.
Like Boas, Rivet fully embraced physical anthropology and mastered
anthropometric measurement techniques, only to use them against the
analyses and conclusions reached by phrenologists bent on proving the
genetic existence of separate human races and their hierarchical ordering
(cf. Pineda Camacho 1996: 65). The relationship between Rivets
Ecuadorian field experience and his thesis that persisting differences
between human groups are cultural and linguistic rather than biological,
and therefore that race is a vacuous concept, has been examined by both
Zerilli (199193, 1998) and Laurire (2006). The two authors may give
too much importance to the construction of scientific discourse and not
enough to Rivets own life experience. A medical doctor with a passion
for bettering human health through a greater knowledge of anatomy,
biology and epidemiology, a keen observer of all things natural and
human, and a firm believer in a universal, enlightened civilisation, Rivet
soon connected facts collected in the field or learnt in libraries in a novel
way, which led him to oppose firmly the notion of racial inferiority and
propose instead the theory of mtissage.
What struck Rivet upon arriving in Ecuador was the bewildering
phenotypic diversity found in the country, both within and between
ethnic groups. The co-occurrence of intra-ethnic phenotypic diversity
and inter-ethnic linguistic diversity fascinated him. After four centuries
142
Laura Rival
of Quechua and Spanish imposition, and despite the intermingling of

races, Ecuador had remained an ethnic and linguistic mosaic. Human
languages and human biology, he concluded, do not change at the same
rate, nor in the same direction. Whereas human bodies are prone to
mixing, linguistic differences persist over time. Moreover, the
intermingling of races, far from being a cause of generation, as so many
of his contemporaries believed, was a source of biological vitality and
cultural progress. European and American societies were both racially
mixed. The purpose of physical and biological anthropology, including
anthropometric measurements and the study of blood groups, was
therefore to measure the historical process of mtissage (Pineda Camacho
1996: 65). Finally, it is by sharing the lives of Ecuadorian indigenous
peoples that Rivet could fully measure the gap existing between their
intelligence and cultural creativity, and the racist stereotypes held by
Latin American elites and authorities of the savages. The fact that all
human societies contributed equally to the general development of
humankind could be demonstrated through the study of indigenous
material culture and technology, for instance pre-Columbian metallurgy
and gold smelting. It is in Ecuador, a country of entrenched paternalism
and deep racial prejudice, that Rivet learnt to feel the human dimension
of his indigenous informants, to lift the barrier between us and them
once and for all, and to reach a profoundly anti-racist and antiethnocentric vision of humanity (Dussn de Reichel 1984: 71).
Although Rivets linguistic studies were made to serve his diffusionist
thesis, they nevertheless contributed to a better knowledge of South
American languages. Not only did he pioneer a vast new field of research,
he also helped improve the classification of the numerous languages in
this region (Pineda Camacho 1996: 59), even if, in the urgency of data
collection and comparison, his attempt to reduce the number of isolates
led to incorrect affiliations (Campbell 1997: 8081). Sometimes he
rushed to conclusions too quickly and his methodology was not
sufficiently rigorous, but many of his bold and brilliant intuitions were
confirmed by later research, and some of his hypotheses are still guiding
current research (Landaburu 1996). A number of Andean specialists
still consider his Bibliographie des langues aymar et kicua (195154) an
important work of reference.18 More controversial was his application to
South American languages of genetic approaches specifically developed
by philologists to reconstruct Indo-European languages. Boas, who
tended to explain language similarities in diffusional rather than genetic
terms (Stocking 1992a: 74, 86), was critical of Rivets linguistic studies,
particularly his 1924 Langues amricaines.19
Rivets diffusionist search for correlations between the movements of
material objects and languages led him to put forward a range of
143
hypotheses, some more insightful or audacious than others, but all

hotly debated among Americanists. For example, his proposition that
the cultural influence of Amazonian civilisations on Andean societies
could be demonstrated on both archaeological and linguistic grounds
literally enthused Nordenskild in 1913. Rivets main thesis, first
formulated in 1924 and perfected in 1943, that the American
continent had received not only Asian migrants entering through the
Bering Straits but also Malayo-Polynesian and Australian migrants
arriving by sea at different times during pre-Columbian history was
received with more circumspection, especially in Anglo-Saxon circles
(Pineda Camacho 1996: 62).20 However, the 1943 publication of Les
origines de lhomme amricain in Spanish, which came out just a few
months after the French Canadian edition, was received with great
enthusiasm in Latin America. Based on the biological hybridisation
hypothesis and the sociological law of substitution,21 Rivets mtissage
theory helped Creole intellectuals valorise their mestizo heritage. Thanks
to Rivet, they could now form a positive image of their multi-stranded
national identities, rooted in a long history of mixed ethnic origins and
cultural achievements, and see these as contributing to the universal
cultural heritage of humankind (Rival ms). It is worth noting that
Claude Lvi-Strauss immediately wrote a very favourable review of Les
origines de lhomme amricain for Renaissance22 in which he lauds Rivets
erudition, lucidity and positively audacious will to speculate, as well as
his critical stand against timorousness and orthodoxy. Pineda
Camacho (1996: 60) remarks that Rivets thesis on the multi-ethnic
peopling of the American continent, far from being an eccentric flight
of fancy, was a logical diffusionist hypothesis that had first been
formulated by the Vienna school. Interestingly, various authors (for
instance, Bellwood 2005, Hornborg 2005) are currently working on
grand syntheses of the kind proposed by Rivet and putting forward new
hypotheses about cultural identity and migratory movements, which
Rivet would doubtlessly recognise as akin to his own theoretical efforts.
The legacies of Rivets work are diffuse and varied. As noted in the
introduction to this chapter, the most fascinating and striking fact is
that, whereas Rivet is treated as an anthropological ancestor in
Colombia and remembered with much respect, admiration and
gratitude in various other Latin American countries, he has been
almost entirely erased from the collective memory of the French
anthropological community today, despite the fact that he was French
anthropologys chief guiding spirit for more than three decades.
Whether trained in Paris, Ecuador or Colombia, Rivets former Latin
American students have left a wealth of testimonies, which speak in
surprisingly similar terms about his teaching style, theories and vision
144
Laura Rival
of anthropology.23 Although more research is needed on this point,

what these testimonies seem to suggest is that Rivets anthropology, as
he taught and expounded it in his academic writing and as it informed
his politics, resonated profoundly with the ideals and values of Latin
American Creole intellectuals of the time. And if there is such a match
between their mestizo consciousness and Rivets anthropology, it is not
simply because they broadly shared the same political culture but also,
and more importantly, because Rivets anthropology was in many ways
their anthropology as well (Rival ms). Rivets humanism resonated with
the humanism of the friends he made in the field. With them, he
debated not only the history of Ecuador but also the concepts of
progress, welfare and commonwealth, the good society, the human
condition, and many other issues that engaged anthropology publicly
as a new form of humanism. Rivet could take part in a fruitful two-way
anthropological dialogue with his secondary informants and friends,
for there was no obvious colonial impediment to such conversations.
Progressive Creoles and mestizos were as interested as he was in what
humans have in common, their common needs or common psychic
unity, independently of their social condition or geographical location.
For them as for him, the aim of anthropology was to teach the history
of mankind, that is the ways in which humans had moved around the
world, exchanged ideas and goods, learnt from each other and
intermarried to create better societies. In this sense, Rivets humanism
also represented a Latin American aspiration to humanism.24 Rivets
objective studies of the material aspects of human life demonstrated to
his Latin American audience that their heritage contributed directly to
humankinds global heritage. Put differently, Rivets humanism and
that of his progressive Latin American intellectual friends were
inseparable from a civilisation politics, a politics deeply rooted in
modernist humanistic values, which led him (like Boas) to embark on an
empirical and moral critique of racism.
Rivet, whose broad vision of anthropology gave equal importance
to material culture (contemporary and past), linguistics and what we
would today call physical and biological anthropology,25 would have
agreed with Lvi-Strausss definition of ethnology as neither a separate
science, nor a new one. It is the most ancient, most general form of
what we designate by the name of humanism (Lvi-Strauss 1978:
272). As Johnson (2003) reminds us,26 structural anthropology was
born from Lvi-Strauss epistemological battle to define the nature and
scope of anthropology and its relationship to other academic sciences.
However, as they both ignore the debates that shook French
anthropology before Lvi-Strausss ascent, they cannot appreciate the
fact that the latters battle had been preceded by Rivets battle, nor that
145
both mens battles were directly linked to their respective claims that
anthropology was a new kind of humanism, as the change of name
from anthropology to ethnology and back to anthropology (although
structural this time) amply reveals (see endnotes 8, 13).
It is not difficult to find lines of continuity between the two French
scholars, both Americanists and admirers of Boas, both equally
extolling the value of linguistic studies and the importance of artefacts,
and both equally concerned with the relationship between history and
the production of cultural difference. Whereas one provided French
anthropology with the institutional framework it needed to start
existing as an independent, nationally and internationally recognised
field of investigation, the other gave it the coherent and rigorous
theoretical framework it lacked. Much more, of course, will need to be
said on the matter. In a way, structural anthropology would not have
existed without Rivets ethnology, for Rivet asked the questions that
Lvi-Strauss tried to answer: Where do the natural sciences end and the
cultural sciences begin? How best to unify natural and cultural
determinisms methodologically? To what extent can the methodological
approaches used in the natural sciences be applied to the social sciences,
and vice versa? What do we all share as members of the same human
species, and what makes us culturally different?
It is also not difficult to see what impelled Lvi-Strauss to create a
distance between his field philosophy and Rivets twin concern with
the natural history of humankind and the history of societies. As we
saw earlier, Rivets fieldwork was emphatically not sociological: he
preferred to classify, order and organise, rather than take stock of native
significances. The most important task for (structural) anthropology,
as Lvi-Strauss envisaged it, was to make historians, philosophers and
the public at large accept that there is more than one way of conceiving
humanity and its relationship to the world. As Dias (1991: 242) puts it,
anthropology has always been a domain of research torn apart (un
domaine de recherche cartel). And as anthropology finds itself yet again
at a crossroads, unsure of its epistemology, its field research
methodology, its intellectual mission or the kind of humanism it should
be defending (Pia Cabral 2005, 2006; Bloch 2005), there is much to
be learnt, as I hope to have shown in this essay, from Paul Rivets
humanist positionings and visions for the common ground.
Laura Rival
146
Notes
1. This reconstruction of Rivets life owes much to Christine Laurires fine intellectual
biography (Laurire 2006), which I read after having completed my own research. I
would also like to thank all the French and Ecuadorian colleagues who shared with
me their memories of Rivets life and their knowledge of his work.
2. See Len (1958: 31214) for an exhaustive list of scientific names incorporating the
word riveti. Rivets first collections included parasites dangerous to humans and
domesticated animals, and insects involved in propagating a range of diseases and
plagues (ibid.: 309). These collections allowed him to produce the first entomological
studies ever realised in Ecuador (Aruz 1958: 7576).
3. Recherches sur le prognathisme, published in LAnthropologie 21 (Rivet 1909).
4. The term ancient ethnography, coined by Rivet, was only used by himself and a few
associates (Laurire 2006: 146, 155).
5. He was never to publish, for example, his study of the remarkable collection of 800
pre-Columbian ceramics he had brought back from Ecuador. This collection, currently
stored in the Muse du Quai Branly, has never been studied or exhibited. However,
Rivet continued to write about pre-Columbian gold smelting after the war.
6. Rivet received an impressive number of military decorations for his services to the
nation during the First World War (Araz 1958: 3132), and almost left academia
after it (Laurire 2006: 45479).
7. From 1909 to 1941, Rivet wrote in French to Boas, and Boas replied in English. The
letters cover a wide range of topics, from linguistics, politics, the development of
international Americanism, anthropology and racism, the rise of fascism in Germany,
nationalism and internationalism, fund-raising for publishing, and more. In a
fascinating exchange of letters written during 1919, we learn that Rivet invited Boas
to contribute an article to the Journal de la Socit des Amricanistes. Boas replied that
he would, but in German. Rivet wrote back saying that he could not accept an article
in German under present circumstances, as every one knew that Boas spoke and
wrote fluently in both English and Spanish. It would just be too provocative, and stir
up hatred among those whose motion he had just defeated. See archived letters in the
Muse de lHomme: 14/08/1919 [FB to PR]; 04/09/1919 [PR to FB]; 09/10/1919
[FB to PR].
8. See Dias (1991) and Laurire (2006) for a discussion of the changing meanings of
anthropology, ethnology, and ethnography in France in the pre-Lvi-Straussian
era. Johnson (2003: 12), who does not seem to be aware of this most central debate
in the history of French anthropology, attributes Lvi-Strausss reworking of the three
modes into three different stages of anthropological enquiry to the latters effort to
reposition anthropology in relation to other human sciences, in particular history
and philosophy.
9. The series Travaux et mmoires de linstitut dethnologie (Laurire 1999: 114) was
founded the following year, in 1926. See Dias (1991: 7172) for an outline of what
was taught by Mauss and others at the turn of the century. Very little is known about
the professional relationships or intellectual affinities between Rivet, Mauss and LvyBruhl, or about the discussions they must have had while designing the first teaching
programme. Laurire (2006: 49697) found letters of students comparing the
esoteric, hard-to-follow teaching of Mauss with the limpid, structured quality of
Rivets lectures. There are no records of Lvy-Bruhls teaching.
10. On 3 December 1928, Rivet wrote to Boas (on official MNHN headed paper): I feel
emasculated by the reorganisation of the lab at the MNHN and that of the Trocadero.
Add to this the directorship of the Institute of Ethnology and that of the Journal of
147
the Americanist Society of Paris, and youll understand why my days fill so quickly
(my translation).
11. This arrangement was to last until the great university reforms of 1968. The Muse
de lHomme, successor to the Trocadro, became a research unit (laboratory) of the
MNHN, which continued to have two anthropology chairs, one in prehistory and one
in ethnology, the latter being held by the director of the Muse (Michel Izard, personal
communication, December 2004).
12. I found a letter from Rivet to Boas sent on official Socit des Amricanistes-headed
paper dated 23 February 1924, which might be the first mention of a joint FrancoNorth American encyclopaedia project. After congratulating Boas on the Handbook
of American Indian Languages, which he judges absolutely essential reading, and
expressing the hope that the Smithsonian Institution will fund the publication, despite
current economic difficulties, Rivet adds: I would also like to take advantage of the
next Americanist congress to ask the Smithsonian delegates whether they would
consider favourably the proposal to produce a handbook of Central and South
American Indians, very much in the same style as that produced by Hodge for North
America. I am convinced that many European scholars (Nordenskild, KochGrnberg, Lehmann, Preuss, Krickeberg, Karsten, myself) would readily and happily
collaborate. We could also ask a few South American colleagues to contribute. What
do you think? (my translation).
13. Renamed the National Institute of Anthropology after Rivets death.
14. Rivet wrote his early publications in his capacity as a medical doctor attached to the
French geodesic mission.
15. Laurire (2006: 101) quotes an unpublished document in which Rivet powerfully
summarises his view: rags are not picturesque (le haillon nest pas pittoresque).
Pineda Camacho (1996: 61) mentions letters Rivet wrote to the Colombian
government, urging officials to act against the dire poverty in which the countrys
indigenous population was living, a remedy without which no truly national
integration or democracy could develop. Analytical tensions between culture and
poverty still pervade much contemporary work on Amerindians (see, for instance,
Hall and Patrinos 2006, Kalt et al. 2008).
16. Rivets medical profession opened many doors to him (Zerilli 199193: 358), in
particular that of Mons. Gnzalez Surez, Archbishop of Ibarra, a colonial city north
of Quito. This scholar-priest, who had a remarkable knowledge of Ecuadors history
and prehistory, became Rivets friend (Aruz 1958: 7778) and informal teacher,
advising him on practically all his wide-ranging interests: linguistics, physical
anthropology and pre-Columbian material culture. Rivet publicly acknowledged his
intellectual debt to Gnzalez Surez (ibid.: 1517), including an article for the Journal
de la Socit des Amricanistes in 1919. I doubt that Rivet would have agreed with
Lens assertion (1958: 316) that he (Rivet) was the founder of anthropology in
Ecuador. He would have demanded that the title be shared with Mons. Gnzalez
Surez and with another of his Ecuadorian friends, the historian Jacinto Jijn
Caamao.
17. For example, he enthusiastically describes fire-making and other techniques to light
houses at night (1907: 58889), giving the impression that, in addition to having
witnessed these techniques, he tried them out himself.
18. This, inter alia, is the opinion of Olivia Harris and of Carmen Bernand (personal
communications, July 2005, December 2006), the latter adding: his four volumes
on the Quechua language are remarkable. No one has done better since (my
translation).
19. Rivet was much more admiring of Boas, whom he treated as a master (Rivet 1958),
than Boas was of Rivet, whose work Boas hardly referred to.
Laura Rival
148
20. In a hand-written letter sent by Rivet to Boas from the MNHN anthropology lab on 13
February 1925, Rivet expresses his regret that Boas had not accepted his conclusions
regarding the genetic links between Malayo-Polynesian, Australian and Amerindian
languages: Of all those who saw the evidence I have marshalled to support my thesis,
you are the only one who is raising doubts [] I still hope to convince you in the near
future with the publication of more detailed studies, especially on the Yuma group
(my translation). Although Rivet (1932) was invited to give the Frazer Lecture in
Oxford in 1930 on Les Ocaniens, no one in Britain was convinced by his
demonstration that the Australian Aborigines, Tasmanians, Melanesians,
Polynesians, Micronesians, Indonesians, Munda and Khmer formed a single ethnic
complex sharing a common linguistic stock.
21. Cultures do not merge into or mix with each other, but one replaces, that is takes over,
the other. See Jamin (1989: 288).
22. Reproduced in its entirety in Laurire (1999: 127).
23. See, for instance, Araz (1958: 39), Pineda Camacho (1985: 1112), Larrea (in
Araz 1958), Dussn de Reichel (1984), Duque Gmez (1958), Valera (in Araz
1958), Santiana (in Araz 1958) and Chevasse (in Araz 1958). Carmen Bernand
(December 2006), another Latin American citizen and anthropologist, mentions that:
It is while reading The origins of the American man as a young student in Buenos Aires
that I decided to become an anthropologist (my translation).
24. Wilder (2005), of course, was to look at Rivets project in terms of his defence of
tempered colonialism in Africa and other regions of the Third World.
25. In a letter he sent to Boas on 14 February 1936, he said that he was preparing a
volume on ethnology for a French encyclopaedia, adding: that is, all the sciences of
mankind, anthropology, ethnography, sociology and linguistics (my translation).
26. Perhaps as a result of being under the spell of the received wisdom that there is a
before and an after Claude Lvi-Strauss, as Michel Izard told me in an interview, thus
stressing the epistemological break, or radical discontinuity, initiated by structuralism.
Bertholet (2003), like Johnson, and almost certainly for similar reasons, presents an
ahistorical version of history in which Lvi-Strauss appears as a total outsider to
French anthropology, someone who learnt the trade in the USA. For Bertholet, LviStrauss who was first recognised professionally not in France but in the USA is a
true heir to Boas. More anecdotal, yet revealing, is Bertholets (2003: 14850, 173)
narration of the famous New York dinner during which Boas died. Told in a way that
stresses the direct lineage between Lvi-Strauss and Boas, the story hardly mentions
Rivet at all. Having similarly heard many French colleagues tell me, overwhelmed by
the symbolic power of the image, that Boas died in Lvi-Strauss arms, I did not pay
attention to Bertholets version until I re-read De prs et de loin, where Lvi-Strauss
(1988: 5758) clearly states that the dinner had been organised in Paul Rivets
honour and that, when Boas felt unwell, he was attended by Rivet, who, after all, was
a medical doctor. The power of myth is indeed overpowering.
References
Allen, N.J. 2000. Categories and classifications: Maussian reflections on the social, Oxford:
Berghahn.
Aruz, J. (ed.). 1958. Homenaje a Paul Rivet, Special issue of the Boletin de las Secciones
Cientficas de la Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, 10 (86).
Bellwood, P. 2005. First farmers: the origins of agricultural societies, Oxford: Blackwell.
Bertholet, D. 2003. Claude Lvi-Strauss, Paris: Plon.
149
Bloch, M. 2005. Essays on cultural transmission, Oxford: Berg.

Campbell, L. 1997. American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America,
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Castelain, J.-P., S. Gruzinski and C. Salazar-Soler (eds). 2006. De lethnographie lhistoire.
Paris-Madrid-Buenos Aires: Les mondes de Carmen Bernand, Paris: LHarmattan.
Chevasse, P. 1958. Las grandes realizaciones francesas: Paul Rivet y el museo del hombre,
in J. Araz (ed.), Homenaje a Paul Rivet, Special issue of the Boletin de las Secciones
Cientficas de la Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, 10(86): 1058.
dHarcourt, R. 1958. Paul Rivet, 18761958, Journal de la socit des amricanistes, 47: 120.
de Friedemann, N.S. 1984. Etica y politica del antropologo: compromiso professional, in
J. Arocho and N.S. de Friedemann (eds), Un siglo de investigacin social antropologica
en Colombia, Bogota: Etno.
Dias, N. 1991. Le muse dethnographie du Trocadro (18781908): Anthropologie et
musologie en France, Paris: Editions du CNRS.
Dussn de Reichel, A. 1984. Paul Rivet y su epoca, Correo de los Andes (Bogota, MayoJunio), 26: 7076.
Gnzalez Surez, F. 1969 [18901903]. Historia General de la Repblica del Ecuador, Quito:
Edit. Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana.
Gruzinski, S. 2002. The mestizo mind: the intellectual dynamics of colonization and
globalization (tr. D. Dusinberre), New York and London: Routledge.
Haekel, J. (ed.). 1956. Die Wiener Schule der Vlkerkunde, Vienna: F. Berger.
Hall, G. and H.A. Patrinos (eds). 2006. Indigenous peoples, poverty and human development
in Latin America, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave (Macmillan).
Hornborg, A. 2005. Ethnogenesis, regional integration, and ecology in prehistoric
Amazonia: toward a system perspective, Current Anthropology, 46(4): 589620.
Jamin, J. 1989. Le savant et le politique: Paul Rivet (18761958), in C. Blanckaert, A.
Ducros and J.-J. Hublin (eds), Histoire de lanthropologie: hommes, ides, moments,
Bulletins et Mmoires de la Socit dAnthropologie de Paris, 1(34): 27794.
Johnson, C. 2003. Claude Lvi-Strauss: the formative years, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kalt, J.P. (and other members of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic
Development) 2008. The state of the native nations: conditions under US policies of selfdetermination, New York: Oxford University Press.
Kerns, V. 2003. Scenes from the high desert: Julian Stewards life and theory, Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Landaburu, J. (ed.). 1996. Documentos sobre lenguas aborgenes de Colombia del archivo de
Paul Rivet, Volumes I and II, Santa Fe de Bogot: Ediciones Uniandes.
Laurire, C. 1999. Paul Rivet, vie et oeuvre, Gradhiva, 26: 10928.
2006. Paul Rivet (18761958): le savant et le politique, unpublished doctoral
thesis, Paris, EHESS.
Leach, E. 1957. The epistemological background to Malinowskis empiricism, in R. Firth
(ed.), Man and culture: an evaluation of the work of Bronislaw Malinowski, London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Len, L. 1958. Contribucin del doctor Paul Rivet al conocimiento cientfico de la
repblica del Ecuador, Miscellana: Acts of the 31st International Congress of
Americanists, Vol. 1, Mexico City: Universidad Autnoma de Mxico, 30521.
Lvi-Strauss, C. 1978. Structural anthropology II, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
1988. De prs et de loin: entretiens avec Didier Eribon, Paris: Odile Jacob.
Lottman, H. 1982. The left bank: writers in Paris from Popular Front to Cold War,
Heinemann: London.
Pia-Cabral, J. 2005. The future of social anthropology, Social Anthropology, 13(2): 11928.
150
Laura Rival
2006. Anthropology challenged: notes for a debate, Journal of the Royal

Anthropological Institute, 12(3): 66373.
Pineda Camacho, R. 1985. Paul Rivet y el Americanismo, Texto y Contexto (Universidad
de los Andes, Bogot), 5: 719.
1996. Paul Rivet: un legado que an nos interpela, in J. Landaburu (ed.),
Documentos sobre lenguas aborgenes de Colombia del archivo de Paul Rivet, Santa Fe de
Bogot: Ediciones Uniandes, vol. 2: 5374.
Rival, L., ms. Land and people in the Ecuadorian Choc: three political visions.
Rivet, P. 1903. Etude sur les Indiens de la rgion de Riobamba, Journal de la Socit des
Amricanistes (n.s.), 1: 5880.
1905. Les Indiens Colorado: rcit de voyage et tude ethnologique, Journal de la
Socit des Amricanistes (n.s.), 2(2): 177208.
1906. Cinq ans dtudes anthropologiques dans la rpublique de lEquateur:
rsum prliminaire, Journal de la Socit des Amricanistes, 3: 22937.
1907. Les indiens Jibaros: tude gographique, historique et ethnographique,
LAnthropologie, 18: 33368 (1st part), and 583618 (2nd part).
1908. Les indiens Jibaros: tude gographique, historique et ethnographique,
LAnthropologie, 19: 23559 (3rd part).
1909. Recherches sur le prognathisme, LAnthropologie, 21: 50518, 63769.
1912. LEthnographie ancienne de lEquateur: Mission du service gographique de
larme en Amrique du Sud, Paris: Gauthier-Villars.
1924. Langues amricaines, in A. Meillet and M. Cohen (eds), Les langues du
monde, Paris: Edouard Champion, pp. 597712.
1932. Les Ocaniens, in W. Dawson (ed.), The Frazer Lectures (19221932),
London: Macmillan.
1943. Les origines de lhomme amricain, Montral: Les Editions de lArbre.
195154. Bibliographie des langues aymar et kicua, Paris: Institut dEthnologie.
1958. Tribute to Franz Boas, International Journal of American Linguistics, 24(4):
25152.
Rochereau, H.J. 1958. El professor Rivet y sus corresponsales, in L. Duque Gmez (ed.),
Homenaje al Profesor Paul Rivet, Bogot: Editorial ABC, 27.
Stocking, G. 1987. Victorian anthropology, New York: Macmillan Press.
1992a. The Boas plan for the study of American Indian languages, in G. Stocking
(ed.), The ethnographers magic and other essays in the history of anthropology, Madison:
The University of Wisconsin Press.
1992b. The ethnographers magic: fieldwork in British anthropology from Tylor
to Malinowski, in G. Stocking (ed.), The ethnographers magic and other essays in the
history of anthropology, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Uribe T. and A. Carlos. 1996. Entre el amor y el desamor: Paul Rivet en Colombia, in J.
Landaburu (ed.), Documentos sobre lenguas aborgenes de Colombia del archivo de Paul
Rivet, Santa Fe de Bogot: Ediciones Uniandes, vol. 1: 5273.
Wilder, G. 2005. The French imperial nation-state: negritude and colonial humanism between
the two world wars, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Zerilli, F. 199193. Il terreno ecuadoriano di Paul Rivet: antropologia, linguistica,
ethnografia, Annali della facolt di Lettere e Filosofia 2: Studi Storico-Antropologici, 29
30: [n.s. 1516, 1991/921992/93]: 35396.
1998. Il lato oscuro delletnologia: il contributo dell antropologia naturalista al processo
di instituzionalizzazione degli studi etnologici in Francia (D.E.A. 10), Rome: CISU.
Chapter 6
ALFRED MTRAUX:
EMPIRICIST AND ROMANTICIST
Peter Rivire
Although Alfred Mtraux was of Swiss nationality, I think it is correct

to say that most people think of him as a French anthropologist and
ethnographer. He was born in Lausanne in 1902 but spent much of his
childhood in Mendoza, Argentina, where his father, also Alfred,
practised as a surgeon from 1907 to 1954. He received all his secondary
education in Europe, rstly in Switzerland and then in France. In 1921
he enrolled at both lcole des Chartes and lcole Pratique des Hautes
tudes, Section des Sciences Religieuses. In 1922, aged twenty, he
obtained eight months leave of absence and returned to Argentina to
undertake his rst eldwork. He spent the time studying the Calchaqu,
a subgroup of the Diaguita, in northwest Argentina, as well as
travelling in Peru, Bolivia and Chile. Back in France by late 1922, in
January or February 1923, he admitted to Georges Bataille his intention
of becoming an ethnologist specialising in South America (Le Bouler
1992: 136). In 1925 he obtained a degree at lcole des Langues
Orientales, in the Section des Langues Africaines, and two years later he
was back at lcole Pratique des Hautes tudes, where he studied with
Marcel Mauss and Paul Rivet. At this time he also went to study in
Sweden, at Gothenburg, under one of the leading Americanists of the
time, Baron Erland von Nordenskild, who seems to have had a far
stronger inuence on him than either of the French anthropologists.
The thesis which he submitted for his degree at lcole Pratique des
Hautes tudes was La civilisation matrielle des tribus tupi-guarani
(1928a). He obtained his Docteur s-Lettres from the Sorbonne in 1928
with a thesis on La religion de Tupinamba et ses rapports avec celle des autres
tribus tupi-guarani (1928b).
152
Peter Rivire
Figure 6.1. Alfred Mtraux, seated second from right, doing fieldwork among Chipaya
in Bolivia, 1931 or 1932. Courtesy of Harold Prins.
In 1928 he was invited to the National University of Tucumn in

Argentina, where he founded the Instituto de Etnologa and served as
its director until 1934. During those years he was able to carry out
extensive eldwork among the peoples of the Gran Chaco, the
Chiriguano, Mataco and Toba, extending his work in 1932 to the UruChipaya of the Bolivian Altiplano. At the beginning Mtraux was happy
at Tucumn and in December 1930 was able to write: My institute and
my journal1 are the sole living organisms in this university, and my
activity is regarded as a good element of propaganda.2 But only seven
months later he complained: My situation is far from being as brilliant
as last year because of the frightful economic disaster in Argentina.3 He
nally gave up in 1934, writing the following year: I have left Argentina,
where, as a consequence of the idiosyncratic nature of the country, my
activity risks becoming completely paralysed. I have escaped the most
appalling stagnation4 (Auroi and Monnier 1996: 1417).
In 193435 he participated, at the invitation of Mauss and Rivet,
in a Franco-Belgian expedition to Easter Island. On his return journey,
he visited various Pacic islands, including Hawaii. Between 1936 and
1938 he was back in Hawaii with an appointment at the Bernice Bishop
Museum, Honolulu. In 1938 he was a Visiting Professor at the
University of California and during 19391941 he was based at Yale,
returning for eldwork to Argentina and Bolivia, as well as being
involved with the Human Relations Area Files. In 1941 he joined the
Alfred Mtraux
153
staff of the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian

Institution in Washington and for the next four years was busy helping
with the production of the Handbook of South American Indians
(hereafter HSAI). During this period he was also Visiting Professor at
the Escuela Nacional de Antropologa in Mexico City in 1943 and made
two visits to Haiti (1941 and 1942). At the end of the Second World
War (he had become a United States citizen before the country entered
the war), he went to Europe as a member of the United States Bombing
Survey. It may have been his experiences on this that turned his
attention to applying anthropology to intercultural and interracial
understanding. He joined the United Nations Department of Social
Affairs in New York in 1946, being seconded to UNESCO in Paris the
following year and joining that organisation in 1950.5 He remained
with UNESCO until his retirement in 1962. During this time he travelled
widely, to Africa and India as well as the New World. He was engaged in
various research projects, including the Hylean Amazon Project in
194748, research into setting up basic rural education in Haiti from
1948 to 1950, into race relations in Brazil in 195051, and in 1954,
in conjunction with the International Labour Office, into Aymara and
Quechua Indian migrations in Bolivia and Peru. He was appointed
Professor of the Anthropology of South American Indians at Lcole
Pratique des Hautes tudes in Paris in 1959. He died, by his own hand,
near Paris, on 12 April 1963.
It is worth considering here whose ideas most inuenced Mtrauxs
work. It would be difficult to argue that Mauss left any lasting impression
on it. I have found no reference to Mausss work in any of Mtrauxs, and
his method is very far from being Maussian. Although La religion de
Tupinamba is dedicated to Mauss, it is difficult to imagine the latter putting
so much work into a topic and producing no more than a compilation
from literary sources. Perhaps one brief Maussian moment, an echo of Le
don, is a very short notice (1929b) drawing attention to two little-known
historical texts on the potlatch in Florida and the Gran Chaco.
Except very early in Mtrauxs career, Paul Rivet does not seem to
have had much inuence on him either. Rivet held that South America
was peopled by Malayo-Polynesian and Australian peoples in relatively
recent times, and this may well explain an early article by Mtraux, Le
bton de rythme: Contributions ltude de la distribution
gographique des lments de culture dorigine mlansienne en
Amrique du Sud (1927a). Rivet clearly thought highly of Mtraux
and wrote a glowing reference for him when he went to the university
at Tucumn. He was Mausss and Rivets choice to go on the FrancoBelgian expedition to Easter Island, and Rivet, who edited Volume 7 of
Encyclopdie Franaise in the early 1930s, chose Mtraux to contribute
154
Peter Rivire
three articles. It would appear, however, that they later fell out, for
Mtraux was to write to Lowie in 1940 that, Whatever my past
conicts with him [Rivet] have been, I thought it my duty to do my very
best to help him leave France and come here (Auroi and Monnier 1996:
46). It is not clear what these conicts were about, but in 1938 Mtraux
had published an article, The Proto-Indian script and the Easter Island
tablets. (A critical study), in which he had rmly refuted an argument
put forward a decade earlier by Guillaume de Hevezy that there is a close
connection between the script found during excavations in the Indus
Valley and signs on Easter Island tablets. Various other authors,
including Rivet, had supported Hevezys position, which was effectively,
and with a degree of mockery, dismissed by Mtraux.
According to Wagley (1964: 604), Father John Cooper also greatly
inuenced Mtrauxs anthropological career. One of Coopers main
concerns was with questions of cultural distribution and historical
reconstruction, and in his 1942 article, Areal and temporal aspects of
aboriginal South American culture, he was the rst to divide the
cultures of the area into three: marginal, silval and sierral. Mtraux
discusses this schema in his La civilisation Guyano-Amazonienne et
ses provinces culturelles (1946b) and, while pointing out the difficulty
of tting many tribes into it, later referred to Coopers article as his
most important theoretical contribution (1950: 43). Coopers schema
was adopted as the structure of the HSAI, in whose preparation
Mtraux was closely involved, as Marginal, Tropical Forest and Andean,
to which was added a fourth type, the Circum-Caribbean.
The gure from Mtrauxs formative years who probably had the
most powerful inuence on him was Nordenskild. As has already been
mentioned, Mtraux had worked with him in Gothenburg while still a
student in Paris in the 1920s. The inuence that Nordenskild exerted
was not so much because he had worked among the peoples of the Gran
Chaco, who were to form the focus of Mtrauxs earliest research, but
because of his method of reconstructing cultural history. This is
exemplied by his ten-volume series, Comparative ethnographical studies
(19191938), in which, using his own data and literary sources, he
plotted a huge range of Amerindian culture traits. For example, in
Volume 1 of the series, entitled An ethno-geographical analysis of the
material culture of two Indian tribes in the Gran Chaco, his method involves
examining where cultural items, such as dwelling places, beds,
cultivated plants, agricultural tools, hunting weapons, shing tackle
and many others, found among the two Mataco groups in question, the
Choroti and Ashluslay (or Nivacle), are distributed through South
America. The text is supported by 44 distribution maps covering such
objects as wooden spades, bowstrings made from animal material and
Alfred Mtraux
155
bird arrows and slings. Although not employed to the same extent,
identically constructed maps are found in many of Mtrauxs early
works. It is also clear that when Mtraux uses the terms analytic and
comparative, it is very much in the sense employed by Nordenskild.
This is well illustrated by his 1937a article, Easter Island sanctuaries
(analytic and comparative study), in which he describes variations in
the form of ritual stone platforms and examines their distribution
elsewhere in Polynesia.6
Mtrauxs publications are numerous, and looked at chronologically
they reect his contemporary research interests, with, for example, the
focus on the Gran Chaco, Easter Island and Haiti predominating at
certain periods. His main declared interest in myth, magic and religion
is well borne out in the list, but he also wrote about a wide range of other
topics.7 Whereas most of his articles appeared in academic journals, he
also occasionally published in more popular publications, such as La
Revue de Paris, Paris-Soir and Natural History.8
The main bulk of Mtrauxs publications falls naturally into two
main divisions: those pieces based on his own eld research, and those
on literary sources. This division is well illustrated by his collection of
essays entitled Religions et magies indiennes dAmrique du Sud. Although
published posthumously in 1967, he had started work on it before his
death, had chosen six of the nine chapters and had undertaken some
editorial work on four of them. The blurb quite explicitly states that the
book exhibits two essential aspects of Mtrauxs work, those based on
literary sources, and those deriving from his own eld data. I have a
personal interest here, for it so happens that this collection was one of
the rst books that I reviewed for The Times Literary Supplement (Rivire
1967). I still have the notes I made when preparing the review. On the
library-based essays, I quoted the author himself, who wrote: the aim
is not to provide new facts, but to bring together scattered data and
present them in an order that facilitates understanding. I noted that
the pieces in the collection based on Mtrauxs own eld research
consisted of little more than ethnographic reportage, almost devoid of
any theoretical or interpretive framework. Conclusions, where they
exist, are little more than a summary of the facts that have gone before.
It is worth looking at these two aspects of Mtrauxs production in a
little more detail. For many South Americanists, Mtraux is best known
for his publications compiled from the existing historical and
ethnographic literature. He himself rated such work highly and, in an
obituary for Father Cooper, he wrote:
The particular conditions of South American ethnography are such that a
researcher who has never been in the field can, nevertheless, undertake
original research likely to advance the science, if he has a taste for
156
Peter Rivire
scholarship and a critical sense. There exists in fact, on the extinct Indian
cultures and on those which still subsist, an enormous body of information
often of the highest order, which is scattered through travel narratives, the
relations of missionaries, and historical documents. In patiently collecting
these texts and in interpreting them in the light of modern ethnography, it
is possible to penetrate very deep into the American past and to resolve
extremely important problems. Furthermore the accumulation of
documents on indigenous cultures is justified only if it provides material for
wider and wider synthesis. (1950: 3940)
His most quoted works appear to be his numerous contributions to the

HSAI. That he played a central role in its production is acknowledged by
the editor, Julian Steward, who, at the end of the introduction to
Volume 1: The marginal tribes, wrote:
A special word of gratitude, however, is due to Dr. Alfred Mtraux. The
extent of his contribution is by no means indicated by the large number of
articles appearing under his name.9 With an unsurpassed knowledge of
South American ethnology and ever generous with his time, his advice and
help to the editor and contributors alike have been a major factor in the
successful completion of the work. (1946: 9)
On the other hand, probably the most inuential of such publications

was one of his earliest, his thesis on Tupinamba religion (1928b). It is the
chapter in this on Tupinamba cannibalism that started a line of interest
and argument that can be traced via Florestan Fernandes (1963) and
many other authors to Eduardo Viveiros de Castros notion of the
symbolic economy of predation, later revised to alterity, and
perspectivism the latest position in Amazonian ethnography. I found
Mtrauxs ethno-historical study of Tup-Guaran migrations (1927b)
extremely useful when conducting a literature survey of Guianese
ethnography in 1962, and Pierre Grenand credits it with opening the
contemporary path to research on the lowlands10 in his ethno-historical
study of the Wa api (1982: 45). In the 1940s, there were a whole series
of works of synthesis in which Mtraux put together a great deal of
information on specic topics. These included Auraucanian shamanism
(1942), tropical South American shamanism (1944b), the cause and
magical treatment of sickness among Tropical Forest people (1944a),
shamanism in the Gran Chaco (1945), supreme gods and culture heroes
(1946d), mourning rites and burial forms (1947), and the distribution of
certain mythic motifs (1948a). These have proved rather less successful
insofar as, unlike his work on Tupinamba cannibalism, they have gone
virtually unnoticed by subsequent writers on these subjects. Perhaps the
reason for this is that these topics are unlike Tupinamba cannibalism,
which no longer exists still there to be studied, and are studied.11
Alfred Mtraux
157
Just before we turn to consider Mtrauxs eld research, it might be worth

noting that in his obituary of Mtraux, Charles Wagley remarks that while
he, Mtraux, valued eld ethnography more than theory, in Wagleys
opinion, His great strength was ... synthesis and historical research, and he
refers to his two works on the Tupinamba as classics (1964: 606).
Mtrauxs eldwork and the publications based on it will now be
dealt with in greater detail, for that is the focus of the present volume.
As already mentioned, Mtraux undertook a great deal of eld research
in a wide range of different places. There are two points about his eld
research which might be made here. First, he rarely worked alone; more
often than not he had at least one companion, and often more. Secondly,
nowhere did he undertake any period of extended eldwork, ve or six
months being the longest. In fact, Wagley felt that he was too restless
and too eager to be on his way to produce detailed and lengthy eld
reports (1964: 606). Some eld research consisted of little more than
short visits, but even so he published, at least briey, on most of them.12
For the purposes of this assessment of Mtraux as ethnographer, I shall
concentrate on three areas: his work in the Gran Chaco and
neighbouring regions, his visit to Easter Island, and his study of Haiti.
His earliest eldwork in Argentina, as already mentioned, was in 1922
among the Calchaqu, and the information obtained on that expedition
was published in the rst volume (1929a) of his Revista, where also
appeared the main accounts resulting from the eld research undertaken
among the Chiriguano, Mataco, Pilaga and Toba of the Gran Chaco
during his years at Tucumn. These included tudes sur la civilisation
des Indiens Chiriguano (1930) and Les hommes-dieux chez les
Chiriguano et dans lAmrique du Sud (1931), both based on eldwork
carried out between February and June 1929. In the southern summer
of 193031, he visited the Chipaya, an Uro-speaking people of the
Bolivian Altiplano, and consequently published La religin secreta y la
mitologia de los Indios Uro-Chipaya de Carangas (Bolivia) (1935c) and
Civilizacin material de los Indios Uro-Chipaya de Carangas (Bolivia)
(1935a). His publications from this period of his life were by no means
restricted to Revista. He published regularly in Journal de la Socit des
Amricanistes de Paris, Contribution au folk-lore andin (1934) being an
example; and in other Argentinian journals such as Revista del Museo de
La Plata, where Mitos y cuentos de los Indios Chiriguano (1932)
appeared. He undertook further eldwork in 1932 among the TobaPilaga, which gave rise to tudes dethnographie Toba-Pilaga (Gran
Chaco) (1937b). He also made collections of myths, publishing 123
Mataco myths (1939), and 106 Toba and Pilaga myths (1946a).
It should be emphasised that, although these are journal articles, they
often approximate in size to an ethnographic monograph. tudes sur la
158
Peter Rivire
civilisation des Indiens Chiriguano runs to 189 pages plus 141 gures and
93 whole plates. However, La civilisation of the title in his earliest works is
restricted almost exclusively to subsistence and material culture. Only the
last of the fourteen chapters into which it is divided, that on the treatment
of illness, does not t this pattern. A sample of the titles of other chapters
gives a avour of the work: Lagriculture, La cuisine et lalimentation,
Outils des Chiriguano, Les calebasses, Le tissage and so on. Many of the
items and techniques described are fully illustrated. There is nothing about
kinship, residence, social organisation or any other sociological matter. The
only deviation from straight description is to be found in the chapter on
basketwork where there is a discussion of the distribution of a certain
technique in a manner reminiscent of Nordenskilds work. The latter
method also occurs in his article on the Calchaqu (1929a) with reference
to the distribution of subterranean and semi-subterranean huts in South
America. There is a brief reference to Frazers ideas in his Les hommesdieux (1931: 63), but this is a unique exception. The overall result is
meticulously detailed but rather old-fashioned ethnography.
Within a few years, however, a change is noticeable and the
emphasis is increasingly on social institutions. His Les Indiens UroChipaya de Carangas (1935d) contains material on social organisation
(post-marital residence, liation, etc.) and even a table of kin terms,
although without any attempt to see whether they formed any sort of
pattern. His ethnography of the Toba-Pilaga (1937b) covers such topics
as religion, dreams, puberty, pregnancy and birth, funerary rites, feasts,
marriages, kin terms, authority, war, property and games.
Mtrauxs next eld site was Easter Island (193435), and besides a
number of journal articles including his rst piece (1936b) to appear in
English (on Easter Island numerals) the main work that emanated from
this research was the substantial monograph, Ethnology of Easter Island
(1940). Once again this is a work of straightforward ethnographic
reportage with no attempt at analysis or interpretation, although there
are a few brief attempts to compare Easter Island practices with those of
wider Polynesia. The largest proportion of the text, some 150 pages out
of 412, is given over to a description of subsistence activities and material
culture, including, of course, stone-working. The section on sociological
topics, which is given relative prominence and fty-three pages, includes
accounts of the life-cycle, social organisation, property rights, war and
cannibalism. The account of religion occupies thirty-three pages mainly
taken up with lists of gods, whereas the discussion of religious ritual
receives just two pages. There are twenty-seven pages of Tales.
As well as this detailed ethnographic report on Easter Island, he also
produced a much more popular and readable work, explicitly not
addressed either to archaeologists or anthropologists. The rst edition of
Alfred Mtraux
159
this, Lle de Pques, was published in Paris in 1941;13 a revised and

expanded edition appeared in 1951, with an English translation of a
further expanded version, entitled Easter Island, in 1957. The main
reason for this expansion was to take account of Thor Heyerdahls KonTiki voyage and his theory that Easter Island and Polynesia were peopled
from the Americas, a position with which Mtraux rmly disagreed.14
Finally, there is the research he conducted on Haiti. This can really
be divided into his work connected with the UNESCO scheme for the
introduction of basic education into rural areas and that on voodoo. I
am mainly going to ignore the former here, which gave rise to a range
of publications from Hati: la terre, les hommes et les dieux (1957b),15
little more than a well-illustrated travelogue, to articles such as tude
sur lagriculture paysanne dans une valle hatienne (1948b) and
Droit et coutume en matire successorale dans la paysannerie
hatienne (1951a). These are once again straightforward ethnographic
reporting although the former, which is based mainly on information
supplied by the agronomist, Edouard Berrouet, concludes with eight
recommendations for development in the area.
When we turn to voodoo, there is a whole series of articles in
academic journals covering many aspects of the topic, from the concept
of the soul (1946c) through animistic beliefs in voodoo (1952) to
voodoo mystical marriage (1956).16 Once again these are a matter of
plain ethnographic description. There is also a monograph, Le Vaudou
hatien (1958), published in English as Voodo in Haiti (1959). This work
covers most of the topics dealt with in earlier journal articles, although
the style and form of presentation make it more readable than them.17
We have now briey examined a representative cross-section of
Mtrauxs publications based on eldwork across a period of thirty years.
Strikingly little has changed in that time. There is from beginning to end
the production of ethnographic description, but no analysis of the
material of the sort that was becoming increasingly characteristic
among his European contemporaries. There are, however, some changes
of emphasis. The earlier concentration on material objects with copious
description and illustration is gradually replaced by more attention being
paid to topics such as social organisation and religion. What I nd
astonishing about his work is the almost total lack of reference to or
concern with any of the theoretical works on these subjects other than
the occasional foray into cultural history. His publications are amply
backed up by references to numerous historical and ethnographic works,
but with very few exceptions, these are used for the factual evidence they
contain rather than for any ideas their authors might have.
It would be difficult to believe that when he started his main period
of eldwork in the Gran Chaco in the late 1920s, he was not familiar
160
Peter Rivire
with the most inuential works of Lanne sociologique. He seems,

however, to have found them and any other theoretical formulations
irrelevant to his endeavours. This is evidence, perhaps, to support
Wagleys contention that he valued ethnography over theory; in fact, on
occasion one is left with the impression that he consciously ignored
theory. One such occasion is his contribution to Encyclopdie Franaise
on La structure sociale (1936a), which, in 1936, one might have
expected to have had some theoretical content. In fact it has none. The
article consists of factual accounts of such topics, as Family and
marriage, The clan, Property, Government, Law and justice and
Economy. Although the accompanying Further readings includes
Malinowski (Crime and custom), Bougl (on caste), Radcliffe-Brown (on
Australian kinship), Lowie (Primitive society), Maine (Ancient law), Tylor
(Researches into the early history of man) and van Gennep (on totemism),
there is no discussion of the ideas contained in these works.
Nor, during the span of Mtrauxs career, is there any lack of more
analytical and interpretive studies based on eldwork by other
eldworkers which might have acted as models for him. In particular,
just to limit the examples to France, there are the various works on the
Dogon, such as Marcel Griaules Masques Dogons (1938) and Denise
Paulmes Organisation sociale des Dogon (1940), or, from the Pacic,
Maurice Leenhardts Do Kamo (1947). These three authors directly
engage, through their eld data, with the ideas propounded by
numerous French, American and British anthropologists. Mtraux
refused to go down that path, and until the end of his career he
continued to report the ethnographic facts as he saw them and recorded
them, without any reference to any wider theoretical notions. For
example, as late as 1960, he published a collection of Kayap myths
(1960b) without a single word of introduction, interpretation or
explanation of how and when he had collected them.18
On the other hand, it might be said that Mtrauxs work was not
entirely in vain, for one of those Kayap myths, that on the origin of
re, is M8 in Lvi-Strausss The raw and the cooked (1970), the second J
variation on M1, the Bororo key myth which starts off the whole cycle.
Lvi-Strauss also later drew further for Mythologiques on Mtrauxs
collections of Toba-Pilaga, Mataco and Chiriguano myths, but there are
other authors who pay far less attention to his material. John Renshaw,
in his The Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco (2003), describes his work as
the rst attempt to offer an overview of the Chaco since Alfred
Metrauxs Ethnography of the Chaco, published in the HSAI in 1946,
but he makes no reference to any of Mtrauxs numerous eldworkbased publications. Mtrauxs work on voodoo has suffered a similar
fate. If one looks at more recent studies of the phenomenon, there is
Alfred Mtraux
161
little reference to his work. For example, Wade Davis, in his The serpent
and the rainbow (1986), makes two very brief references to him. Indeed
today few people cite his eldwork results.
There may, however, be a clue as to why Mtraux conned himself
to description and eschewed interpretation. There are two publications
in which Mtraux expresses his views on eldwork, ethnography and
anthropology, one published at the beginning and the other at the end
of his career. In 1925, while still a student at lcole des Langues
orientales vivantes, but after his rst eld trip to the Calchaqu and after
having declared to Bataille his intention of becoming an ethnographer,
he published as his second academic article, De la mthode dans les
recherches ethnographiques. There are two points which arise from
this article which deserve attention here. The rst is that Mtraux sees
a clear division of labour within the anthropological endeavour which
harks back to the nineteenth century and Frazers men in the eld,
whose duty it was to collect the facts that the anthropologists, in their
armchairs, could use in their theorising. In Mtrauxs case it is between
the ethnographers and those he variously refers to as scholars, scientists
or sociologists. The nature of Mtrauxs eldwork publications which
we have just reviewed indicates that he continued to subscribe to this
view throughout his working life; he saw his job as providing the facts
which would speak for themselves, as Wagley put it (1964: 606), or,
perhaps, on which other people could theorise. This concern with facts
rather than theories did not escape his contemporaries and friends.
Michel Leiris, in his preface to the French edition of Le Vaudou hatien
(not included in the English translation), wrote:
In his work, Mtraux seems like someone who cared above all for concrete
knowledge and for whom the study of societies was, not a path opening out
into theoretical insights, but a way of knowing men and of approaching
them as nearly as possible, in all the diversity of their usages and customs.
(1958: 7)19
The second point that can be taken from the 1925 article is that he appears
to have a remarkably pessimistic view of the ethnographic endeavour.
Basically he argues that the science of society must rest on a body of secure
and precise facts, but it is questionable whether these can be collected. The
reason for this is that the civilised mind is unable to comprehend the
workings of the primitive mentality. Indeed, the only author he refers to is
Lvy-Bruhl.20 To the question, Do ethnographic facts have the high degree
of precision and exactness indispensable to science?, he answers:
If, as has been believed and continues to be believed, there is an identity
between primitive mentality and civilized mentality, the response to this
162
Peter Rivire
question cannot be other than affirmative. This universality of human

reason has implicitly been admitted by the British sociological school, which
is responsible for the illusion shared by many scholars regarding the quasiabsolute value of the result of these investigations. The critique presented by
Lvy-Brhl in these two works, les Fonctions mentales dans les socits
infrieures and la Mentalit primitive, has cast a legitimate suspicion over this
postulate. The analysis of the representations of primitives has revealed their
fundamental differences from those of the civilized. Wild humanity
appears like a closed world, impermeable to our experience, which remains
incomprehensible so long as one attributes those who create it with mental
processes similar to ours. This misunderstanding, demonstrated with
evidence only in the past fourteen years, is the reason for the imperfection
of evidences obtained from the natives and will affect the results of
ethnographic enquiries to come, as well as those that have already been
provided to us. (1925: 27677)21
The article continues with a litany of the difficulties and obstacles that
impede the collection of accurate and reliable information. One might
be led to think that this is rather a paradoxical position, given the
authors declared commitment to ethnography. However, he goes on to
argue that, with sufficient ability, patience and the ingenuity to adapt to
the circumstances, the ethnographer can overcome many difficulties
and achieve an increasing degree of accuracy. He ends:
The task of the ethnographer must be to succeed in assembling a collection
of information and data whose value and precision place them beyond all
criticism. The facts must dictate the hypotheses and not submit to them. It
is on greater rigour in observation that the progress of sociology will depend,
and it will only become a science of societies under this sole condition.
(1925: 28990)22
In other words and in the end, Mtraux is claiming that the role of the
collector of information is a highly skilled and not a purely mechanical
occupation that anyone can undertake. It is a bid for the proper
recognition of the ethnographers status, one to which he already aspired.
The other article is entitled Entretiens avec Alfred Mtraux, based
on three interviews with Fernande Bing in 1961 and published
posthumously in LHomme (Bing 1964). The second and third
interviews, dealing respectively with his work on Easter Island and on
voodoo, are of no immediate interest, but it is worth looking at the rst
interview in some detail, for it is entitled, Comment et pourquoi
devient-on ethnologue?
In answer to this question, Mtraux states that ethnographers
become ethnographers because they are ill at ease in their own society,
because they do not belong something which certainly seems true of
Alfred Mtraux
163
Mtraux.23 He then looks back at the mid-1920s when he decided to

become an ethnographer. It was period of ferment and of surrealism
that turned to exotic peoples to full its aspirations, rst in the elds of
primitive art, but then, for some, to become channelled into scientic
ends. It was at this time that Mtraux undertook his rst eld research
among Amerindians, and he found that among these people, he felt,
unlike in his own culture, entirely at ease. The rhythm of life seemed
slower and less problematic. He then embarks on a piece of romanticism
which is best left in his own words:24
I also believe that this taking up contact with primitive civilisations has made
me feel that, at root, the protest that has pushed me precisely towards
civilisations that are so much removed from our own finds its motivation in
a sort of nostalgia, a nostalgia that we, men of the West, have, I believe, felt
at all times and which I call, using a term that may be humorous or at
least I intended it to be so a nostalgia for the Neolithic. It seems to me,
without wishing to fall into a facile Rousseauism, that humanity may have
been wrong in going beyond the Neolithic. (Bing 1964: 2122)25
He goes on to argue that the people among whom he spent time in

South America do not differ in their style of life greatly from that of the
Neolithic, and paints an extraordinarily rosy picture of such a life. He
would, he states, be very happy living in the Neolithic age, if only there
had been dentists. He admits, however, that there is no returning to the
Neolithic, and the last people who are at that stage are rapidly
disappearing. What has inspired his ethnographic career is the need to
record, in as much detail as possible, this passing way of life, for he
believes that they have been able to resolve, better than we, certain
problems that confront humanity.26
In practice, however, this Neolithic utopia seemed to have escaped
him, and often he does not seem to have enjoyed his eldwork. For
example, he wrote to Georges-Henri Rivire from Easter Island on 4
December 1934, complaining that life on the island is sad and
monotonous. His stay on the island, which he describes as a devil of
an island, has undermined his resistance, and he has rheumatism and
a serious stomach complaint. He continues:
All this for the modest glory of having compiled a dictionary, made a
grammar and created a corpus of the traditions of these mongrelized
Polynesians. I have a horror of the inhabitants of this island: it is difficult to
imagine a population more vilely degenerated. South American contact has
been enough to introduce the foulest vulgarity. (Laroche 1992: 64)27
164
Peter Rivire
In February 1954, he wrote to Pierre Verger:

Through an act of masochism and pure stupidity, I have spent a month
wandering around the Aymara country, in the rain, in the fog and with
weather that was all the colder given that I was equipped for the tropics. I
have a horror of the landscapes of the high plateaux, I cant bear altitude,
and the Aymara Indians inspire physically in me a violent aversion. In fact,
they give me nausea. (Verger 1992: 182)28
Although he was looking forward to working among Tropical Forest

people, his experience with the Kayap in Central Brazil, a little later
that year, was no better. He was, like most others, a victim to the endless
delays that accompanied travel in the interior of Brazil at that time. The
aeroplane that he expects on 4 April to take him from the Kayap village
of Kubenkankrey does not arrive and when by 6 May, desperate to leave,
there is still no sign of it, he writes:
I would feel much better if I did not have at the bottom of my heart the fear
of not being able to leave this place next Sunday. The prospect of another
fortnight waiting here terrifies me. I wont be able to stand it.29
The aeroplane nally arrives on 24 May. By that time, presumably, in a

state of frustration and anxiety, he has even given up writing his
journal. Later, however, no mention is made of his problems and
worries, and the single difficulty to which he refers is his lack of an
interpreter (dAns 1992: 1115).
Finally, right at the end of his career, in December 1959, in the little
Andean village of Carhuauz, he condes these words to his journal:
The relentless silence of the main square under the sun, and the vague
terror of being condemned to live here, even as an ethnographer (dAns
1992: 24).30
There is something enigmatic about Alfred Mtraux. He was a man
openly dedicated to eldwork, which, in practice, he often found
disagreeable. He devoted himself tirelessly to the accumulation of facts,
whether from the eld or from the writings of others, and to the
production of descriptive accounts, but, at the same time, he seems to
have had a principled unwillingness to submit the material to further
analysis.
A survey of South American ethnographies from the past three
decades indicates that rarely do his anthropological colleagues refer to
his work. On the other hand, Rhoda Mtraux, Alfreds second wife and an
anthropologist in her own right, noted in her article on him in
International Dictionary of Anthropologists (1991) that, while his work had
been neglected for some years, now it is recognized as an invaluable base
Alfred Mtraux
165
on which to build new knowledge and new theory. This may be so, and
there are signs of a recent revival of interest in Mtraux. In Geneva has
emerged the Socit dtudes Alfred Mtraux, and in 2005, at a
symposium in Paris to commemorate 60 years of UNESCO, a paper (see
Prins 2005) celebrated his many years work as an applied anthropologist.
Notes
1. This was the Revista del Instituto de Etnologa de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumn
(hereafter Revista).
2. Mon Institut et ma Revue sont les seuls organismes vivants de cette Universit et mon
activit est considre comme un bon lment de propagande.
3. Ma situation est loin dtre aussi brillante que lanne dernire en raison de leffroyable
dbcle conomique de lArgentine.
4. Jai quitt lArgentine o mon activit la suite de lidiosyncrasie du pays risquait dtre
compltement paralyse. Jai chapp la stagnation la plus lamentable.
5. For an account of Mtrauxs work with UNESCO, see Prins (2005).
6. Nordenskild also rejected the idea of recent Asian or Oceanic influence in
Amerindian culture to which Rivet subscribed. Interestingly enough, when Mtraux
published an article on tapirage (the treatment of birds, such as parrots, in order to
change the colour of their plumage) in South America (1928c), he not only used a
Nordenskild-type distribution map of the practice, but explicitly stated that he could
not relate it to the Malayo-Polynesian culture area.
7. In April 1963, the month of his self-inflicted death and a few months after he had
turned sixty, he published an article entitled Does life end at sixty? Curiously, in none
of the obituaries or commentaries on Mtrauxs life that I have read is there any
reference to what proved to be the rather ominous title of this article. The article
mainly consists of examples of how well old people are treated and respected in simple
societies, but ends on the slightly sour note that in modern societies we have
exchanged these for increased longevity. Although the reason for Mtrauxs suicide
is outside the scope of this paper, Lvi-Strauss made a remark that suggests that he
was suffering from a loss of what today we call self-esteem: And what increases our
desolation even more is the thought that he might not have overrated death if he had
not so unfairly underrated his work, and that he left us under this double
misunderstanding (Et ce qui aggrave encore notre dsolation, cest de penser quil naurait
peut-tre pas surestim la mort sil navait injustement sous-estim son oeuvre, et quil nous
a quitts sur ce double malentendu; 1964: 8).
8. There is a comprehensive, but not exhaustive, list of Alfred Mtrauxs publications in
LHomme, 4 (see Tardits 1964).
9. Mtraux himself wanted to do more. He was disappointed that he was not to write
the articles on the Altiplano, and he made a strong claim to write those on myth and
religion, especially the former (Murra 1992: 78).
10. la voie contemporaine des recherches sur les basses terres.
11. Louis Farons Hawks of the sun (1964), which is a fieldwork-based study of Mapuche
shamanism, refers only twice to Mtrauxs work on Araucanian shamanism, both
times critically. Whereas Mtraux refers to the work of Audrey Butt Colson in his
updating of his 1944 article (1944b) on tropical South American shamanism in his
posthumous collection, the latter makes reference only to his HSAI contributions in
any of her works on the topic.
166
Peter Rivire
12. For example, Contribution lethnographie et la linguistique des Indiens Uro

dAncoaquil (Bolivie) (1935a), of 35 pages, is based on just one weeks stay in the Uro
village of Ancoaquil, on the Bolivian Altiplano.
13. Given its date and place of publication, it is not too surprising that this edition is
difficult to find. I am grateful to Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, who has a copy in his extensive
collection of South Americana and provided me with a detailed account of how it
differs from the 1951 edition.
14. A decade later, in the course of an interview, Mtraux was much more scathing about
Heyerdahls theory: This is a perfectly unsustainable theory, which no man of science has
accepted, I would even say so absurd that no scholar has dreamt of examining it seriously
(Cest une thorie parfaitement insoutenable quaucun homme de science na accepte, je dirai
mme si absurde quaucun savant na pu songer lexaminer srieusement; see Bing 1964: 26).
15. An English version, Haiti: Black peasants and their religion, appeared in 1960.
16. In 1961 he stated that it was only in 1948, when he became involved with the
UNESCO project in the Marbial Valley, that he began his study of voodoo (Bing 1964:
28). It is not clear why he should have claimed this, since he declares elsewhere that
he became interested in the subject during his visits in 1941 and 1944, and he
published his first article on voodoo in 1946 (Mtraux 1959: 17).
17. This work still commands a sizeable readership and apparently remains popular in
Haiti. I am grateful to Harald Prins for pointing this out to me, as well as for making
a number of other invaluable comments on an earlier draft.
18. This against a background when there is likely to have been much discussion in
Parisian anthropological circles about mythology, as Lvi-Strauss was then working
on the first volume of Mythologiques, which appeared in 1964.
19. Mtraux apparat dans son oeuvre comme quelquun qui se souciait avant tout de
connaissance concrte et pour qui ltude des socits tait, plutt quune voie dbouchant sur
les aperus thoriques, un moyen de connatre les hommes et de les approcher du plus prs,
dans toute la diversit de leurs us et coutumes.
20. To whom, at least in those of his publications which are listed in the bibliography and
comprise all his main ones, he never makes another reference. Perhaps it might be
added that the Revue dethnographie, in which this piece appeared, was edited by,
amongst others, Lvy-Bruhl.
21. Sil y avait, comme on la cru et comme on continue le croire, identit entre la mentalit
primitive et la mentalit civilise, la rponse cette question naurait pu tre que laffirmative.
Cette universalit de la raison humaine a t implicitement admise par lcole sociologique
anglaise qui est responsable dillusion partage par beaucoup de savants sur la valeur quasi
absolue du rsultat de ces investigations. La critique prsent par Lvy-Brhl dans ses deux
ouvrages, les Fonctions mentales dans les socits infrieures et la Mentalit primitive, a jet
sur ce postulat une suspicion lgitime. Lanalyse des reprsentations des primitifs a rvl les
diffrences foncires quelles prsentent avec celles des civiliss. Lhumanit sauvage apparat
comme un monde clos, impermable notre exprience, qui reste incomprhensible si lon
attribue ceux qui le composent des processus mentaux sembables aux ntres. Ce
malentendu, signal avec vidence depuis quatorze ans seulement, est cause de limperfection
des tmoignages obtenus des indignes et affecte le rsultat des enqutes ethnographiques
venir aussi bien que de celles qui nous sont dj donnes.
22. La tche de lethnographe doit tre de parvenir rassembler un ensemble de renseignements
et de donnes dont la valeur et lexactitude seront au-dessus de toute critique. Les faits doivent
imposer les hypothses et ne pas sy plier. Cest dune plus grande rigueur dans lobservation
que dpendront les progrs de la sociologie, qui ne deviendra la science des socits qu cette
seule condition.
23. See Lvi-Strauss (1976 [1955]) and Leach (1984) for similar arguments.
Alfred Mtraux
167
24. It should be noted that such romanticism was not that uncommon. One of the most
famous examples of it is to be found in Lvi-Strausss Tristes tropiques (1976 [1955]).
25. Je crois aussi que cette prise de contact avec les civilisations primitives ma fait sentir quau fond,
la protestation qui mavait prcisment pouss vers des civilisations tellement loignes de la
ntre, trouvait son motif dans une sorte de nostalgie, une nostalgie que nous, hommes
dOccident, avons, je crois, ressentie de tout temps et que jappelle dun terme peut-tre comique,
enfin que je veux tel, la nostalgie du nolithique. Il me semble, et cela sans vouloir tomber dans
un rousseauisme facile, que lhumanit a peut-tre eu tort daller au-del du nolithique.
26. It comes across more or less explicitly in many of Mtrauxs field studies that he sees
himself engaged in salvage ethnography, that what he is observing is the debris of a
past civilisation and that he is recording what will soon have gone forever.
27. Tout ceci pour la modeste gloire davoir runi un dictionnaire, fait une grammaire et constitu
en corpus les traditions de ces Polynsiens abatardis. Jai les habitants de cette le en horreur:
on peut difficilement imaginer population plus vilement dgnre. Il a suffi du contact
sudamricain pour y introduire la plus crapuleuse vulgarit.
28. Par un acte de masochisme et de pure imbcillit, jai parcouru le pays aymara pendant un
mois, sous la pluie, dans la brume et par des froids dautant plus acerbes que jtais quip
tropicalement. Jai horreur des paysages de haut-plateau, je supporte mal laltitude et les
Indiens aymara minspirent une aversion physique violente. En fait, ils me donnent la
nause.
29. Je serais beaucoup mieuxsi je ne gardais au fond du coeur la crainte de ne pouvoir quitter
cet endroit dimanche prochain. La perspective de quinze nouveaux jours dattente
mpouvante. Je ne pourrai pas les supporter.
30. implacable silence de la grande plaza sous le soleil, et vague terreur dtre condamn y
vivre, mme en tant quethnographe.
References
Auroi, C. and A. Monnier. 1996. Du pays de Vaud au pays du Vaudou: ethnologies d Alfred
Mtraux, Geneva: Muse d Ethnographie.
Bing, F. 1964. Entretiens avec Alfred Mtraux, LHomme, 4: 2031.
Cooper, J. 1942. Areal and temporal aspects of aboriginal South American culture,
Primitive Man, 15: 138.
dAns, A.-M. 1992. Le contenu ditinraires 2, 19531961, Prsence de Alfred Mtraux,
Cahiers Georges Bataille (Special Issue): 528.
Davis, W. 1986. The serpent and the rainbow, London: Collins.
Faron, L. 1964. Hawks of the sun: Mapuche morality and its ritual attributes, Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press.
Fernandes, F. 1963. Organizao social dos Tupinamba, So Paulo: Difuso Europia do Livro.
Grenand, P. 1982. Ainsi parlaient nos anctres: essai d thnohistoire Wa api, Paris:
ORSTOM.
Laroche, M.-C. 1992. Alfred Mtraux lle de Pques, Prsence de Alfred Mtraux, Cahiers
Georges Bataille (Special Issue): 4765.
Le Bouler, J.-P. 1992. Alfred Mtraux et Georges Bataille en 1922: de lcole des Chartes
lAmrique du Sud, Prsence de Alfred Mtraux, Cahiers Georges Bataille (Special
Issue): 12939.
Leach, E. 1984. Glimpses of the unmentionable in the history of British social
anthropology, Annual Review of Anthropology, 13: 123.
Leiris, M. 1958. Preface, in A. Mtraux, Le Vaudou hatien, Paris: Gallimard.
Lvi-Strauss, C. 1964. Hommage Alfred Mtraux, LHomme, 4: 58.
168
Peter Rivire
1976 [1955]. Tristes tropiques, London: Penguin.

Mtraux, A. 1925. De la mthode dans les recherches ethnographiques, Revue d
ethnographie et des traditions populaires, 6: 26690.
1927a. Le bton de rythme: contributions ltude de la distribution
gographique des lments de culture dorigine mlansienne en Amrique du Sud,
Journal de la Socit des Amricanistes de Paris, 19 (n.s.): 11722.
1927b. Migrations historiques des Tup-Guaran, Journal de la Socit des
Amricanistes de Paris, 19 (n.s.): 145.
1928a. La Civilisation matrielle des tribus Tupi-Guarani, Paris: Librairie Geuthner.
1928b. La Religion des Tupinamba et ses rapports avec celle des autres tribus tupiguarani, Paris: Librairie Ernest Leroux.
1928c. Une dcouverte biologique des Indiens de lAmrique du Sud: la
dcoloration artificielle des plumes sur les oiseaux vivants, Journal de la Socit des
Amricanistes de Paris, 20 (n.s.): 18192.
1929a. Contribution lethnographie et larchologie de la province de
Mendoza (R.A.), Revista del Instituto de Etnologa de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumn,
1: 573.
1929b. Deux anciens textes peu connus concernant linstitution du potlatch en
Floride et dans le Gran Chaco, Journal de la Socit des Amricanistes de Paris, 21 (n.s.): 417.
1930. tudes sur la civilisation des Indiens Chiriguano, Revista del Instituto de
Etnologa de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumn, 1: 295493.
1931. Les hommes-dieux chez les Chiriguano et dans lAmrique du Sud, Revista
del Instituto de Etnologa de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumn, 2: 6191.
1932. Mitos y cuentos de los Indios Chiriguano, Revista del Museo de La Plata, 33:
11984.
1934. Contribution au folk-lore andin, Journal de la Socit des Amricanistes de
Paris, 26 (n.s): 67102.
1935a. Civilizacin material de los Indios Uro-Chipaya de Carangas (Bolivia),
Revista del Instituto de Etnologa de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumn, 3: 85129.
1935b. Contribution lethnographie et la linguistique des Indiens Uro
dAncoaquil (Bolivie), Journal de la Socit des Amricanistes de Paris, 27 (n.s.): 75110.
1935c. La religin secreta y la mitologia de los Indios Uro-Chipaya de Carangas
(Bolivia), Revista del Instituto de Etnologa de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumn, 3: 784.
1935d. Les Indiens Uro- ipaya de Carangas, Journal de la Socit des Amricanistes
de Paris, 27 (n.s.): 11128.
1936a. La structure sociale, Encyclopdie franaise 7: Section A, Chapter 2, Paris:
Comit de lEncyclopedie Franaise diteurs.
1936b. Numerals of Easter Island, Man, 36: 19091.
1937a. Easter Island sanctuaries (analytic and comparative study), Ethnological
Studies, 5: 10453.
1937b. tudes dethnographie Toba-Pilaga (Gran Chaco), Anthropos, 32: 171
94, 378401.
1938. The Proto-Indian script and the Easter Island tablets (a critical study),
Anthropos, 33: 21939.
1939. Myths and tales of the Matako Indians (the Gran Chaco, Argentina),
Ethnological Studies, 9: 1127.
1940. Ethnology of Easter Island, Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum.
1941. Lle de Pques, Paris: Gallimard.
1942. Le shamanisme araucan, Revista del Instituto de Antropologa de la
Universidade Nacional de Tucumn, 2: 30962.
1944a. La causa y al tratamiento mgico de las enfermedades entre los Indios de
la regin Tropical Sud-Americana, America Indigena, 4: 15764.
Alfred Mtraux
169
1944b. Le shamanisme chez les Indiens de Amrique du sud tropicale, Acta

Americana, 2: 197219, 32041.
1945. Le shamanisme chez les Indiens du Gran Chaco, Sociologia, 7: 15768.
1946a. Myths of the Toba and Pilaga Indians of the Gran Chaco, Philadelphia:
American Folklore Society.
1946b. La civilisation Guyano-Amazonienne et ses provinces culturelles, Acta
Americana, 4: 13053.
1946c. The concept of soul in Haitian vodou, Southwestern Journal of
1946d. El dios supremo, los creadores y hroes culturales en la mitologa
Sudamericana, America Indigena, 6: 925.
1947. Mourning rites and burial forms of the South American Indians, America
Indigena, 7: 744.
1948a. Ensayos de mitologa comparada Sudamericana, America Indigena, 8: 930.
1948b. tude sur lagriculture paysanne dans une valle hatienne, Acta
Americana, 6: 17391.
1950. The contribution of the Rev. Father Cooper to South American
ethnography, Primitive Man, 50: 3948.
1951a. Droit et coutume en matire successorale dans la paysannerie hatienne,
Zare, 5: 33949.
1951b. Lle de Pques (dition revue et augmente), Paris: Gallimard.
1952. Les croyances animistes dans le vodou hatien, Mmoires de lInstitut
Franais dAfrique Noire, 27: 23944.
1956. Le mariage mystique dans le vodou, Cahiers du Sud, 43: 41019.
1957a. Easter Island: A stone-age civilization of the Pacific, London: Andr Deutsch.
1957b. Hati: la terre, les hommes et les dieux, Neuchtel: la Baconnire.
1958. Le Vaudou hatien, Paris: Gallimard.
1959. Voodo in Haiti, London: Andr Deutsch.
1960a. Haiti: Black peasants and their religion, London: George G. Harrap.
1960b. Mythes et contes des Indiens Cayapo (Groupe Kuben-kran-kegn), Revista
do Museu Paulista, 12 (n.s.): 735.
1962. Les Incas, Paris: ditions du Seuil.
1963. Does life end at sixty? The UNESCO Courier (April): 2023.
1967. Religions et magies indiennes dAmrique du Sud, Paris: Gallimard.
Mtraux, R. 1991. Mtraux, Alfred, International Dictionary of Anthropologists, New York
and London: Garland Publishing.
Murra, J. 1992. Correspondance entre Julian H. Steward et A.M. propos du Handbook
of South American Indians, Prsence de Alfred Mtraux, Cahiers Georges Bataille (Special
Issue): 7578.
Nordenskild, E. 19191938. Comparative ethnological studies (vols 110), Gteborg:
Elanders Boktryekeri Aktiebolay.
Prins, H.E.L. (with E. Krebs) 2005. Vers un monde sans mal: Alfred Mtraux, un
anthropologue lUNESCO, 60 Ans dHistoire de lUnesco, Paris: UNESCO.
Renshaw, J. 2003. The Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco: identity and economy, Lincoln and
London: University of Nebraska Press.
Rivire, P. 1967. Chaco and Mapuche, The Times Literary Supplement, 13 July 1967.
Steward, J. (ed.). 1946. Handbook of South American Indians, Smithsonian Institution,
Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 143, vol. 1.
Tardits, C. 1964. Bibliographie, LHomme, 4(2): 4962.
Verger, P. 1992. Trente ans damiti avec Alfred Mtraux: mon presque jumeau, Prsence
de Alfred Mtraux, Cahiers Georges Bataille (Special Issue): 17391.
Wagley, C. 1964. Alfred Mtraux 19021963, American Anthropologist, 66: 60313.
Chapter 7
ROGER BASTIDE OR THE

DARKNESSES OF ALTERITY
Stefania Capone
Introduction
Within the French anthropology of the 1950s, Roger Bastide played a
preeminent role in the foundation of what was an entirely new domain
of studies at the time, namely Afro-Americanism, dened in France by
its notion of Black Americas.1 If his heritage continues in France,
thanks especially to the journal Bastidiana, it was in Brazil that Bastide
acquired his reputation, profoundly marked by the development of
studies on the religions and cultures of African origin. His slightly
marginal position within the French academic world2 seems to have
derived from his critical position with regard to the theories that were
dominant at this period. As we shall see, his critical distance from the
sociology of Durkheim and Weber, as well as from Lvi-Strausss
structuralism,3 was motivated by a profound questioning of the role of
the researcher and his involvement with the eld.
If eldwork constitutes the privileged moment of the anthropological
enterprise, in which alterity is fully at work, the reexivity of the
Bastidian intellectual project was not limited to encounters with the
Other but became a constant aspect of his entire work. In Bastides case,
theory cannot be the simple product of deductive reasoning or Cartesian
rationality, as was the case for many of his colleagues, but involves a
different rationality, one that seeks its chosen eld in art and mystical
states. Bastide never ceased to reect on his sociological work, which was
profoundly marked by the discipline of anthropology.
172
Stefania Capone
Figure 7.1. Roger Bastide, seated left on bench, Ifanhin, Bnin, 1958. Fundao Pierre
Verger, Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.
However, the complexity of Bastides intellectual trajectory cannot be

understood without taking into account another gure who plays the
role of a go-between linking the worlds of the candombl and academia,
namely Pierre Verger. Bastides friend and accomplice for more than
thirty years, Verger incarnated that ethnographic essentialism that has
been so much decried by the critics of a certain type of French
anthropology. For Verger, theory is only a secondary aspect, of little
importance and even carefully avoided in a personal project which was
very remote from the scientic standards of the time. Bastide needed his
alter ego to reect on his own practice and to theorise a sociology in
depth. Bastides interest in mysticism, which marked his intellectual
trajectory from the start, led him to think that the only way to understand
the world of candombl was for the anthropologist himself to go through
an initiation.4 The rst period of his intellectual biography, in which art
and mysticism combine, thus proved crucial for the future development
of his method, in which poetry would play a fundamental role.
173
The relationship between Bastide and Verger can be thought of as a

perfect example of the anthropological division of labour between
ethnographic description and theoretical analysis. The trajectory involving
Bastides break with the dominant conceptualisations and his position as an
outsider in the intellectual milieu of his period made him an exemplary
case of another way of creating a sociology of religion, taking fully into
account the encounter with the other, its chimeras and its dangers.
Bastide and French sociology in the inter-war period

Roger Bastide was born at Nmes in the south of France on 1 April 1898.
The son of primary school teachers, he was educated in the Protestant
religion and spent his infancy in Anduze in the Cvennes, which had
been a refuge of Protestant rebels at the start of the eighteenth century.
As Maria Isaura Pereira de Queirz, a former student of Bastides, has
stated (1983: 7): Right from his infancy, he was plunged into sociocultural contradictions which, throughout his life, constituted the
background to his researches, the basic food for his observations and
reections .... Although feeling himself to be profoundly French, he was
a member of a minority religious group which had known and kept the
marks of its oppression and persecution.
This specicity of Bastide, his marginality with respect to the world
that surrounded him, would be one of the marks of his scientic and
biographical trajectories. The links he maintained throughout his life
with other gures in the French academic world who were also
Protestant by confession, such as Raoul Allier, Gaston Richard, Paul
Arbousse-Bastide and Maurice Halbwachs, bears witness to the
pregnant nature of a religious identity that was never completely
abandoned and that marks his trajectory in different ways.
Trained as a philosopher, it was under the direction of Gaston
Richard (18601945)5 that Bastide discovered sociology by following
Richards courses at the University of Bordeaux, where he obtained a
licence (rst-degree) bursary at the end of the First World War. Richards
inuence (1923), and in particular his anti-Durkheimianism, would
play a continual role in his work overall. Trained in an academic
universe that was strongly marked by the Durkheimian school, Bastide
never ceased to rethink the relationship to the sacred and the religious,
questioning Durkheims theories while taking into account certain of
the masters formulations.
Nonetheless, in Les problmes de la vie mystique, published in 1931
(Bastide 1931b), Bastide adopted a similar procedure to Durkheims in
his study of religion, starting out from elementary forms of mystical
174
Stefania Capone
life, that is of primitive mysticism, in order to construct a mystical

chain to more elevated forms. As Fernanda A. Peixoto recalls (2000:
28), Bastide had already addressed some severe criticisms of
Durkheims Les formes lmentaires de la vie religieuse (1912) in an article
of 1928 entitled Mysticisme et sociologie. In it, he questions
Durkheims ethnocentrism, especially for the importance he gives to
the exaltation of religious ceremonies in his work, which Bastide nds
excessive. For Bastide, this was the outcome of a western gaze.
Durkheim (1895) dened the social fact as an entity sui generis, a
totality which contains within itself its own explanation and which
cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. To explain it, it was necessary
to use the tools of the nascent sociology and to reject contributions from
other disciplines, like psychology. In dissociating the individual from the
collective, Durkheim saw in social norms and institutions the means
whereby society exercises a constraining action on individuals.
In his earliest writings, Bastide developed a whole series of criticisms
of Durkheimian sociology, addressing himself to what he called the
collectivist emphasis and the effacing of the individual fact. But it
was above all Durkheims attitude to belief which led Bastide to distance
himself from Durkheims teaching and join the ranks of his critics.
Thus, quoting Richard in his introduction to Elments de sociologie
religieuse (1935: 8), Bastide emphasises the importance of experience in
sociological reection: the rst condition to be satised by anyone
wishing to understand the believer and the society of believers is to have
participated oneself in a belief at some moment in ones life, at least
through emotion or sentiment. In taking up Richards ideas, which
would play a very important part in his preparations for his agrgation
in philosophy, Bastide saw in the refusal of French positivism to take
the individual into account one of the main limitations of the
Durkheimian approach. In reducing the religious to the social,
Durkheim had therefore lost the very essence of the phenomenon.
By contrast, Bastide underlines the importance of individual factors
in understanding religious phenomena while still retaining from
Durkheimian theories the idea that the collective deeply penetrates the
religious and the distinction between sacred and profane. The
importance accorded, from his very rst writings, to the individual
dimension of religious practices evokes the theories of Durkheims great
rival at this period, Gabriel Tarde (18431904), the founder of French
social psychology. The latter had developed a sociological theory based
on criteria that were essentially individual, showing that the social is
nothing other than the expression of individual forces, especially
psychological ones. For Tarde, the domain of sociology boils down to
inter-individual or inter-mental communication. He thus opposes to
175
Durkheims collective self a multiplicity of individuals, irreducible to

the collective consciousness.6
As Peixoto rightly stresses (2000: 35), where Durkheim affirms the
legitimacy of science in opposition to literary style, history and
psychology, Tarde combines literary leanings and the image of the poet
with scientic work. This intellectual posture was much closer to the
temperaments of Richard and Bastide, who cultivated a taste for
literature and the arts, philosophy and psychology. For them, sociology
is not enough on its own, as Durkheim affirmed, but has to be completed
by other disciplines.
For a rapprochement between sociology and social psychology, one has
to wait for Marcel Mauss (18721950), Durkheims nephew and pupil:
For our part, we observe the complete and complex reactions of numerically
defined masses of men, complete, complex beings. We, too, observe what
constitutes their organism or their psyche. At the same time we describe the
behaviour of this mass and its corresponding psychoses: sentiments, ideas,
and the volitions of the crowd, or of organized societies and their subgroups.
(Mauss 1990 [1922]: 103)
The notion of the social fact, introduced by Mauss, offers a holistic

approach which encompasses the totality of human manifestations.
Mausss interest in sentiment found echoes in Bastides writings,
notably in Elments de sociologie religieuse of 1935. But the attempt to
draw closer to Mauss, whom Maurice Halbwachs had advised him to
meet, was not a very happy one. Thus, in a letter dated 3 November
1936, Mauss, acknowledging Bastide having sent him this work, writes:
Your introduction strikes me as far too philosophical. I add that one of those
you particularly appreciate, Max Weber, is among those with whom
Durkheim, Hubert and I communicated the least. [] As for the rest, I also
believe that you have exaggerated appreciably the metaphysical basis of
Durkheims thought. He was not only one of the founders of science, but
almost exclusively a founder who used philosophy less and less. And to
regard this philosophy as a metaphysics is equally wrong in my view.7
In the same work, Bastide also moved nearer to the interpretations of

Lvy-Bruhl (18571939), for whom mysticism did not have
pathological causes but constituted a collective template of perception
expressing a different logic, a different type of relationship to the world,
than our own. Being inspired by the notion of the collective
representation of Durkheim, whose collaborator he had been, LvyBruhl affirmed that, if representations are the product of the social, it
becomes possible to explain mystical representations with reference to
176
Stefania Capone
the principles that are proper to them and which are linked to a welldened social milieu. However, to understand a pre-logical mentality,
it was also necessary to include supra-sensitive elements like the spirits
of the dead, which form part of primitive reality.
Bastide adopted some of Lvy-Bruhls formulations (1922),
especially in the elaboration of his key concept, the principle of
compartmentalization.8 The inuence exerted by reading the rst
works of Maurice Leenhardt (18781954), who had practised
participant observation well before Malinowski, thus inaugurating the
anthropological eldwork advocated by Mauss, helped Bastide to
rethink Lvy-Bruhls theories and to espouse an obscure and confused
thought which seemed to him better able to express mystical states.9
This calling into question of the dominant theories of his period put
Bastide at odds with the French intellectual milieu, in which theory did
not necessarily arise from eld data. Durkheim had advocated the
exteriority of the researcher in relation to the object of his research,
this being the sole guarantee of objectivity. Mauss had reintroduced
subjectivity in underlining the unconscious dimension of social
phenomena, while recognising, like his uncle, the subordination of
psychological to social phenomena.
This attitude regarding the role of the researcher and his immersion
in the eld, as well as the epistemological status of mysticism and of the
religious life in general, led Bastide to position himself critically with
regard to Durkheimian sociology.10 Thus, in the introduction to his work
of 1960 (see 1978: 4), Bastide writes:
Durkheim always seems to hesitate between religion as product and
religion as expression. The two themes are always closely intertwined in his
work, and it is difficult to separate them. [] Durkheims conclusion goes
beyond the multitude of examples he compiles in support of his thesis,
inasmuch as they all merely show that religion is always incarnate in the
social structure, but not that social structure creates religion.11
Bastide, who in this period was working as a teacher agrg de philosophie

in the lyces and had been appointed to Valence in 1928, was already
attracted by doing eldwork. In 1930 he became involved in his rst
sociological enquiry on groups of immigrants in France, which would
lead to Les Armeniens en Valence, a study that appeared in the Revue
Internationale de Sociologie in 1931 (Bastide 1931a). It was in Valence,
where he lived from 1928 to 1937, that Bastide wrote his rst texts on
religious sociology and mysticism, a theme that accompanied him right
up until his death in 1974. Although a critic of Durkheimian theories,
he made contact with Maurice Halbwachs (18771945), whom he met
at Strasbourg and with whom he discussed his works on mysticism and
177
religion (Peixoto 2000: 39). His inuence would become apparent in

the Bastidian analysis of collective memory (cf. Capone 2007).
The years in Brazil, or the discovery of the Other

In 1937 Bastide was appointed to Versailles, but he only stayed there
for a year, since Georges Dumas offered him a post as professor at the
University of So Paulo. The author of Le trait de psychologie (Dumas
192324), at once a doctor and a philosopher (Carelli 1993: 193),
had originally been sent to Rio de Janeiro in 1908 as a spokesman for
the Groupement des Universits et Grandes coles de France in order to
set up scientic cooperation with Brazil. His role was to be central in the
founding of the French lyce in Rio in 1916 and the sending of
university missions to So Paulo between 1935 and 1939 (ibid.).
Supported by a fund for French university and scientic expansion
overseas, created in 1912, and a service promoting French works
overseas, Dumas also founded Instituts franco-brsiliens de Haute
Culture in Rio in 1922 and in So Paulo in 1925, which helped
establish French higher education in Brazil (Lefebvre 1990).
Paul Arbousse-Bastide, a former student of Dumas and long-term
friend of Bastide, who was installed in Brazil from 1934, wrote to
Bastide as follows in 1937: I am reading you from afar, and our subjects
of study are very close. I would like to have you for a colleague. You
know that this is not impossible. A chair of sociology may become
vacant from one day to the next, and sociologists are rare in the
University Think about it in principle. It would be for March 1938
(quoted in Morin 1994: 36). Thanks to Dumas, the University of So
Paulo (USP), which had only just been founded in 1934, had already
brought together an important number of French intellectuals, among
whom were Fernand Braudel (193538) in history, Pierre Monbeig
(193546) in geography and Claude Lvi-Strauss (193538), who
beneted from the splitting of Arbousse-Bastides chair of sociology.12
In 1938, Dumas invited Bastide to come to Brazil to take up the post
of professor of sociology at the University of So Paulo, which had been
vacated by Lvi-Strauss. The contract Bastide signed with the Brazilian
university envisaged him teaching Durkheimian sociology and in
reaction to Lvi-Strausss resignation, presented in 1937 so that he
could conduct research among the Nambikwara and Bororo it also
obliged him to restrict his research to the university vacations. This
arrangement with his employers is the origin of his brief eld
experience. In Le candombl de Bahia (1958: 14), Bastide admits to
having passed no more than nine months in the eld, including ve at
178
Stefania Capone
Salvador de Bahia, spread out over seven consecutive years (1944 to

1951).13 His work therefore proceeded more by following contacts with
local experts than through prolonged observation of the rituals he was
studying: as a result, I might get to know a candombl during three
months of vacation. The ceremonies that took place in months without
vacations I could not get to know (quoted in Cardoso 1994: 72).
At the start of his Brazilian sojourn, Bastide therefore devoted
himself to his teaching and to intensive activities as a critic in several
Brazilian journals. He attended the lectures of Brazilian sociologists and
frequented Paulist intellectual circles. But it was especially the affinities
between Bastide and the modernist group in So Paulo, notably with
Mario de Andrade, that marked his rst steps in Brazil.
The Modern Art Week, put on in So Paulo in 1922 upon the
centenary of the countrys independence, offered a group of young
intellectuals an opportunity to assert themselves on the national scene.
Bastide quickly inserted himself into this group, to which belonged the
poet Mario de Andrade, the painter Lazar Segall, the archaeologist
Paulo Duarte, the writer Oswald de Andrade and the art critic Sergio
Millet. It was in his debates with the modernists that the French
sociologist rened his view of the Other in his search for the Brazilian
soul. This intense dialogue becomes clear in Bastides writings on
Brazilian art, especially his reections on the Baroque and the work of
Aleijadinho (Peixoto 2000: 64). In his rst writings can already be
found his questioning of the authenticity and originality of Brazilian
culture, with a particular interest in syncretism, without which it is
impossible to understand the reality of Brazil.
In these earliest Brazilian writings can be found themes dear to
Bastide: the links between art, mysticism and religion in the article
Pintura e mstica (Painting and mysticism) of 1938, and the
psychoanalytical analysis applied to a sociological topic in Psicanlise
do cafun (A psychoanalysis of the cafun) of 1940. The link between
art and mysticism is one of the constant themes in Bastides writings.
For Bastide, mysticism and painting are intimately interwoven with one
another, since mysticism is the search for unity, the will to integration,
while painting is the search for and conquest of unity. Art and religion
are thus for Bastide two forms of ecstasy, two forms of contact with the
sacred, as manifested in styles of life and artistic expressions (ibid.: 70).
But Bastide did not restrict himself to maintaining his numerous
contacts with Brazilian sociologists and intellectuals.14 He kept up his
contacts with the French academic world, trying to help his colleagues
who were in danger from the imminent war. Thus in 1940 he received
a letter from Georges Gurvitch, who was to play a central role in his
future return to France. Gurvitch wrote to him from Clermont-Ferrand,
179
where the University of Strasbourg had withdrawn, to ask Bastide to

consider an application from Gurvitch to teach in Brazil, since the law
of 18 July 1940 on the dismissal of naturalized officials had led to his
suspension, before being permanently dismissed (Morin 1994: 38).
Despite his efforts Bastide could do nothing, and in 1942 Gurvitch
departed for New York. Having returned to France at the end of the war,
he joined Bastide at the University of So Paulo, where he taught for a
year. In 1948 he wrote to Bastide again, regretting the fact that the
latter, the best candidate and [his] preferred candidate, had not agreed
to replace him at the University of Strasbourg, which would have
allowed him to be appointed Matre de Confrences and, when he had
nished his thesis, titular professor (ibid.).
During his rst years in Brazil, Bastide devoted himself to his
teaching and to studying the Brazilian literature on his chosen topics.
But it was also in Brazil that he discovered American sociology,
especially studies of acculturation and culture contact, through the
Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation by Robert Redeld,
Ralph Linton and Melville Herskovits (Redeld et al. 1936).15 The latter
had dened the process of acculturation as those phenomena which
result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into
continuous rst-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original
culture patterns of either or both groups (Herskovits 1938: 10). This
process of social and cultural change also involved the disorganisation
and reorganisation of individual personalities. Robert Park (1928) used
the expression marginal man to designate a member of a cultural
group that has lost its characteristics in contact with another group,
though without having been integrated into the dominant group. He
therefore becomes marginal since, as Arthur Ramos writes (1979
[1937]: 244), he is on the margins of two cultures: his own, which he
has lost, and the other one, which he has not yet assimilated.
When Bastide arrived in Brazil, Arthur Ramos was already recognised
as the great specialist in Afro-Brazilian cultures and religions. Bastide met
him in 1938, when he was occupying the chair of anthropology at the
new National Philosophy Faculty (FNFi), founded that year in Rio de
Janeiro, and he rapidly became his friend (Teixeira and al. 1952). Ramos
undoubtedly had a great inuence on the evolution of Bastides thought,
in particular on his interest in social psychology.16
Bastide had to wait until the start of 1944 to undertake his rst AfroBrazilian eldwork, travelling to the Nordeste between 19 January and
28 February. On this journey, which led him to Recife, Joo Pessoa and
Salvador de Bahia, he met Jorge Amado, who was to become his guide
within the world of the Bahian candombls. His contacts with those
initiated into the candombl were thus made through the intermediation
Stefania Capone
180
of a great Bahian writer, as well as through rather precarious linguistic

exchanges, mixing, according to Amado, French and Nag, since,
despite having already spent six years in Brazil, Bastide had not yet
mastered Portuguese (Lhning 2002: 10).17 In fact, Bastide was never
to master it. In the course of time, he fashioned a language of his own,
a bizarre mixture of French, Latin and Provenal, in which, here and
there, Brazilian words surfaced (Queirz 1994: 218). This does not
seem to have prevented Bastide from grasping deeply the point of view
of the Other, sometimes appropriating it in order to reason, as his lifelong friend Pierre Verger stresses, with his interlocutors arguments by
seeing things through their own eyes (Verger 1978: 52).
Poetry as a scientific method

This attempt to plunge as deeply as possible into the Brazilian soul led
Bastide to revise his approach to the eld and his methodology. During
this initial journey, despite the very short period he spent in the eld,
with Amados help Bastide had the opportunity to attend several
ceremonies in the Bahian candombl. Thus he attended the
conrmation of an ogan, a ritual title bestowed on men who do not go
into trance, in the terreiro (cult house) of Me Cotinha. He was also
present at the exit of an ia, the ceremony which marks the end of the
period of initiation by publicly presenting a newly initiated person, in a
terreiro of the Angola nation, that of the celebrated Joozinho da
Gomia. It was with this pai-de-santo (cult leader) that he was to have
his rst experience of the sacred:
The inspired [sic] to be cannot be visited, not even by the ogans or the obaj [ob],
in the traditional terreiros. Joo da Gavea [Gomia] nonetheless permitted me
to violate this secret taboo, and I saw, spread out along the boards, each
wrapped from head to foot in a large white sheet, five or six bodies. They looked
like larvae, or some white cockchafer grubs, and indeed, during this period
they are truly human larvae. A new self is being born, a metamorphosis of
the personality going on in the belly of the sanctuary, from which will very
shortly emerge the sons of the gods [the initiated], who will then open
themselves out in the shade of the hut, their wings still fragile, the wings of
beings who henceforward will be saints [orixs]. (Bastide 1995 [1945]: 63)18
In this rst work on the candombl, Bastide seems to hesitate between a

scientic approach and poetic writing, which he feels more suitable in
describing this new universe that is opening before his eyes. Thus, in
his introduction, he writes:
181
This is just a bundle of images. It is not purely a scientific book, let alone a
type of lyrical chant. [] Perhaps the main fault with this work actually
resides in its hesitation between science and poetry. However, this hesitation
exactly translates the spiritual state in which I found myself at that moment,
torn between a very great degree of fervour and the desire to conduct
objective research. (ibid.: 1112)19
However, Bastides scientic care and the reections he had already

made from the writings of his Brazilian predecessors also led him to
question the interpretations of these religious phenomena, as well as
their generalisations:
Up until now, studies have been restricted to superficial descriptions of the
fetish cult of Bahia. The moment has come to devote ourselves to researches
that require greater patience. It is necessary to construct monographs on all
the terreiros, at least the more traditional ones, together with all their
activities. When such monographs have been completed, studies carried out
on the same nation can be compared first, and then the various nations
compared among themselves.20 I believe this method will be particularly
fertile in separating false generalizations from true ones, for the researcher
tends to take everything he states about a terreiro as a general characteristic.
In doing this, a false idea is provided of a cult which should only be spoken
of with the greatest respect. For my part, every time I made any observation
whatever, I sought to localize it in order then to pose the same question to
other informers. Now, I have often stated that such-and-such gesture or
myth did not go beyond a restricted domain, that of a nation, and often even
that of a unique terreiro. (ibid.: 7374)
This recommendation was not actually followed, since, in the work

Bastide was to write in 1958 on the candombl of Bahia, all references
to particular individuals or places have been removed. The description
he presents therefore forms the basis for an analysis of the subtle
metaphysics of the candombl in which all the internal differences, so
evident in his rst work of 1945, have been nally erased. In the 1958
work, one discerns the inuence of Marcel Griaule and of a certain type
of Africanism, which, since the 1930s, had sought to cast light on
African philosophies and metaphysics.
Motta (1994: 105) has raised again the question of Griaules possible
inuence over Bastide, affirming that a certain number of ideas developed
in Le Candombl de Bahia (1958) had already been anticipated in Images
du Nordeste mystique en noir et blanc (1945; see 1995), in which Bastide
declared that the philosophy of the candombl is not a barbarous
philosophy but a subtle form of thought that had to be deciphered. Now,
this same Bastide was aware of the closeness of his 1958 volume to
Griaules work. Thus, in the introduction, written in 1972, to his Estudos
182
Stefania Capone
afro-brasileiros (Afro-Brazilian studies; Bastide 1973b), a collection of a

series of essays originally published between 1946 and 1953, Bastide
writes as follows about this rst stage of his Brazilian sojourn:
I would like to stress that, at this period, I had not yet had an opportunity to
read Griaules first books (the circumstances of the Second World War had
prevented me from receiving these books in Brazil). At around the same
time, Griaule arrived at some conclusions that were close to mine on the
subject of Dogon religion, which concealed a philosophy as rich and as
valuable as those of a Plato or an Aristotle. (Bastide 1973b: xii)
Other authors have underlined the affinities between Bastide and

certain parts of French intellectual production, especially with the
founding group of the Collge de Sociologie, Michel Leiris, Georges
Bataille and Roger Caillois. In his 1945 volume, the only one of this
group whom Bastide quotes is Leiris, an emblematic gure in thinking
about the intimate articulation between art and anthropology. Leiris
had discovered anthropology thanks to surrealism, which represents a
rebellion against western rationalism, being conveyed, among other
things, through a curiosity about primitive peoples and about primitive
mentality (Peixoto 2005: 136). The initiative in creating the Collge
de Sociologie must therefore be understood in this context of cultural
criticism, fed as much by surrealism as by anthropology. Bastides
thematic affinities with this group are obvious: common themes include
the dream, the unconscious, mysticism and the festival. The notion of
the sacred was the intellectual focus of the group which had for its
ultimate aim, according to Caillois (1950 [1939]), to restore to society
an active, epidemiological and contagious sacred, a project echoed in
the pages of Sacr sauvage et autre essais, published by Bastide in 1975.
It was with Leiris that Bastide maintained relations the most. Thus,
in a warm letter dated 15 May 1958 replying to Leiris, who had sent
him a copy of his La possession et ses aspects thtraux chez les Ethiopiens
de Gondar (1958), published that year, Bastide writes of having
subscribed in one of his Brazilian books to the thesis of the wardrobe
of personalities, which to him appears as necessary to apply to America
as to Africa (Leiris 1996: 909).21 The affinities with Leiris are not just
a matter of the topics dealt with but also, and above all, concern
method. If Leiris was a writer and a poet concerned to explore all the
resources of a language, he also sees in poetry a way of being able to
advance knowledge about human beings. Bastide stressed several times
in his writings the importance of poetry as a form of knowledge about
the world. Thus, in Brsil terre de contrastes (1957: 16), he writes:
183
The sociologist who studies Brazil does not know which system of concepts
to use. The ideas he has learned from European or North American
countries are no longer any good. The old is mixed with the new. Historical
periods are all tangled up with one another. The same words, such as social
class or historical dialectic, do not have the same meanings and do not
apply to the same concrete realities. Instead of rigid concepts, it is necessary
to discover notions that are to some extent fluid, capable of describing the
phenomena of fusion, turmoil and interpenetration, and moulded on a
living reality in perpetual transformation. The sociologist who wants to
understand Brazil must often transform himself into a poet.
This link between scientic research and poetic knowledge had already
been formulated in a double article published in 1946 in the Dirio de
So Paulo, under the title A propsito da poesia como mtodo sociolgico
(On poetry as a sociological method). In order to grasp a moving social
reality, the sociologist must situate himself within the social experience
he is studying; he must adhere to the soul of the fact being studied.
Understanding only becomes possible through this transfusion of souls,
which forces the researcher to abandon his position as an external
observer. Any type of judgement concerning the social reality being
studied that proceeds from external categories must be rejected:
For the sociologist, it is a matter of not situating himself externally in
relation to social experience, but of living it [] we have to transform
ourselves into what we are studying, whether crowd, mass, class or caste
As in an act of love, we must transcend our own personalities in order to
adhere to the soul that is attached to the phenomenon being studied.
(Bastide 1946, quoted in Queirz 1983: 17)
But, to do this, it was necessary to modify profoundly the researchers

own logical categories if one were to expect nally an anti-ethnocentric
mentality (Bastide 1973b: xi). The crisis of conscience in what Bastide
called his spiritual itinerary would lead him to convert himself to a
different mentality. It was necessary to abandon a mentality produced
by three centuries of Cartesianism by fully accepting a conversion
presented as a crucial stage in the work of research: Scientic research
requires from me the initial passage through a rite of initiation (ibid.).
Initiation, or the anthropology of chiasmus

After his trip to the Nordeste in 1944, Bastide only returned to Salvador
in January 1949 and August 1951.22 In 1946 Bastide met Pierre
Verger, who had arrived in Brazil after a long journey through Latin
America. Bastide advised him to go to Bahia to nd Africa again, which
184
Stefania Capone
Verger already knew, having worked there as a photographer. Verger

arrived in Salvador on 5 August 1946. Having fallen for the charms of
the city and its religious traditions, he decided to establish himself there,
where he was to remain until his death in 1996.23 The spiritual son of
Senhora dOxum, the me-de-santo of Ax Op Afonj, Verger was a sort
of alter ego to Bastide, opening doors for him to the Bahian candombl,
like Amado in earlier years.
When Bastide undertook his second trip to Salvador in 1949, Verger
was in Africa and could not accompany him on his visits to the cult houses
of the candombl (Verger 1978). It was on this trip that Bastide achieved his
rst divination sance with Vidal, the pai-de-santo or cult leader of the
quarter of Brotas, who revealed to him his mystical connection with the
god Xang. On his third trip in 1951, in the celebrated terreiro of Ax Op
Afonj, to which Verger was already affiliated, Bastide completed the
ceremony of the consecration of the necklaces, called the lavagem das
contas (washing of the necklaces), through which is established the
minimum of involvement between an individual and his protecting
divinity. By this time, Verger had already become his main interlocutor a
sort of local representative of the world of candombl and principal
translator of the religious universe for his compatriot.
This event, the consecration of the necklaces in the colours of the
protecting divinities, is the source of a sort of mysticism of initiation in
the writings of certain authors who use Bastide as their authority,
though this seems to mistake the internal organisation of the candombl.
Thus, Claude Ravalet (2005: 124) writes that Bastide was initiated
under Xangs aegis in the night of 3 to 4 August 1951. However,
Bastide, in an article devoted to this ceremony, states that this was not an
initiation: It was a private ceremony, of little importance, quite ordinary
and, doubtless for this reason, neglected by researchers (Bastide 1973a:
36364). The washing of the necklace is thus represented as a form of
incorporation into the candombl in which one does not pass through
initiation or the rite of feeding the head. [] The washing of the
necklace constitutes the rst moment in this incorporation; feeding the
head is the second moment, initiation the third (ibid.: 364).24 Thus, if
the washing of the necklace does not strictly speaking constitute an
initiation, it nonetheless marks the individuals link with the cult group,
placing him under the authority of the spiritual chief, the me or pai-desanto who has conducted the ritual. The washing of the necklace
which, as I have just said, is merely the rst degree of incorporation of
the candombl, the lowest level, the most ordinary of all (ibid.: 373)
marks the acceptance, on the part of the individual, of a range of
prohibitions and nancial duties in respect of the cult house to which
he belongs. In no way is he acknowledged by the initiated group as one
185
of them. He is, on the other hand, part of the group of abian, the future
novices, candidates for initiation proper.
This becomes evident if one reads attentively the passage from
Bastides thesis of 1960, where he declares: Africanus sum, inasmuch
as I have been accepted by one of those religious sects, which regards
me as a brother of the faith, having the same obligations and the same
privileges as the other members of the same degree (Bastide 1978: 28, my
emphasis). Bastide knew very well that his incorporation into the cult
group was very supercial and did not permit him to attend all the rituals
of the cult house. This reluctance to cross the threshold towards a true
conversion has been made the subject of analyses by two of Bastides
closest collaborators, Maria Isaura de Queirz and Franoise Morin. For
Bastide, genuine participant observation, the transfusion of souls, had
to be transformed into controlled observation through the selfcriticism of the researcher (Queirz 1983: 17). If it is true that Bastide
searched throughout his life for what Morin (1975) calls an
anthropology of the abyss, his fascination with the possibility of
vertigo persisted up until his last years. Thus, in some notes edited in
1968 and entitled Rexion sur une agitation, he wrote, of May 1968:
I nd in it one of my fundamental desires (I have been dened previously
as someone who circles around the abyss in order to feel the seduction
of its vertigo, but who is rmly attached to the mast of the ship; one must
hear the Sirens but not drown) (quoted in Morin 1994: 24).
As Morin emphasises, for Bastide the seduction of the abyss was found
above all in the study of the trance, the dream and polytheistic mysticism.
Thus, doubtless through a fear of drowning, Bastide resisted the singing
of the Sirens, clung to the mast of reason and did not pursue his initiation
further (ibid.: 25). In 1965, in an interview he gave to the journal Combat,
he conded to Jacques Delpeyrou: In my passionate quest for mystical
experiences, I have always had a fear of going mad (ibid.).
Another route had been taken by Bastides friend and accomplice Pierre
Verger. Far from wanting to devote himself to scientic studies, Verger was
hardly interested in the work of the anthropologist. In his journeys to Africa,
he took notes in order to full his role as a messenger, making clear the
faithfulness of the Blacks of Bahia to African traditions by comparing Africa
and Bahia. His wish was to be able to recount Africa to his Bahian friends
(Mtraux and Verger 1994: 62).25 Verger spent many years going between
Brazil and Africa, where in 1953 he had been initiated into the If cult and
become a babalawo (diviner) with the ritual name of Fatumbi: If brought
me back into the world. Verger had already conducted a bor in the Bahian
terreiro of Ax Op Afonj in 1948. Me Senhora, who, in a clever move,
had brought Verger under her spiritual protection (cf. Nobrega and
Echeverria 2002: 1789), consecrated his head to Xang.26 When Verger
186
Stefania Capone
returned from Africa, Senhora bestowed on him the title of Oju Oba (the
eyes of the king, a ritual title given to one of Xangs sons), thus
incorporating him nally into the hierarchy of her terreiro.
Now, initiation carried out in Africa seemed to obey a very different
logic from that put forward by Bastide:
I went through my initiation not to see (predict the future), but because it
gave me access to the knowledge of the babalawo, those who transmit orally all
the knowledge of the Yoruba people. [] It was this side that interested me,
since I had not only the right to learn, but the duty to do so. This is completely
different position from that of the anthropologist who enters like an analyst,
with more or less idiotic questions which make no sense to the people I
conducted all my researches without posing any questions, merely collecting
what the people judged important and what was linked to the corpus of
knowledge of the babalawo. (cited in Nobrega and Echeverria 2002: 202)
In reality, what stimulated Verger was his desire to rid himself of his
former bourgeois identity in order to identify fully with the Nag, that
is the inhabitants of the eastern region of Dahomey (present-day
Benin). As he wrote in his correspondence with Mtraux, whom he
described as almost his twin, since 1952 his sympathies for this
people had been conrmed even more (Mtraux and Verger 1994: 157).
Verger never ceased to reaffirm his desire to go native, to become
Nag. Thus, on 12 May 1956 he wrote as follows:
And yes! I have become very conformist, seeking Yoruba dignities and
honours, while I have only sarcasm for those I could acquire in my own
social milieu. This is very much what Lvi-Strauss describes [in Tristes
tropiques]: Willingly subversive among his own kind, and rebellious with
regard to traditional usages, the ethnographer appears respectful to the
extent of being conservative as soon as the society being envisaged is found
to be different from his own. If I do not wear a ribbon, on the contrary I
display a bracelet of yellow and green pearls when in the milieu of the
Yoruba Nag, the insignia of my dignity as a babalawo. I refuse to kiss the
hands of the dowagers, but I willingly and ostentatiously make extravagant
bows in another style and utter interminable salutations in front of strange
old crabs. (Mtraux and Verger 1994: 229)
Vergers conversion, unlike Bastides, does not seem to have been

dictated by any inclination towards belief. Verger never ceased to declare
his incredulity. Thus, in an interview he gave to Gilberto Gil a few days
before his death in February 1996, he stated that he had never
experienced the state of trance, since he was an idiot as a Frenchman,
a rationalist I am not an idiot for believing in these things (quoted in
Nobrega and Echeverria 2002: 388). In reality, Verger was never
187
inspired by profound mystical or metaphysical questioning as was

Bastide: his transformation into Nag was not the result of any spiritual
quest, but the keystone to his quest for an identity. Upon his death,
Verger was nally incorporated into the Nag cult, attaining the status
of an ancestor venerated in the cult of the eguns or revenants.
Paradoxically for someone who remained an unbeliever right up to the
end, Vergers Baba Egun manifested himself for the rst time in
January 2005 in the terreiro of Balbino and received the name of
funlade, the ancestral spirit made of efun [chalk, a sacred substance
linked to Oxal] (Souty 2007: 366).27
Vergers African initiation and the privileged links he was able to
weave with the Bahian cult houses made him an ideal collaborator for
Bastide, who, as we have seen, was greatly restricted in his research
work. The extensive correspondence between Verger and Bastide,
consisting of 227 letters over 27 years, reveals a genuine collaboration
between Verger, more nomadic, travelling unceasingly between Africa,
Brazil and the Caribbean, and Bastide, more sedentary because he was
teaching in So Paulo and Paris (Morin 1994: 40). Thus, in a letter
sent to Verger on 30 June 1947 while leaving for Belm de Par, Bastide
writes: Believe me, I envy you, being imprisoned by my students, far
from the most cherished objects of my research. If you can, in the
course of your travels, collect some texts of hymns, at Belm or
Maranho. I would be interested in having them to compare them with
those of Recife or Bahia (quoted in Morin 1994: 40).
At the end of the 1950s, Vergers works inaugurated a new phase in
Afro-Brazilian studies by suggesting links providing continuities with
African cultures. His 1957 work had the impact of a bomb in an
environment in which all the specialists were insisting on acculturation,
syncretism and change (cf. Bastide 1996: 18). The study of AfroBrazilian religions therefore became a hunting ground for the
Africanists, a new generation of Brazilian anthropologists who,
inspired by Vergers work, went to Africa to search for proof of the
faithfulness of certain Afro-Brazilian religious practices to the African
tradition. For Bastide, Verger embodied the transfusion of souls which
he had pursued throughout his own life:
No one could make these Afro-Brazilian cults better known and loved than
Pierre Verger. Not only have his numerous voyages to the two coasts allowed
him to compare the Brazilian ceremonies with those of Africa and to
discover their perfect unity, but he is not an outsider, a stranger looking
with curiosity and capturing hieratic gestures or faces in trance on the
sensitive plate. He belongs to the world of the candombls and has been
accepted by the Blacks of Bahia as one of themselves, like a true brother, a
white brother. North American sociologists have invented a term to
188
Stefania Capone
designate a research method which consists precisely of identifying oneself

with the milieu one is studying, namely participant observation. However,
Pierre Verger is more than a participant observer, for the word observer
still marks out a certain barrier, splitting the ethnographer in two in a rather
unpleasant fashion as a man of the outside and a man of the inside. For
Pierre Verger, knowledge is the fruit of love and communion. (Bastide,
Preface to Verger 1995 [1954]: 11)
Bastide tried several times to make his collaboration with Verger official,
regretting that their two names did not gure fraternally, one alongside
the other (Morin 1994: 41). Verger almost always opposed the law of
secrecy, to which he should have submitted as one who had been
initiated, at the insistent requests of his friend.28 The works of these two
authors demonstrate two models of ethnographic texts: one, Bastides,
a highly abstract model of the candombl, which, as da Silva recalls
(2000: 127), owes its form to specic strategies of the textual
description and interpretation of ethnographic data; and another
model of ethnographic narration, Vergers, that of ethnography as the
photography of a reality which becomes apparent in the choice of
scenes to be shown in his work as a photographer, always presented as
undeniable testimonies of the continuity of African traditions with
Brazil and of the nearness of the candombl rituals to those of the West
African coast (ibid.: 130). For Verger, photography had to suffice by
itself, without any other commentary or explanation. It is only at a
second period, motivated by his desire to demonstrate the African
faithfulness of Brazilian cults, that Verger was to use the image in a
more and more didactic fashion (Souty 2007: 133).
The ambiguous relationship that Verger maintained with religious belief
made him a sort of alter ego of Bastides, who remained, right up until his
death, much more fascinated by mysticism than Verger. His distance, at the
existential level, thus seems to be inversely proportional to this fascination.
Return to France, or those excluded from the horde

After 1951, and up to 1954, Bastide started to prepare his return to
France, dividing his time between So Paulo and Paris. Lucien Febvre
had offered him a post as Directeur dtudes at the cole Pratique des
Hautes tudes (EPHE). He nally returned to his own country in 1954.
Bastide multiplied his teaching by giving a course on the sociology of
Brazil and another on Brazilian literature to the Institut dAmrique
Latine. Art and sociology continued to be closely linked in Bastides
trajectory. And it was in Paris that he resumed his association with
Georges Gurvitch, who encouraged him to prepare his thesis.29
189
Upon Gurvitchs death in 1965, Bastide became the director of the

Laboratoire de Sociologie de la Connaissance, which he had created.30
Gurvitchs position in the French academic world was unique: very much
inuenced by Marxism and German phenomenology, and concerned to
combine certain Durkheimian themes with phenomenology, he never felt
himself to be a true representative of French sociology, dening himself
as being excluded from the horde (Gurvitch 1966).31
Gurvitch was persuaded that the discipline was in crisis because it
had still not succeeded in joining together theory and empirical
research. Confronted with Durkheims theories, Gurvitch adopted the
idea of social life being divided into different levels of reality, while
criticising Durkheims dogmatism and his view of God as a projection
of the collective consciousness (Gurvitch 1959: 4). Such would be the
consequences of a conceptual deciency, the cause of which is the
Durkheimian denition of the social fact, from which unfolds the
collective consciousness, to which is attributed the status of the
supreme being (Marcel 2001: 13).
Gurvitch was very critical of German sociology, and especially of
Max Weber. The young Marx, by contrast, was one of his main points
of reference because of the attention Marx gave to the reciprocal
immanence between society and the individual (Gurvitch 1948: 22).
Mauss, with his notion of the total social fact, helped him work out his
method, in which sociology and psychology were mixed together in
order to achieve a genuine reciprocity of perspectives. The synthesis of
the teachings of Mauss and Marx would lead Gurvitch to develop a
typology of depth levels, which constituted an attempt to resolve the
question of the separation between individual and society, thanks to
levels which go from the morphological surface of society to the mental
and psychic states of the individual.
However, in order to arrive at a unied paradigm for the discipline,
North American sociology also had to be confronted:
The enormous descriptive work provided by American sociology has shown
the way here, although to bear all its fruits, and even to become usable, it
needs to be rooted in conceptual schemes that are clearer, more refined and
more flexible, such as those which are the strength of French sociological
thought. (Gurvitch 1950: 4)
In this respect, Bastide signed up fully to the Gurvitch school, since for
him North American anthropology was merely the point of departure
for the analysis of the interpenetrations of civilisations. He found the
intellectual tools for the development of this analysis in French
sociology and anthropology: Durkheims and Mausss notion of the
190
Stefania Capone
collective representation, Halbwachs denition of collective memory

and Lvy-Bruhls law of participations.
Between 1945 and 1960 in French sociological circles, American
authors were commented on in terms of a conception that referred to
a methodological holism inherited from Durkheimian and Marxist
thought (Marcel 2004). It was a matter of appropriating methods of
enquiry created across the Atlantic while rebuilding around them a
conceptual inventory compatible with the need to explain the parts of
the whole in all circumstances. American authors were therefore no
more than purveyors of methods permitting the collection of microsociological data (ibid.). Bastide adopted this critique by affirming that
the great task of sociology was to establish valid generalizations from
monographic descriptions (Bastide 1960: 324).
In the introduction to his major thesis, defended in 1957 at EPHE
under Gurvitchs supervision, Bastide examines the contributions of
Marxism, Durkheimian sociology and French anthropology in the
analysis of processes of the interpenetration of civilisations. Positivist
sociology must be replaced by a sociology of understanding, which
must be freed from Weberian subjectivism: For the understanding he
seeks is attained by reference to the observer, i.e. the sociologist who
interprets the correlations. This is to ignore the fact that the sociologist
himself is part of society, that he has been shaped by a given culture,
and consequently that his own psychology has also been conditioned
by social factors (Bastide 1978: 5).
For Bastide, however, the determining factor of the new sociological
conceptions must be sought in the very evolution of anthropology at
the start of the twentieth century, and especially in the contributions of
Granet and Leenhardt (1930, 1947): A civilization does not reveal its
true meaning unless it is grasped through its mythical vision of the
world, which is more than its expression or justication, being indeed its
very mainstay (Bastide 1978: 9). In American sociology, what had so
closely unied French sociology was split up into three different
disciplines: sociology proper, cultural anthropology and social
psychology. With Gurvitch and his depth sociology, the stratication
of the depth levels of social reality made a much richer dialectic possible
it made possible the transition from statics to change, from situation
to cause; in brief it allowed explanation to be more effectively modelled
on concrete fact in its perpetual transformation (ibid.: 1011).
Now, the sole means open to Bastide to achieve genuine
understanding was to become the Other. But how could one integrate
oneself into an African religion? This was possible since, in Brazil,
there is a dissociation between culture and race:
191
In the candombl we find Spanish daughters of the gods as well as French

and Swiss members of the priestly hierarchy with various titles. [] All that
is required is to accept African law wholeheartedly. From that moment on,
however white ones skin, one is caught up in the shared mystic rites, in
taboos, and in susceptibility to magical vengeance. In fact it is possible in
Brazil to be a Negro without being African and, contrariwise, to be both
white and African. (ibid.: 28)
If, therefore, Bastide declares Africanus sum, he knows that his position
in relation to the candombl prevents him from achieving this deep
understanding:
it was evident that, even though I entered the candombl as a member and
not at all as a simple observer, the law of the maturing of the secret, which
dominates any religion of initiation, forced me to remain still too much of
an outsider for me to be able to provide anything other than an introduction
to a certain Negro vision of the world. Only a priest of the cult who occupies
an elevated position in the hierarchy could provide us with the work I was
praying for. (Bastide 1996: 1819)
This sociology of the encounter (Balandier 1995 [1960]), which demands

the fruit of both scientic knowledge and shared belief, was thus condemned
to failure. Only those who had been initiated could achieve genuine
understanding, but they could not reveal it, since, as in Vergers case, they
were bound to the law of secrecy. Like the mystic, Bastide tried to position
himself on another plane of existence, gazing towards somewhere else
which was in reality at the root of himself. As he noted in his article of 1965
on obscure and confused thought, to lose consciousness to the point of
losing oneself is equivalent to being plunged into darkness, to forgetting
oneself in the silence of the self, until the ultimately revealing encounter
with the Other. Right up to the end, Bastide was bound to the mast of reason,
a new Ulysses trying to resist the Sirens songs.
Notes
1. For a critical analysis of this domain, see Capone (2005).
2. In his preface to a work of Bastide (1960), Georges Balandier writes (1995: v): The
separation, the delayed access to Parisian academic positions, the gap with respect to
the ideological confrontations of the 1950s were for him a handicap. Besides these
circumstances, equally important was the distance he was able to maintain between
what was important to him and the concessions that had to be made to maintain his
reputation.
3. On the missed encounter between Bastide and Lvi-Strauss, see Mary (2000a,
2005).
4. For an analysis of the limits of this approach to the field, see Capone (1999: 4148).
192
Stefania Capone
5. Richard taught at the University of Bordeaux, where he succeeded Emile Durkheim,

who occupied the Chair of Pedagogy and Social Sciences from 1887 to 1902. He was
linked to the Anne Sociologique group, with whom he collaborated until 1907. For
Bastides biography and bibliography, see Ravalet (1993a, 1993b).
6. Bastide stresses Tardes contribution (1890, 1898) to the study of the
interpenetrations of civilizations in one of his last works, Le prochain et le lointain
(1970), where he defines him as the true founder of cultural anthropology.
7. This letter from Mauss to Bastide has been published in Bastidiana no. 4950 (2005).
See also Morin (1994: 38).
8. I have devoted another work to Bastides principle of compartmentalization and
theory of syncretism. See Capone (2007).
9. On this, see Bastide (1965), Beylier (1977: 23437).
10. Brazil seems to have been a fertile field for the rediscovery of Durkheimian sociology,
given Durkheims influence in the Paulist academic milieu of the period, especially
among the members of the French mission in So Paulo (cf. Peixoto 2000). In his
discussion of the relationships between magic and religion, Bastide partly adopts
Durkheims formulations (1970) in opposing a disaggregative magic to an
integrative religion.
11. This opposition to Durkheimian theories was not so clear in previous writings. Thus
in 1945 Bastide wrote as follows on the subject of the trance or mystical crisis: it is
inscribed in a cultural ensemble, it follows a certain number of collective
representations, and one can say of the candombl what I have said elsewhere with
regard to Durkheim, that a mysticism that commences at a fixed moment in order to
end at a given moment while always following certain rules, far from explaining the
social, can only be explained by the priority of the social over the mystical. the
explanation for the trance must be sought in sociology, in the constraint of the milieu
over the individual (1995: 100). This approach was modified fundamentally some
years later. Thus, in an article on the washing of the necklace, originally published
in 1953, he writes: the structure of the social is determined by religious conceptions
and by the African philosophy of the universe. If we want to understand the
morphological organisation of groups, we are obliged to pass through religious
sociology, since it alone possesses the explanatory key (1973a: 370).
12. Jean-Paul Lefebvre (1990) lists thirty-eight French professors who took part in
university missions to Brazil from 1934 to 1944. They occupied especially the chairs
in the humanities and social sciences, while German and Italian professors shared
the chairs in the exact and natural sciences. See also Peixoto (1989), Carelli (1993).
13. The sites and periods of his fieldwork were as follows: Bahia and Recife (December
1943 to February 1944), Porto Alegre (July 1945), Bahia (December 1948 to
February 1949), and Bahia and So Luiz do Maranho (JulyAugust 1951). These
periods correspond to university vacations in Brazil.
14. On the fertile dialogues between Bastide and Brazilian intellectuals, as well as his
debt to them, see Peixoto (2000), Capone (2007).
15. I have dealt with the relations between Herskovits and Bastide elsewhere (Capone
2007). Herskovits spent six months in Brazil at the start of the 1940s and supervised
anthropological theses there, such as those by Octavio da Costa and Ren Ribeiro,
while maintaining close links with Brazil, especially with Arthur Ramos. Cf.
Guimares (2004).
16. Ramos had already published, in 1936, an introduction to social psychology before
Bastide arrived. For his interpretation of the process of acculturation, see Ramos
(1979 [1937]).
17. From this journey Bastide would draw a book, published in Brazil in 1945 (see Bastide
1995). In this text, there are numerous errors concerning the terminology of the
193
candombl and great confusion in transcriptions of the names of the orixs or

divinities. The text was only published in France after Bastides death.
18. An ob is a particular type of ogan (cf. Capone 1999: 26070). In this text, Bastide
calls the me-de-santo (chief priestess) of the Casa de Oxumar Dona Cotilha instead
of Dona Cotinha. Similarly, the celebrated pai-de-santo Joozinho da Gomia, his
principal informant at this time, becomes Joo da Gvea (cf. Bastide 1995: 85, 63).
19. Here is an example of the Bastidian style, in which poetry seems to be the principal
route to understanding reality: The twilight chased me, forcing me to take the tram,
which was full of black beggars, dreaming workers, amorous soldiers, ironic mulattos,
brigands decked out in the most incredible shirts, sky blue with golden braids. I
returned to my hotel, waiting for the tom-toms of the festival to call me back to those
places, this time dominated by the night, the music and the divine madness (ibid.: 92).
20. The candombl is divided into several nations: the nag (ketu, ijex, efon), the bantu
(angola and congo), the jeje and the candombl de caboclo, in which the indigenous spirits
are venerated. Today this division into nations reflects a difference in the unfolding of
the ritual rather than actual ethnic origins.
21. See also the letters sent by Leiris to Bastide, published in no. 4950 of Bastidiana
(2005).
22. Two other brief trips were made after his return to France, in September 1962 and
August 1973.
23. On Vergers itinerary between Brazil and Africa, see Mtraux and Verger (1994). A
great number of works were published in Brazil at the centenary of Vergers birth in
2002. Among others, see Le Bouler (2002), Lhning (2002, 2004), Moura (2002),
and Nobrega and Echeverria (2002). On Verger, see also Capone (1999), Souty
(2007).
24. The words feeding the head designate the ceremony of the bori (bo + ori = to
venerate the head), in which the head, the receptacle of the gods, is fed by the blood
of the sacrifices and the offerings of sacred food. Initiation proper is called feitura do
santo, the making of the saint [orix].
25. When he started, Verger had no vocation for anthropological work, as he declared
himself: I did this research for myself and my friends in Bahia. The idea of publishing
the results for a wider public never entered my mind. It was Monod who made me
publish (Verger 1982: 257). Thodore Monod, Director of the Institut Franais
dAfrique Noire or IFAN in the 1950s, had invited Verger to publish a study of cults
in Brazil and Africa, which appeared in 1957. Verger entered the Centre National de
la Recherche Scientifique in 1962, finally becoming a directeur de recherche in 1972,
at the age of 70.
26. See Souty (2007), Le Bouler (2002), on the tension expressed in the attribution of
two different protecting divinities (Xang in Ax Op Afonj and Oxal in the Casa
Branca) that brought the mes-de-santo of two of the most prestigious terreiros in
Salvador into mutual opposition, since both wished to incorporate Verger into their
cult group.
27. On the counter-acculturative effect of Vergers work and its consequences for the
ritual practice of the candombl, see Capone (1999: 25359), Souty (2007: 25662).
The search for a Nag purity in the creation of a new terreiro, that of his protg
Balbino Daniel de Paula, in which Verger participated actively, is an excellent
illustration of the role he played in legitimating a ritual model (ketu) in the Bahian
candombl. Cf. Capone (2003).
28. They only published two articles together, a study of divination in Salvador in 1953,
and an article on the Nag markets of Dahomey in 1959.
29. For information on Gurvitchs biography, see Gurvitch (1966), Duvignaud (1969),
Balandier (1972).
Stefania Capone
194
30. This raises a question about Marcels statement (2001: 6) that, after 1965, there
was no longer a Gurvitch school. Gurvitch had left his mark on Bastides work,
notably on his theory of syncretism and of the Negro-African collective memory
(cf. Capone 2007). See also Mary (2000a, 2000b).
31. One could say the same about Bastide, cf. Balandier (1995).
References
Balandier, G. 1972. Georges Gurvitch, sa vie, son oeuvre, Paris: Presses Universitaires
Franaises.
1995 [1960]. Une sociologie de la rencontre, Prface to Roger Bastide, Les religions
africaines au Brsil: contribution une sociologie des interpntrations de civilisation,
Presses Universitaires Franaises.
Bastide, R. 1928. Mysticisme et sociologie, Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 36(5/6):
297306.
1931a. Les Armniens de Valence, Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 39(1/2), 17
42.
1931b. Les problmes de la vie mystique, Paris: Armand Colin.
1935. Elments de sociologie religieuse, Paris: Armand Colin.
1938. Pintura e Mstica, Revista do Arquivo Municipal (So Paulo), 50: 4760.
1940. Psicanlise do Cafun, Revista do Arquivo Municipal (So Paulo), 6(70):
11830.
1946. A propsito da poesia como mtodo sociolgico, 2 parts, Dirio de So Paulo,
8 and 22 February.
1957. Brsil, terre de contrastes, Paris: Hachette.
1958. Le candombl de Bahia (rite nag), Paris: Mouton.
1960. Problmes de lentrecroisement des civilisations et de leurs uvres, in G.
Gurvitch (ed.), Trait de sociologie, Paris: Presses Universitaires Franaises, vol. 2.
1965. La pense obscure et confuse, Le Monde Non-Chrtien, 75/76: 13756.
1970. Le prochain et le lointain, Paris: Edition Cujas.
1973a. Algumas consideraes em torno de uma lavagem de contas, in R.
Bastide, Estudos Afro-brasileiros, So Paulo: Perspectiva.
1973b. Estudos Afro-brasileiros, So Paulo: Perspectiva.
1975. Le sacr sauvage et autres essais, Paris: Payot.
1978 [1960]. The African religions of Brazil: toward a sociology of the
interpenetration of civilizations [Les religions africaines au Brsil: contribution une
sociologie des interpntrations de civilisation], Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
1995. Images du Nordeste Mystique en Noir et Blanc, Paris: Actes Sud/Babel (orig.
Brazilian edn. 1945).
1996. Etat actuel des recherches afro-amricaines en Amrique Latine,
Bastidiana, 13/14: 1128.
Bastide, R. and P. Verger. 1953. Contribuio ao Estudo da Adivinhao em Salvador
(Bahia), Revista do Museu Paulista, 7: 35780.
1959. Contribution ltude sociologique des marchs nag au Bas-Dahomey,
Cahiers de lInstitut de science conomique applique, 95: 3365.
Beylier, C. 1977. Luvre brsilienne de Roger Bastide, Thse de doctorat, Paris, 2 vols.
Caillois, R. 1950 [1939]. Lhomme et le sacr, Paris: Gallimard.
Capone, S. 1999. La qute de lAfrique dans le candombl: pouvoir et tradition au Brsil, Paris:
Karthala.
195
2003. Regards contemporains sur les premiers candombls Salvador de Bahia,

in A. Kouvouama and D. Cochart (eds), Modernits transversales: citoyennet, politique
et religion, Paris: ditions Paari.
2005. Repenser les Amriques noires: nouvelles perspectives dans la recherche
afro-amricaniste, Journal de la Socit des Amricanistes, 91(1): 8391.
2007. Transatlantic dialogue: Roger Bastide and the African American religions,
Journal of Religion in Africa, 37(3): 135.
Cardoso, I. 1994. Entretien avec R. Bastide, Bastidiana, numro spcial, Roger Bastide:
Claude Lvi-Strauss. Du principe de coupure aux courts-circuits de la pense, 7/8:
6973.
Carelli, M. 1993. Cultures croises: histoire des changes culturels entre la France et le Brsil
de la dcouverte aux temps modernes, Paris: Nathan.
da Silva, V.G. 2000. O antroplogo e sua magia, So Paulo: EDUSP.
Dumas, G. 192324. Trait de psychologie, Paris: Alcan.
Durkheim, E. 1895. Les rgles de la mthode sociologique, Paris: Alcan.
1912. Les formes lmentaires de la vie religieuse, Paris: Alcan.
1970. Lavenir de la religion, in E. Durkheim, La science sociale et laction,
Introduction et prsentation de J.-C. Filloux, Paris: Presses Universitaires Franaises.
Duvignaud, J. 1969. Georges Gurvitch, symbolisme social et sociologie dynamique, Paris:
Seghers.
Guimares, A.S.A. 2004. Comentrios correspondncia entre Melville Herskovits e
Arthur Ramos (19351941), in F.A.Peixoto, H. Pontes and L.M. Schwarcz (eds),
Antropologia, histria, experincias, Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG.
Gurvitch, G. 1948. La sociologie du jeune Marx, Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, 4,
347.
1950. La vocation actuelle de la sociologie, Paris: Presses Universitaires Franaises.
1959. Les cadres sociaux de la connaissance sociologique, Cahiers Internationaux
de Sociologie, 26: 16572.
1966. Mon itinraire intellectuel ou lexclu de la horde, LHomme et la socit, 1:
312.
Herskovits, M. 1938. Acculturation: the study of cultural contact, New York: Augustin.
Le Bouler, J.-P. 2002. Pierre Fatumbi Verger: um homen livre, Salvador: Fundao Pierre
Verger.
Leenhardt, M. 1930. Notes dethnologie no-caldonienne, Paris: Institut dEthnologie.
1947. Do Kamo: la personne et le mythe dans le monde mlansien, Paris: Gallimard.
Lefebvre, J.-P. 1990. Les professeurs franais des missions universitaires au Brsil (1934
1944), Cahiers du Brsil Contemporain, 12: 89100.
Leiris, M. 1958. La possession et ses aspects thtraux chez les Ethiopiens de Gondar, Paris: Plon.
1996. Miroir dAfrique, textes dits par Jean Jamin, Paris: Quarto Gallimard.
Lvy-Bruhl, L. 1922. La mentalit primitive, Paris: Alcan.
Lhning, A. (ed.) 2002. Verger-Bastide: dimenses de uma amizade, Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand
Brasil.
2004. Pierre Verger, reprter fotogrfico, Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
Marcel, J.-C. 2001. Georges Gurvitch: les raisons dun succs, Cahiers Internationaux de
Sociologie, 110: 97119.
2004. Une rception de la sociologie amricaine en France (19451960), Revue
dhistoire des sciences humaines, 11: 4568.
Mary, A. 2000a. Le bricolage africain des hros chrtiens, Paris: Editions du Cerf.
2000b. Le dfi du syncrtisme: le travail symbolique de la religion dEboga (Gabon),
Paris: Editions de lEHESS.
2005. Mtissage and bricolage in the making of African Christian identities, Social
Compass, 52(3): 28194.
196
Stefania Capone
Mauss, M. 1990 [1922]. The gift, London and New York: Routledge.
Mtraux, A. and P. Verger. 1994. Le pied ltrier: correspondance 19461963, Paris: JeanMichel Place (prsent et annot par Jean-Pierre Le Bouler).
Morin, F. 1975. Roger Bastide ou lanthropologie des gouffres, Archives de Sciences Sociales
des Religions, 40: 99106.
1994. Les indits et la correspondance de Roger Bastide, in P. Laburthe-Tolra (ed.),
Roger Bastide ou le rjouissement de labme, Paris: LHarmattan.
Motta, R. 1994. Lapport brsilien dans luvre de Bastide sur le candombl de Bahia, in
Philippe Laburthe-Tolra (ed.), Roger Bastide ou le rjouissement de labme, Paris:
LHarmattan.
Moura, C.E.M. de. (ed.). 2002. Uma sada de ia: Pierre Verger, So Paulo: Axis Mundi Editora.
Nobrega, C. and R. Echeverria. 2002. Verger: um retrato em preto e branco, Salvador:
Corrupio.
Park, R.E. 1928. Human migration and the marginal man, The American Journal of
Sociology, 33: 88193.
Peixoto, F.A. 1989. Franceses e Norte-Americanos nas cincias sociais brasileiras 1930
1960, in S. Miceli (ed.), Histria das cincias sociais no Brasil, vol. 1, So Paulo: Vrtice.
2000. Dilogos brasileiros: uma anlise da obra de Roger Bastide, So Paulo:
EDUSP/FAPESP.
2005. Roger Bastide: Nordeste mystique, itinraires africains et villes brsiliennes,
Bastidiana, 4950: 12740.
Queirz, M.I.P. de. 1983. Nostalgia do Outro e do Alhures: a obra sociolgica de Roger
Bastide, in M.I.P. Queirz (ed.), Roger Bastide, So Paulo: tica.
1994. Roger Bastide, professor da Universidade de So Paulo, Estudos avanados,
8(22): 21520.
Ramos, A. 1936. Introduo psicologia social, Rio de Janeiro: Jos Olympio.
1979 [1937]. As culturas negras no Novo Mundo, So Paulo: Editora Nacional.
Ravalet, C. 1993a. Bio-bibliographie de Roger Bastide, Bastidiana, 1: 3948.
1993b. Bibliographie de Roger Bastide, Bastidiana, 3: 7110.
2005. Roger Bastide et le Brsil, Bastidiana, 4950: 11726.
Redfield, R., R. Linton and M. Herskovits. 1936. Memorandum for the study of
acculturation, American Anthropologist, 38: 14952.
Richard, G. 1923. Lathisme dogmatique en sociologie religieuse, Revue dhistoire et de
philosophie religieuse, 3: 12537, 22961.
Souty, J. 2007. Pierre Fatumbi Verger: du regard dtach la connaissance initiatique, Paris:
Maisonneuve et Larose.
Tarde, G. 1993 [1890]. Les lois de limitation, Paris: Kim.
1999 [1898]. Les lois sociales: esquisse dune sociologie, Paris: Synthlabo.
Teixeira, A. et al. 1952. Arthur Ramos, Rio de Janeiro: Ministrio de Educao e Sade,
Servio de Documentao.
Verger, P. 1957. Notes sur le culte des Orisa et Vodun: Bahia, la Baie de tous les saints, au
Brsil et lancienne cte des Esclaves en Afrique, Dakar, Mmoires de lInstitut Franais
dAfrique Noire (IFAN), no. 51.
1978. Roger Bastide, Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, 20: 5253.
1982. 50 anos de fotografia, Salvador: Corrupio.
1995 [1954]. Dieux dAfrique: culte des Orishas et Vodouns lancienne Cte des
Esclaves en Afrique et Bahia de Tous les Saints au Brsil, Paris: Editions Revue Noire.
Chapter 8
THE ART AND CRAFT OF

ETHNOGRAPHY:
LUCIEN BERNOT 19191993
Grard Toffin
In the landscape of the French anthropology of the second half of the

twentieth century, Lucien Bernot (19191993) appears as a quite
original figure.1 Like certain other anthropologists we are dealing with
in the present volume, he did not occupy the front stage and was not
well-known abroad, except perhaps by Western colleagues working on
his particular geographical areas of research, namely the Chittagong
Hills, Burma and Southeast Asia. He has nevertheless been very
influential in France, through his books and his teaching at the cole
Pratique des Hautes tudes (sixth section), which in 1975 became the
cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). In fact, Bernot
trained a whole generation of young anthropologists between 1960
until 1980, mainly on Asiatic studies but also a few on European
ethnography. I myself was a doctoral student of Bernots for both my
Ph.D. dissertations.2 From 1972 till 1986 I was in very close contact
with him and learned a great deal about anthropology from him. His
teaching was for me a kind of revelation, an immersion into the reality
of fieldwork and the craft of ethnography, as well as a move from
concept to action. Throughout his career, he defended a vision of
anthropology based on intensive fieldwork and knowledge of the
vernacular languages. He campaigned in favour of an ethnography
oriented towards facts, realities and detailed observations.
As Clifford remarks (1988: 139), this ethnographic vision, which is
often associated with the Muse de lHomme, formerly located in the
Palais du Trocadro (Paris), is rooted in a long French tradition. It dates
198
Grard Toffin
Figure 8.1. Lucien
Bernot, on the occasion
of his being honoured
with a Festschrift at the
cole des Hautes tudes
en Sciences Sociales,
Paris, 1987. To the right
in the background,
Claude Lvi-Strauss (left)
is talking to Marc Aug.
Taken by J.C. Vaysse.
Collection Bernard
Koechlin.
back to the very origins of French anthropology, through figures like

Paul Rivet, Marcel Griaule, Michel Leiris and, as far as Asia is
concerned, ethnographers belonging to the cole Franaise dExtrmeOrient (Charles Archaimbault, Guy Morchand and Jean Boulbet, to
name but a few). After the mid-1950s, this approach became in many
ways linked with the name of Andr Leroi-Gourhan (19111986),
prominent archaeologist and ethnographer specialising in technology,
who was a professor at the Collge de France from 1969 until 1980.
For a number of French anthropologists of the second half of the
twentieth century, Leroi-Gourhan embodied an alternative to the
structuralism of Lvi-Strauss, which is often considered too distant from
ethnographic realities. Yet although he was undoubtedly an eminent
scholar and great spirit, Leroi-Gourhan cannot be reduced to just one
school. In the course he taught in the 1960s at the Sorbonne, I
remember that he often claimed to be closer to the cultural
anthropology of the United States than to the French or British schools
of anthropology, a view of himself corroborated by a careful
examination of his works.
Although this ethnographic and empirical perspective has never
been totally rejected by anthropologists who are more oriented towards
theory, and although its practitioners generally maintained close
relations with the latter, it retains its vitality as a stream of
anthropology that is very different in its style and intellectual concerns
from the Lvi-Straussian structural school (Toffin 1995).
The art and craft of ethnography
199
Life and works

Lucien Bernot was born in Gien (Loiret department), central France, in
1919.3 Unlike most French anthropologists of the twentieth century, he
came from a very modest family with strong rural roots. His father, who
taught himself to read and write, was a worker in the PTT state telephone
company. Throughout his life he cultivated a small garden and some
vines, as was the custom in the region. Lucien became a typographer and
followed this job from 1935 (when he was fifteen years old) until 1943 in
several workshops all over France, including the Imprimerie Nationale
in Paris. But he soon became interested in other cultures, starting with
Asiatic writing systems, which were different from the graphic signs he
was using in his job. From 1944 until 1947, he learned Chinese, then
Tibetan, at the cole Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes in Paris.4
This degree gave him an equivalent to the baccalaurat and enabled him
to enter university. In 1946 in the Muse de lHomme he met Andr LeroiGourhan, who found him a post in the Asiatic department with a small
salary. Bernot was in charge of filling out card indexes for the various
tools and items that the museum acquired.
In 1949, Claude Lvi-Strauss raised some funds from UNESCO for
this young student in ethnology and oriental languages. Bernot was
sent by the historian Lucien Febvre to a village located on the border
between Normandy and Picardy, northwest of Paris, with Ren
Blancard, a psycho-sociologist (see Lvi-Strauss 1995, Zonabend
1995). This UNESCO project was very much under the influence of the
Culture and Personality American school. Its emphasis was on the
interactions between individuals and their society, as well as on the
cultural models affecting children at an early age. The project was also
intended to highlight contacts between cultures. A border village
between two geo-cultural regions was an excellent choice in that
connection. The two young men spent eight months there and in 1953
published a book, entitled Nouville, an invented word derived from nous,
we, and ville, town. This monographic study, which was republished
in 1995, was the first to focus on a French village from a genuinely
anthropological perspective. The earlier studies on French communities
by Robert Hertz (1913) on Saint Besse in the Aosta valley, and by Louis
Dumont (1951) on La Tarasque in Provence were mostly concerned with
local cults. As for the study by Laurence Wylie on Roussillon (Village in
the Vaucluse), this only dates from 1957.
Between 1951 and 1952, Bernot undertook fieldwork with his wife,
Denise, in the Chittagong Hills, in what was then East Pakistan (today
Bangladesh). He was advised to do research in this area by Lvi-Strauss,
who thus for a second time directed the young ethnographers career in
200
Grard Toffin
a decisive manner. Lvi-Strauss had actually just returned himself from

the Chittagong Hills, as he narrates in Tristes tropiques (1958). Bernot
joined CNRS in 1954 and returned a second time to East Pakistan,
thanks to a scholarship from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (October
1959February 1960). He worked mainly on a Tibeto-Burmanspeaking population, the Marma, who originally came from Burma. He
submitted his doctorat dtat on this Buddhist group in 1967 with a fulllength study under the supervision of Andr Leroi-Gourhan, the thesis
being published the same year in a two-volume monograph, Les paysans
arakanais du Pakistan oriental (1967a). In 1967 another book dealing
with another Tibeto-Burman-speaking ethnic group, Les Cak:
Contribution ltude ethnographique dune population de langue loi (1967b),
whom Bernot had studied in 1960, also appeared. The Cak are very close
linguistically to the Kadu, who live on the upper Mu River, Burma.
By then Bernot had already joined the cole Pratique des Hautes
Etudes (in 1964) as a Directeur dtudes and had started his important
teaching to students in ethnology (or anthropologie sociale, the
expression made more and more familiar in France under the influence
of Louis Dumont and Claude Lvi-Strauss). His courses focused on
technology, one of his favourite themes, but also on other topics, such
as kinship and ethnobotany. This was before the anthropology
department at Nanterre University (Paris X) had really got going: it only
started in 1967 and became really effective in the early 1970s. The
sixth section of the cole Pratique des Hautes tudes was therefore the
main place for training advanced students in anthropology.
Bernot participated with Georges Condominas and Andr-Georges
Haudricourt in the foundation of the Centre de Documentation et de
Recherches sur lAsie du Sud-Est et le Monde Indonsien (Cedrasemi).
He played an active role in this Centre, stimulating a programme on a
linguistic atlas of Tibeto-Burman languages to which I shall return. He
went back several times to Asia, especially during the summer vacations,
which in Southeast Asia corresponded with the rainy season. He worked
mainly in Burma with his wife, who became Professor of Burmese at the
Institut National des Langues et des Civilisations Orientales. He studied
a number of Burmese craftsmen all around Mandalay and became
interested in another ethnic group, the Intha, who lived on the edges of
the Inle Lake and practised agriculture on floating islands.
Although he was in some ways marginal to the dominant French
academic establishment, Bernot was appointed professor in the
prestigious Collge de France in 1979, where he mainly taught Burmese
and Assamese ethnography. He entitled his chair the Sociographie de
lAsie du Sud-Est, resuscitating a term current at the beginning of the
twentieth century (e.g. the chair of Alfred Le Chatelier, then of Louis
201
Massignon, in the Collge de France was in the Sociologie et

Sociographie du monde musulman). Bernot gives the following
definition of this term: To observe the facts and isolate those that
characterize the society being studied without losing sight of their
context, to search the disciplines that relate to this context for the means
to clarify these facts and, through this, to enrich and deepen
observations and descriptions: these are the steps that, for me too, the
term sociography covers (Bernot 2000 [1978]: 28).5 He wanted to
bring ethnography and history together in the Boasian manner, and to
study literate as well as preliterate societies (Leon inaugurale au Collge
de France 2000 [1979]: 500). Yet, a few years later, he was no longer
sure that sociography was the right word (personal communication).
He died in 1997, at the age of 72, just after mowing his lawn in the
garden of his house in Brantes, in southern France. Thus we lost an erudite
scholar, a great connoisseur of rural life, a bon vivant, a very warm person
with an open nature, expansive, but also modest and quite untypical in
many other respects in the intellectual milieu of French anthropology.
Monographic studies and attention to detail

Of all the professional ethnographers we are dealing with in this
volume, perhaps nobody placed more emphasis on the importance of
monographic study than Bernot. Even though he occasionally defended
himself from the charge of relying exclusively on this method (AvantPropos to Les Paysans arakanais), most of his books have a monographic
structure focused either on a village or a minority group. Nouville, for
example, is the study of a specific locality inhabited by 594 individuals
working in either agricultural activities or two local glass
manufacturers. Les Paysans arakanais deals specifically with a particular
ethnic group (about 100,000 in number in 1960), the Marma. The
same can be said for his books on the Cak (about 3,000 individuals) and
his article devoted to the Intha published in the Journal dagronomie
tropicale et de botanique applique (2000 [Bernot and Bruneau 1972]).
Bernot was fully aware of the limitations of the monographic
approach, especially with regard to a village. As he explained in one of
his best articles, Les Plein-Vent,6 published in Ethnos (1975a), a village
does not live in total isolation from the external world, but has links with
surrounding villages and overlapping economic or social interests; it
also has a relationship with cities as well as various markets, on which
it may depend. Bernot also acknowledges that a particular village is
frequently visited by people from different localities and that marriage
rules often unite different communities through strong links. Quoting
202
Grard Toffin
the French Marxist historian Charles Parain, he stressed that a regional

approach is sometimes a useful complement to village study. Likewise,
he mentioned Louis Dumont, his colleague at the cole Pratique des
Hautes tudes, who argued that, in the Indian context, the supposedly
self-sufficient multi-caste village is partly irrelevant from the
sociological point of view (Dumont 1966).
Nonetheless, Bernot defended the monographic approach, which he
considered a good point of departure. Admittedly, the village framework
is more appropriate for studying localities inhabited by a single ethnic
group, such as the ones he worked in, than those consisting of multicaste communities. But more fundamentally, he was of the opinion that
peasant life and rural social units are best considered at the local level,
because farmers are attached in a very intimate manner to a specific
territory. Bernot even suggests that the size of the ideal village to be
investigated intensively by an anthropologist staying alone
continuously for a year is 200 to 300 persons, including children (2000
[1973]: 325).7 It is only at this micro-level that the professional
fieldworker can be on close terms with the local population and get to
know everybody. It is also at this level that s/he can realise the strong
contrast which opposes us to others in all rural worlds, a theme which
occurs repeatedly in his works.
Bernot devoted a whole article on how to conduct a census in a small
territorial unit without official census data or a civil register. In this
work, the author of Nouville is stimulated by a concern to collect data
with as much rigour as possible (Le recensement dun village, 2000
[1973]), but unfortunately he ignores sampling problems and the
representativeness of the materials collected. In his view, the census of
a village of forty houses normally takes about forty hours. He suggests
that the investigator should collect genealogies for the study of the
social organisation at the same time. He also gives some advice on the
possible use of photography to provide better identification of the
population during an enquiry and to give each of them the pleasure of
receiving their own photograph:
The work of taking a census can be facilitated by means of photographs.
One can ask a certain number of individuals to pose (it does not matter
whom so long as they live in the village). From these photographs one has
enlargements made, as many as the people in the photographs, plus two.
When the photographs return from town, two are kept and [the others]
distributed. On one of the retained photographs is indicated, using tracing
paper, the name of each individual and his or her number. The other
photograph is cut up and the corresponding face glued on to the individual
page [for each person]. (ibid.: 32728)
203
This article may be considered as a late but nonetheless useful

development of the innovative works of W.H.R. Rivers (1900) on the
use of the genealogical method to study kinship systems and social
organisation. By and large, indeed, Bernots fieldwork method was more
or less in accordance with the methods laid down by Rivers in the fourth
edition of Notes and Queries (Royal Anthropological Institute 1912):8
the necessity of learning the local language, the search for spontaneous
informants, the concern to create as great an empathy as possible
between the enquirer and the population being studied (Stocking
1995). This method of intensive enquiry, with both direct and
participant observation, which Malinowski developed so well
subsequently, contrasts strongly with the practice of the first tribal
ethnographers in India and Burma, British for the most part, who
gathered their information mainly while touring or surveying whole
districts, spending a few nights camping in successive villages,
and interviewing informants in isolation rather than in any
detailed context.9
Ultimately, Bernot validates the monographic approach in these terms:
Monograph, rural sociology within the monograph, structural study no
one of these forms of study can exclude the two others. But the excellent
monograph can always, sooner or later, lend itself to structural analysis,
while a structural study, however excellent, can never permit the
monograph to be reconstructed. (1973: 245)
In other words, monographs are credited with a more permanent life

than theoretical studies, which often fall under the influence of
transitory moods, and whose life expectancy is much more limited. A
good monograph will always be useful to future generations, being an
inventory, a document made at a certain point in time and space, to
which it can always be referred.
It is instructive to examine closely the synopses and divisions of his
works into chapters. For instance, Nouville falls roughly into three parts.
The first four chapters are devoted to the geographical, historical,
demographic and economic settings. The second part includes four
chapters dealing with the life-cycle (infancy, adolescence, marriage and
family life, and old age). The third and last part focuses on the
inhabitants of the village and their relationships with outsiders
(communal life, values, information, space and time, attitudes toward
outsiders). The contents correspond to the expectations of those who
conceived the UNESCO project. Among the various appendixes, one
presents the result of the psychological tests that Blancard performed on
a selected sample of the population. Included is an interesting chapter
204
Grard Toffin
(Ch. 5), written in fact by Blancard, on childhood and education, a

subject too often neglected by anthropologists even today.
Let us now consider Les paysans arakanais, Bernots masterpiece,
which contains an impressive body of ethnographic materials. Part 1
looks at the narratives of a Hinduised group through historical sources,
mainly European (Portuguese, British, Dutch). Part 2, Le monde vgtal,
includes chapters on the elementary principles of Marma technology
(Ch. 3), slash and burn agriculture (Ch. 4), occasional agriculture
(ploughing and gardening) (Ch. 5), food (Ch. 6), bamboo and cotton (Ch.
7) and the house (Ch. 8). The third part is devoted to society men and
women with chapters focusing on the economy (Ch. 9), the life-cycle
(Ch. 10), the village and its environment (Ch. 11) and kinship (Ch. 12).
The conclusion is devoted to the social division of labour.
As a whole, such lists of contents are very classical, cover most
aspects of society and culture, and adopt a holistic viewpoint, except
for the two important domains of religion and politics, which are never
treated as such, but only in relation to the facts of social organisation
and material life. In the conclusion to Nouville, the two authors explain
that their aim has been to throw light on the links between all aspects
of the life of a social group: psychological, sociological, historical and
economic. These divisions into chapters can be considered typical of
the ethnographic monographs prepared in the Muse de lHomme (and
the cole Franaise dExtrme-Orient too) at that time.
But what marks Bernot out as original and distinctive is his scientific
attention to detail. Undoubtedly his powers of observation were acute,
his interest in the concrete passionate. He himself gives some
illustrations of his ethnographic method:
For example, let us cite the different ways of lighting a fire according to
whether it is done by a man or a woman, the places in the house classified
according to whether they are occupied by the father, the mother or the
children, the differences between the birth of a boy and that of a girl,
between the cremation of a deceased male or female, the smell of a mothers
clothing in infancy, what happens to the hair of a young monk, the yams
that wind themselves round in the opposite direction, etc. (1967a: 15)
What he thinks more important is the noting of little details or microdetails, hidden or not in the discourse of the informants, in
accordance with Mausss instructions in his Manuel dethnographie
(2007 [1947]: 7). These details are in fact crucial, primordial, in
Bernots words. He presents his work as an attempt, starting with a
little, to understand the whole, that is, to make the whole understood:
that is, to make the Marma ethnic group understood (1967a: 14). The
aim is to leave as little as possible behind the scenes and to list all the
205
details, so that the underlying determinants of the social and cultural

rules, the patterns of a group, can be highlighted.
The result is a somewhat puzzling way of writing anthropology, one
that recalls Franz Boass works, as well as the volumes of the
Encyclopdie agricole of the ditions J.B. Baillire10 or the agronomical
works of the Maison rustique publishing house.11 These two types of
work, which are a mine of inexhaustible information on the history of
agricultural techniques in France, were very well known in the French
provinces in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, though more by
the rural elites in the strict sense than the minor peasants. This type of
writing accumulates a tremendous quantity of detail on the social
group studied, providing a sort of naturalistic ethnography devoted
to the daily routines, the chores of ordinary activities, repeatedly citing
the terms of ones informants and interlocutors. Thus when Bernot is
studying agricultural techniques, he gives a lengthy description of how
Hari Phru ploughs his two-acre plot of land before sowing wheat from
8.30 in the morning until 6.15 in the evening. Similarly, when he deals
with marriage, he gives a description of a particular wedding, at a
certain time and place. The farmers and their families are presented
personally in the context, without any literary effect, and are placed at
the heart of the ethnographic description. This particularistic approach
also characterises chapters on rituals. Interestingly, the ethnographic
data are often presented in a rough form, not very different, in all
probability, from his field notes. Besides, the sentences in his texts,
intricate and often quite long, are not written to be elegant but to reflect
the complexity of the realities observed, the very opposite of any
journalistic or literary type of writing. This direct style conveys a sense
of reality that is expressed in the uniqueness of individuals and events.
The ethnography of techniques and of the botanical world

In his teaching as well as in his writings, Bernot stressed the importance
of the study of techniques and of material culture for a thorough
understanding of pre-modern societies and cultures. After being
appointed Directeur dtudes in the cole Pratique des Hautes tudes,
he focused his seminar on Les techniques de consommation (habitat,
alimentation, vtement) en Asie du Sud-Est. His aim was to study the
links between these techniques and the society using them and to bring
out the articulations between the two. These aspects became more and
more important as he advanced in his career. He identified a
methodological interest in starting with these studies: at the beginning
of his work, the ethnographer often does not understand enough of the
206
Grard Toffin
language of the unfamiliar culture in which he has chosen to settle to

carry out research on more abstract subjects.
In advocating this method, he was inspired by his doctoral
supervisor, Andr Leroi-Gourhan, whose main achievements in the
field of anthropology were to reflect on technology and on the
classification of pre-industrial techniques from all over the world,
taking as his main parameter the various technical operations on raw
materials (hammering, cutting, scraping, shearing, moulding, etc.).
Bernot was also influenced by Andr-Georges Haudricourt, a colleague
with whom he was in close contact throughout his professional life and
with whom he shared a common vision of anthropology, or perhaps
more broadly, a conception of research in the social sciences and
humanities. Bernot was also a steady reader of the seven volumes of
Joseph Needhams Science and civilisation in China, a series published by
Cambridge University Press from 1954 to 1985. This great work is
conceived as a history of science, technology and medicine in China,
seen in its fullest social and intellectual context. Bernot used to take
examples from these books to illustrate his teaching.
His concern for material culture was first of all motivated by his feeling
that too much attention had been paid to religion and symbolism by most
anthropologists, especially French ones, and that the ordinary means of
subsistence had been neglected in the majority of studies. In fact, one of
Bernots main lessons was that rural communities in either the hills or
the plains were made up of peasant agriculturists, whose main
preoccupation was to produce food for their own consumption, provide
shelter, exchange and carry goods, wear clothes, produce tools, and in a
more general way adapt themselves to a somewhat hostile environment.
In a lecture delivered in the Maison franco-japonaise (Kyoto) in
1974, Bernot argued that a technique has to be studied from three
different aspects: historical, geographical (including the influence of
soil, fauna and flora) and how it is used. In this last respect, he proposed
a useful functional classification of techniques into three parts:
production (how tools and objects are acquired or made), distribution
(how they are given away, exchanged or stored), and consumption
(how they are used). Significantly, in each of these techniques, he placed
the emphasis on gestures (the techniques of the body of Marcel Mauss,
1936), and on the movements of the hand, the feet and of the whole
body in daily work activities. Studying fieldwork, he recommended
asking the following questions for each tool and object: What? Where?
When? How? How many? By whom? Why? (2000: 270).
However, compared to Haudricourt and Leroi-Gourhan, Bernots
studies of material culture pay less attention to classification proper. In
accordance with the museological emphasis of the Muse de lHomme,
207
he took seriously every ethnographic object as a witness of the society

being studied. Yet, on the whole he was more interested in the context,
the relationship between various techniques and their relationships
with social facts. Religious ideas interested him mostly when they could
be connected with material life. Although he did not theorise the topic,
he argued that technology is socially and culturally constructed. This
appears clearly in his research on the house among the Marma and
Cak. For instance, among many other topics, he considered such
matters as the positions allocated to the different family members in the
domestic space, the social and religious uses of different rooms
(whether there was partition), the division into female and males areas,
the values attributed to each part of the dwelling place, the economic
aspects of the different divisions of the house, the inventory of all the
objects kept in it, how they are kept, what happens in case of their loss
and the psychological aspect of the house as a refuge. Very often, all
these indicators vary from one ethnic group to another. More broadly,
he considered the house as the most useful, if not the most precious
object of all ethnographic study (2000 [1982]: 142). In other words,
for Bernot techniques were a key to entering into the social world, to
deciphering cultural categories, modes of thought and local values.
With food or habitat, he was confronted not only with technology, but
also with economy, religion, family life, law and so on. My own study of
the anthropology of space among the Newar and Tamang of Nepal is
greatly indebted to these ideas (e.g. Toffin 1994).
The similarity with Mausss Manuel dethnographie (2007 [1947]) is
particularly evident here. In his courses delivered at the Institut
dEthnologie in the University of Paris from 1920 to 1939, under the
title Instructions dethnographie descriptive, Mauss actually devoted
a great deal of space to technology. For the great master of
anthropological studies of this period, the study of clothing, the house,
pottery and fishing provided a way of addressing problems of economics
or social morphology, of religious or legal anthropology. His teaching
provided a vivid introduction to the study of societies populating the
French colonies between the wars and societies at the same stage (ibid.:
5). In this work, from considering the sandal as footwear Mauss passes
to African secret societies, from agricultural works in Oceania to
Polynesian chiefs, from boat technology to the chants of rowers.
Learning to observe is specified as the goal from the first sentence of
the Manuel (ibid.). Although Bernot only came to know Mauss towards
the end of the latters life, one finds the same inspiration in his own
course. Indeed, his teaching seems to have come straight out of the
Manuel. It is this global vision of anthropology that the title of the
volume published in his honour in 1987 De la vote cleste au terroir,
208
Grard Toffin
du terrain au foyer: mosaque sociographique with contributions from

sixty-five anthropologists, tries to capture (see Koechlin et al. 1987).
Closely linked to the study of material culture for Bernot was the
examination of plants and the botanical world. In this respect too he
was probably influenced by his long-term friend Haudricourt, an
agronomist himself and a specialist in cultivated plants. Together they
edited the Journal dagronomie tropicale et de botanique applique, a wellknown scholarly journal of ethno-botany published by the Musum
dHistoire Naturelle in Paris since 1923. Bernot collected from the
Marma a herbarium of about 160 vegetables, giving the names and
uses of ninety-two edible plants, either wild or domesticated. Such
botanical variety is nothing exceptional in Southeast Asia, where forest
people often use more than four hundred species of plants, all named,
as food. The Hanunoo of Mindoro described by Harold C. Conklin
(1975), an important reference in Bernots works, distinguish more
than 1,600 different plant types, reaching the astounding number of
430 cultivars. The samples collected in the field by Bernot were given to
the Musum dHistoire Naturelle and identified by Haudricourt and J.E.
Vidal. For most of these plants, the author of Les paysans arakanais also
documented how they were cooked and what they were eaten with.
Bernot developed a strong interest in the agriculture of these selfcontained societies, which was organised mainly to fulfil the subsistence
needs of its people rather than to produce a marketable surplus. On the
one hand, he dealt with swidden agriculture, which was practised by the
Marma on the peripheral land of their territory, as in a great number of
other Asian rural groups. He even gave a yearly course on that topic in
the Collge de France. On the other hand, he spoke and wrote a great
deal about rice cultivation, either wet or dry, which is particularly
important in Southeast and South Asia, being the staple cereal of a
number of these countries. His rich article on rice cultivators, included
in a manual published by Armand Colin in 1975 (1975b), is a first-rate
study, embracing the history of the plant Oryza, its origins and varieties,
wild and cultivated, the various ways of cultivating it, the vocabulary
of its different organic parts, the associated techniques of irrigation, the
harvest tools (knives and sickles), the processing of the grain, how to
measure and store it and so on.
All these researches played a great role in the development of
ethnobotany in France, stimulating many of Bernots students to take
an interest in the complex relationships between humans and
vegetables, as well as to collect data on the names of plants from the
four corners of the world. It is from these seminars on ethnobotany and
ethnozoology, in which Haudricourt, Jacques Barrau and Claudine
Friedberg also participated held in the delightfully antiquated rooms
209
of the Musum dHistoire Naturelle, among specimens of snakes

preserved in jars of formaldehyde and various stuffed animals that a
whole series of researches on indigenous systems of classification and
local taxonomies was born.
The taste for words

One of the outstanding characteristics of Bernots ethnography is its
interest for linguistics, more specifically for ethno-linguistics. These
considerations appeared very early, at the time of the Nouville study. In
a lecture delivered in 1949 entitled Les confins picards de la Normandie
daprs quelques considrations dhistoire conomique et sociale
(2000: 3378), he raised the question of the significance of local
toponyms and village names ending with ville, mesnil court, bec, budh or
boeuf between the departments of Seine-Maritime (Normandie) and
Somme. He linked these suffixes with the remote history of the region
and the influence of the various groups that had migrated through
Normandy or settled there (mainly Frankish, Roman, Germanic and
Scandinavian). Thus ville denotes Roman influence, boeuf and be point
to Scandinavian origins and so on. Each of these groups has thus left
behind certain words that are still alive today.
The link between ethnography and linguistics is also prevalent in his
research on Southeast Asia. With his wife, who specialised in linguistics,
in 1958, he published a short book (Bernot and Bernot 1958) on the
Tibeto-Burman language of the Khyang of the Chittagong Hills, a Chin
group. The book contains a general presentation of the Khyang and
data on their clan organisation, kinship terminology and technology,
but at its core is an account of Khyang phonology and vocabulary.
Some of the articles he wrote during the same period concern mainly
the classification of the Tibeto-Burman language groups in the area,
taking the work of Robert Shafer (1967) as a guide. Similarly, the paper
he published in the volume offered to G.H. Luce, a leading epigraphist
and historian of ancient Burma, is entitled lments de vocabulaire
Cak recueilli dans le Pakistan Oriental (2000 [1966]).
In addition, the team he chaired within his laboratory (Cedrasemi;
see above), with the aim of drawing up an ethno-linguistic atlas of
Southeast Asia, was a joint research project on the mapping of different
word series. The words were either collected in the field or taken from
the published documentation of the time. The main linguistic families of
the area Tibeto-Burman (on that group alone, 230 languages were
selected), Austro-Asiatic, Mon-Khmer, Thai and so on were all taken
into account. Such tremendous work supposed first of all the precise
210
Grard Toffin
localisation of ethnic groups and languages on a map. The western part

of Burma even included, at least partly, the Nepalese Himalayas, which
was filled mainly using data collected by Brian Hodgson, a former British
Resident in Kathmandu during the nineteenth century. Through this
method, Bernot and his colleagues sought to throw light on the history
of the local populations and on migrations. The team started by mapping
three words: dog, teeth and salt, a list afterward extended to 21, then
to 80 words, though it is unclear to me how they were chosen. The maps
(size 55 x 70 cm, then reduced to 42 x 59 cm) were printed off by the
cartographic laboratory of the cole Pratique des Hautes tudes in small
numbers for preliminary research use only. Bernot also thought of
mapping information on rice cultivation wet and dry rice, modes of
preparing ricefields, use of nurseries, techniques of harvesting and so
on but this project remains largely unrealised. The models for these
undertakings were the various linguistic atlases published by linguists
on French regions,12 such as that on the Massif Central published in four
volumes in 195963 by Pierre Nauton, one of Bernots favourites
because of its richness and its numerous ethnographic aspects. The final
work of the Southeast Asia ethno-linguistic atlas was published partly in
the journal ASEMI (1972, III, 4), without much analysis or comment.
On the whole, the atlas remains mainly a research project.
What chiefly interested Bernot in the words taken from different
languages was their own identity which was jealously guarded by
each ethnic group their links with the social and material worlds, their
migrations and the testimony they reveal of a disappeared past. He liked
to trace a words history, how it travelled over various geographical
areas in the course of time, within a diffusionist framework. In a paper
presented to a symposium in the Sorbonne in 1986 on the Routes dAsie
(2000 [1988]), he mentioned the different plants which arrived in
Southeast Asia from elsewhere: maize (from America), sorghum (from
Africa), nuts, yams, varieties of beans. Some of these plants had been
introduced to China through Southeast Asia. He gave the Chinese
names borne by these plants today and described how the words had
been formed. He noted in passing that the introduction of new plants in
Asia has not acted to the detriment of local ones, as has happened in
Europe. In a similar vein, he noted that certain spices came to Southeast
Asia from India together with their original names, such as pepper, Piper
nigrum L., whose Sanskrit name, marica, has been adopted by some
languages of Asia for either pepper or pimento. Then taking the
example of the plough, Bernot stressed that, even though the name for
it in Southeast Asia may have come from Indian languages, its
construction has become highly differentiated today, from northern to
southern regions: North Burma, North Laos and North Vietnam have
211
adopted the Chinese plough, whereas the southern parts of those

countries still used the Indian type. Through all these notations, the
researcher can point out certain ancient links and speculate about the
past influence of one group over another.
Bernots ethnographic descriptions are filled with the indigenous
expressions that are used to speak about different objects. He was aware
of the danger of using preconceived European categories and wanted to
understand each culture in its own terms, from the inside. Similarly, it
is worth mentioning his interest in folk classifications. One of his main
guides in this respect was again Conklin, whose work on the Hanunoo
(1975) is still a key reference today. It is unfortunate that the new
orientations in linguistics, with their shift towards cognition (among
other things), have made such approaches if not marginal then at least
less valued than formerly.
Conclusions: achievements and limitations

Besides the attention to detail and the descriptive aspect of his works,
Bernot emphasised what he considered a global conception of
ethnography. As we have already noted, this global conception is
reflected in the synopses of his main books, the most notable exceptions
being firstly, religion which is considered only in passing, never as a
whole and secondly, politics and power, whose role is rarely taken into
account at all. These lacunae are, of course, important and represent a
significant difference between Bernots ethnography and that of the
British school of anthropology. But by and large, Nouville and Les
paysans arakanais are characterised by their holistic viewpoints, a
holism, however, that is not sociological, properly speaking, but
principally methodological. These works aim to draw a picture of a
whole society or a whole culture. Bernot himself expresses his concern
with this aspect in the preface to his two volumes on Les paysans
arakanais, when he explains that one of his crucial aims was to attempt
to acquire a view of the whole of Marma culture (1967a: 13), the other
goal being the search for detail (ibid.: 15). The two approaches are
presented as complementary, each requiring and building on the other.
Bernot mentioned explicitly the influence of Marcel Mauss (une
approche maussienne) in this respect (ibid.: 10), in that he applied the
adjective total, invented by Mauss to characterise pre-modern society,
to the individual in preliterate and traditional societies: Having been
something of a sociologist in studying a French village, and an
ethnographer in studying several villages in East Bengal, I believe I can
affirm that, in both areas, I have encountered total men (2000
212
Grard Toffin
[1975a]: 235). In fact, it is rarely remembered today that Mauss used

the expression total not only to designate social institutions but also
humans themselves. In a lecture delivered in 1924 to the Socit
Franaise de Psychologie, he wrote:
The average man of our days and this is true above all of women and
almost all the men of archaic or backward societies, is a total man: he is
affected in all his being by the least of his perceptions or by the least mental
shock (Mauss 1979 [1950]: 28)
[And further:] The study of the complete man is among the most urgent of
these studies we would ask you to make. [] It is this man, this indivisible but
measurable but not dissectible being that we met in our moral, economic
and demographic statistics. It is this man that we find in the history of
masses and people, and of their practices, in the same way that history
meets him in the history of individuals. (ibid.: 26, emphasis in the original)
Bernot uses the expression total men in a rather different sense,

namely that agriculturists, men and women in the forest and other
people in traditional societies maintain close contact with the soil, trees,
plants, cattle and fields. This is the meaning of that elegant expression
les Plein-vent (see also above), which Lucien Febvre (1942) uses,
outside its original context of arboriculture, to denote peasant.
Bernots conception of ethnography is also distinguished by its
interdisciplinarity. In his own words:
I am convinced that the human sciences demand of the researcher that he
develops his faculties of observation that he knows perfectly the
bibliography of his subject, that he avoids becoming a prisoner of theory or
of any single discipline, but uses one and the other as a means of guiding his
thought, a programme which is not original, since it was already expressed
in lAnne sociologique at the moment it was founded. (2000 [1978]: 28)
The parallel here with Mausss Manuel is also striking: Ideally, an

expedition should not set out without its geologist, botanist and
ethnographers. [] So, set out as a group (2007 [1947]: 13). In fact,
Bernot made a great many references in his works to the French school
of geography of Albert Demangeon, Max Sorre, Roger Dion and so on, as
well as to the historical cole des Annales, quoting frequently Marc Bloch
and Lucien Febvre. With all these scholars, he shares the same scientific
values, the same trust in the progress of science and pure scholarship.
The diachronic dimension is also prevalent in all his works, from
ethnography to linguistics, contrary again to the British school, which
was sceptical of using historical facts during most of its classical
213
functionalist period (ca. 19221970). When Bernot spoke of Arthur

Hocart, he mostly mentioned The Progress of Man (1933), an
evolutionary work forgotten today, not the better known books, Kings
and Councillors (1936) or Les Castes (1938). In his studies, he always
used written sources if they were available, using them either to
demonstrate the influence of the past on the present, as in his work on
the Marma (1967a), or else to derive the etymology of a word or
indicate parallel usages in other languages. However, the information
drawn from books was never used as a way of devaluing observation.
Similarly, the concerns with space, with the influence of geography on
human settlements and processes of diffusion from one country to
another, are recurrent themes in all his works. The author of Nouville
also summoned up other disciplines: botany and linguistics, as already
mentioned, but also architecture, which he found very useful in respect
of the ethnographic study of vernacular houses and settlements. My
own ethno-architectural studies in Nepal (Toffin 1991, 1994) entirely
confirms this recommendation.
Ultimately, Bernot regarded himself as a ruralist, that is, a specialist
in peasant societies. His family background gave him an immediate
understanding of agriculturists concerns and attitudes. His students,
brought up for the most part in an urban culture, learned a great deal
from him about these rural topics. Clearly Bernot was first of all an
ethnographer; but he was also eager to collaborate with other
disciplines that were closely linked to his field of research and to
promote a global approach to rural men and societies that was valid for
France as much as for Asia. He wrote:
I would not hesitate even to write that, among these three examples of
peasants [those of Nouville, East Bengal and Haiti, where Bernot spent a
brief time13], I have felt less difference than that which exists between most
citizens of Paris and the peasants of the Bresle valley from whom they are
separated by some 150 kilometres. I have no pretensions to a desire to define
rural sociology, but wish to try and research the common denominators
between types of countryside established in a landscape which belongs to
the fields, to the countryside the definition of rural according to Littr.
(2000 [1975a]: 235)
By writing this sentence, Bernot was obviously recalling his country

origins. However, it is a contestable thesis he presents, given the
demonstration by a scholar like Haudricourt of the profound differences
that oppose rice-cultivators to cereal-cultivators, or peasants in Western
countries to tuber-planters in Oceania. Whatever the case may be, this
notion explains the frequent comparisons he made between western
rural communities and Asian farmers in the east.
214
Grard Toffin
Some words should also be devoted to Bernots relationship with the

chief authority on structuralism in France. Interestingly, throughout
his career there seems to have been a strange complicity, at least at first
sight, between Bernot and Claude Lvi-Strauss. Of course, the latter
embodies a totally different trend in anthropology, oriented mainly
towards theory, universal rules of marriage, structures of
communication and the mind. He developed a highly intellectual
school, in which Bernot, like Haudricourt and Condominas, was not at
ease. Moreover, some of the structuralist followers of Lvi-Strauss
looked down rather disparagingly on the research of someone like
Bernot, which was so attached to realities, and they considered such
ethnographic studies at best peripheral and subordinate. In the dual
geography of French anthropology of the second part of the twentieth
century, the first dominated by Leroi-Gourhan, the second by LviStrauss, Bernot evidently situated himself much closer to the former.
Nevertheless, Lvi-Strauss supported Bernot at different key moments
in his career, even writing a preface to the re-publication of the Nouville
monograph in 1995. This cannot be explained only in terms of tactical
or political reasons: from the very beginning, Lvi-Strauss was
impressed by Bernots unconventionality and deep knowledge,
immediately recognising his astonishing erudition in so many different
fields. But more broadly, unlike some of his imitators, the leader of
structural anthropology has always defended ethnographic studies, the
collection of materials through fieldwork, without which, as he wrote,
a more interpretative anthropology cannot exist. Everybody can recall
the considerable use Lvi-Strauss made of ethno-botanical data and
folk classifications in La pense sauvage (1964).
What about Lucien Bernot today? Re-reading his monographs
closely, some limitations naturally emerge. The sociological dimensions
of the groups studied the conflicts, the relations of power within
communities, for instance remain largely unexamined. Attempts to go
beyond particular descriptions and to propose cultural generalisations
are extremely rare. The style also sometimes sounds old-fashioned today
in some ways. In brief, Bernots main achievements are based on a
combination of erudition and fieldwork: they are in no sense guided by
the anthropological theory of his time. Nevertheless, his monographs
are models of their kind and exert a continuing influence,
unfortunately far too limited and too much restricted to French
researchers and students. His book with Blancard on Nouville (Bernot
and Blancard 1953) is a landmark in the study of the anthropology of
France, breaking with the former folklorist approach, and for the first
time applying anthropological methods and addressing concerns in
favour in countries distant from the French field. Similarly, his works
215
on Tibeto-Burman-speaking ethnic groups remain essential

introductions to the material culture of Southeast Asia and are still
unrivalled, being among the best books to be prescribed for the
education of professional fieldworkers. English translations of them
would undoubtedly be useful tools and would help extend their
readership. Interestingly, Bernot never challenged his naturalist
approach to ethnography, nor did he ever raise epistemological
questions about the validity of the fieldwork experience or of
ethnographic knowledge: he just explained straightforwardly how the
material was collected, in which village, and on the basis of which
observations. All signs of subjectivity are banned from his books.
However, Bernots achievement was undoubtedly to associate datacollecting with a good sense of humour, an immediate and friendly
contact with his interlocutors and informants. All this cannot be learnt
from books and is contrary to what happens in most other social
sciences and humanities, most of which deal exclusively with written
documents. The anthropologist, as is well known, works with living
people and has to rely on his or her own human qualities to establish
personal contacts with informants and win their co-operation. In this
connection, Bernot raised ethnographic fieldwork not only to a
respected craft, a necessary discipline, but also to something of an art.
Notes
1. I would like to thank Robert Parkin, Anne de Sales and Genevive Bdoucha for their
comments on an earlier version of this article.
2. The first, on Pyangaon village, was submitted in 1974 (EPHE, 6 me section), the
second (my doctorat dtat), entitled Socit et religion chez les Nwar du Npal, in
1982, Paris, cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales.
3. On Bernots life, see especially Thomas et al. (1987), Toffin (1995), D. Bernot (2004).
4. The cole Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes was transformed into the
Institut des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in 1971, following the
student movement of 1968. It had originally been created during the French
Revolution, in 1795, on Lakanals initiative. At this period, it was called the cole
Speciale des Langues Orientales. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, this
cole has been known to successive generations of students as Langues O.
5. The quotations taken from Bernots articles and similar items are given here
according to the pagination in Bernot (2000), a collection of all his works published
under this form. The references to his books are given according to the pagination in
their original editions.
6. He took this word, which refers to arboriculture, especially of fruit trees in unsheltered
locations that are exposed on all sides to the wind, from Lucien Febvres book on
Rabelais (1942).
7. Interestingly, the population of Pyangaon, the first Newar village in which I carried
out fieldwork in the Kathmandu Valley, was 484 in 1971 (close to the 594
Grard Toffin
216
inhabitants of Nouville). I chose this village mainly because of its low population,
more or less in accordance with Bernots recommendation.
8. One cannot help being struck by the considerable gap between the dates of the
appearance of the two fieldwork manuals, Notes and Queries (first edition 1874) and
Marcel Mausss Manuel dethnographie (2007 [1947]), which provided a broadly
similar framework for investigation and type of questionnaire.
9. However, Bernot himself never actually spoke Marma or Cak fluently, nor even
Burmese, as he himself confessed in his introduction to Les Paysans arakanais (1967a:
11); instead, he relied mainly on English-speaking informants and his wife. Nonetheless
he was always passionately interested in words, vocabularies and dictionaries.
10. The publishing house of J.B. Baillire, founded in 1818 in Rue Hautefeuille in Paris,
has been one of the great scientific and medical publishers in France since the
nineteenth century. It has reissued extracts from the Encyclopdie of Diderot and
Alambert several times in different forms. Its collection Encyclopdie agricole covers a
whole series of subjects concerning agricultural techniques, the care of animals,
plants and forests, the use of manure, etc.
11. La Maison rustique, founded in 1836 in Paris, is a bookshop and publisher specialising
in agriculture, stock-raising, horticulture, hunting and fishing, and is still active
today.
12. This linguistic atlas of France is different from the geographical atlas of France
published under the auspices of the National Committee of Geography from the
beginning of the twentieth century. Cf. Febvre (1962).
13. Before researching in East Pakistan, Bernot started a study in Haiti, thanks to a grant
from UNESCO. He did not publish anything on this.
References
Bernot, D. 2004. Les collines de Chittagong, in M. Izard (ed.), Lvi-Strauss, Paris: ditions
de lHerne (Cahiers de lHerne).
Bernot, L. 1966. lments de vocabulaire Cak receuilli dans le Pakistan Oriental, in B.
Shin, J. Boisselier and A.B. Griswold (eds), Essays offered to G.H. Luce, Artibus Asiae, vol.
1: 6791 [republished in L. Bernot, 2000, 389414].
1967a. Les Cak: contribution ltude ethnographique dune population de langue loi,
Paris: ditions du CNRS.
1967b. Les Paysans arakanais du Pakistan Oriental: lhistoire, le monde vgtal et
lorganisation sociale des rfugis Marma (Mog), Paris: Mouton (2 vols).
1972. Essai pour la prsentation de la carte des langues, ASEMI, 3(4): 16
[republished in L. Bernot 2000, 48294].
1973. Le recensement dun village, in Lhomme, hier et aujourdhui: receuil dtudes
en homage Andr Leroi-Gourhan, Paris: Cujas, 1724 [republished in L. Bernot 2000,
32532].
1975a. Les Plein-Vent, Ethnos 1975: 14, 7390 [republished in L. Bernot 2000,
23547].
1975b. Riziculteurs, in R. Creswell (ed.), lments dethnologie,1: huit terrains,
Paris: Armand Colin (Collection U) [republished in L. Bernot, 2000, 10142].
1978. Titres et travaux, Paris: Imprimerie Commerciale dAnthony. [republished
in L. Bernot, 2000, 2741].
1979. Leon inaugurale au Collge de France, Paris: Collge de France [republished
in L. Bernot 2000, 497510].
217
1982. The house of swidden farmers as a special object for ethnological study, in
K.G. Izikowitz and P. Sorensen (eds), The house in East and Southeast Asia:
anthropological and architectural aspects, Richmond: Curzon Press, 3540 [republished
in L. Bernot 2000, 14348].
1988. Transmissions des techniques et des produits entre la Chine et lAsie du
Sud-Est, in Routes dAsie: marchands et voyageurs, XVeXVIIe sicle (Varia Turcica XII),
Paris and Istanbul: Isis, 87101 [republished in L. Bernot, 2000, 15769].
2000. Voyage dans les sciences humaines: qui sont les autres? Paris: Presses
Universitaires de la Sorbonne.
Bernot, L. and D. Bernot. 1958. Les Khyang des collines de Chittagong: matriaux pour ltude
linguistique des Chin, Paris: Plon (Cahiers de lHomme).
Bernot, L. and R. Blancard. 1953. Nouville: un village franais, Paris: Institut dEthnologie.
Bernot, L. and M. Bruneau. 1972. Une population lacustre: les Intha du lac Inl (tats
Shan du Sud, Birmanie), Journal dAgriculture Tropicale et de Botanique Applique, 19:
1011, 41041 [republished in L. Bernot, 2000, 63100].
Clifford, J. 1988. The predicament of culture: twentieth-century ethnography, literature, and
art, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Conklin, H. 1975. Hanunoo agriculture: a report on an integral system of shifting cultivation
in the Philippines, Yale: FAO Forestry Development Paper No. 12.
Dumont, L. 1951. La Tarasque, Paris: Gallimard.
1966. Homo hierarchicus, Paris: Gallimard.
Febvre, L. 1942. Le problme de lincroyance au XVIme sicle: la religion de Rabelais, Paris:
Albin Michel.
1962. Pour une histoire part entier, Paris: ditions de lEHESS.
Hertz, R. 1913. Saint Besse, Revue de lHistoire des Religions, vol. 67.
Hocart, A.M. 1933. The progress of man: a short survey of his evolution, his customs and his
works, London: Methuen.
1936. Kings and councillors: an essay in the comparative anatomy of human society,
Cairo: Paul Barbey.
1938. Les castes, Paris: Guethner (Annales du Muse Guimet, vol. 54).
Koechlin, B., F. Sigaut, J. Thomas and G. Toffin (eds). 1987. De la vote cleste au terroir, du
jardin au foyer: mosaque sociographique, Paris: ditions de lEHESS.
Lvi-Strauss, C. 1958, Tristes tropiques, Paris: Plon.
1964. La pense sauvage, Paris: Plon.
1995. Pour la rdition de Nouville, in L. Bernot, Nouville, Paris: Archives
contemporaines.
Mauss, M. 1936. Les techniques du corps, Journal de Psychologie, 33 (34).
1979 [1950]. Sociology and Psychology (tr. B. Brewster), London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
2007 [1947]. Manual of Ethnography (tr. D. Lussier), New York and Oxford:
Berghahn.
Nauton, P. 19591963. Atlas linguistique et ethnographique du Massif Central, Paris:
ditions du CNRS (4 vols).
Needham, J. 19541985. Science and civilization in China, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Rivers, W.H.R. 1900. A genealogical method of collecting social and vital statistics,
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 30: 7482.
Royal Anthropological Institute. 1912. Notes and queries on anthropology, 4th edition,
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Shafer, R. 1967. Introduction to Sino-Tibetan, Part 2, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
Stocking, G.W. 1995. After Tylor: British social anthropology 18881951, Madison: The
218
Grard Toffin
Thomas, J. 1987. Lucien Bernot, in B. Koechlin, F. Sigaut, J. Thomas and G. Toffin (eds),
De la vote cleste au terroir, du jardin au foyer: mosaque sociographique, Paris: ditions
de lEHESS.
Toffin, G. 1994. Ecology and anthropology of traditional dwellings, Traditional dwellings
and settlements review, 5(2): 920.
1995. Lucien Bernot (19191993), LHomme, 133: 58.
Toffin, G. (ed.). 1991. Man and his house in the Himalayas, Delhi: Sterling Publishers.
Wylie, L. 1957. Village in the Vaucluse, Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Zonabend, F. 1995. Nouville aprs Nouville, in L. Bernot, Nouville, Paris: Archives
contemporaines.
Chapter 9
ANDR-GEORGES HAUDRICOURT:
A THOROUGH MATERIALIST
Alban Bensa1
Accessing the real

In an interview given to the Union Rationaliste in 1984, Andr-Georges
Haudricourt summed up the initial context in which he learned to do
research, and set the tone for the whole encounter: Im my parents
son, and my parents were city people whod gone back to the country
because they didnt like living in the city, having to say Good morning,
good evening, etc. I obviously inherited some of that. Born in 1911
and raised on his fathers farm in Picardy, where a good number of farm
workers were employed, Andr-Georges was apparently too sickly to go
to school. His mother taught him to read, and he took correspondence
courses until the age of fteen. He was then admitted to the Lyce Saint
Louis in Paris, and three years later, in 1929, he passed the nationwide
competitive examination for admission to LAgro, the Institut National
dAgronomie. During his youth in Picardy, he acquired an
extraordinary culture as an autodidact, observing the rural world and
agrarian techniques in actual use, listening to the surrounding patois,
initiating himself into a knowledge of foreign alphabets (Greek,
Russian) by means of a stamp collection, and showing a passionate
interest in botany, history and biology, among other subjects. He thus
acquired a free-ranging, acute perspective on human knowledge that
was far removed from the conventions and disciplinary distinctions that
characterise ordinary schooling. His ability to rid observation of all
220
Alban Bensa
Figure 9.1. Andr-Georges Haudricourt: le matre la recherche de la petite bte ou le

matre dans lexercice de ses fonctions, June 1972. Fonds Andr-Georges Haudricourt/
Archives IMEC.
preconceptions led him to the understanding that the only genuine

fact was what could be known through the senses. Cleaving to the real
in all its strangeness, his words and texts do have a certain abruptness
to them, somewhat like a whack of the baton a Zen master uses to wake
his disciples from their dreams.
Haudricourts anthropological thinking was thus always grounded in
tangible material traces of human activity, what is presented to our
sensory experience: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste. Palpating leaves,
crushing them between his ngers to bring out or express their odour;
cupping his hand around his ear to apprehend better the sound of a voice,
the interesting phonemes it produced; scrutinising landscapes, buildings
and tools so as to identify spaces and the particular plants in them, their
materials, forms and functions this extraordinary observer
concentrated all his attention on what can be grasped of the world as it
appears to us. Being anchored in this way in the materiality of the real
221
presupposes an ability to clear out the mind. To remain in the empirical

world and perceive effectively, a would-be observer needs to know how to
expel social, psychological and intellectual considerations that might
cloud or obstruct the full receptiveness required, namely the conventions
of human relations (politenesses, phatic or narrative speech, compulsory
banalities, etc.) and the ordinary ow of psychic life, in which ideas,
images, and feelings screen out the world of the visible, the audible, the
sensory. It is only by fully exposing ourselves to that world, returning to
what is there, right in front of us, that we can grasp and analyse it.
Though Haudricourts close-up view may be hyperrealist, it is not
contemplative, but rather active and critical. He worked to discern the
connections, schemata and logical relations that are common to
actions and representations operative in objects, words, and physical
gestures and practices. His fascination for the material world in the
broad sense constantly pushed him to wonder about the origin and
history of practices. Being anchored in the materiality of things and
living beings caused him to develop a general attitude of caustic doubt
about the supposed autonomy of representations and ideas. For
Haudricourt, it is clear that the ideas which stir and agitate human
beings have their source in the experiences that link us to the world.
The origin of what seem the most cerebral ideologies can therefore, in
his view, be related to habits acquired in hunting or domesticating
animals and plants; that is, through humans interaction with the
ecological and historical constraints (climatic, geological, botanical,
zoological; migrations, confrontations, ways of doing) that have
affected diverse peoples, groups and populations.
For Haudricourt, focusing on the natural world and techniques works
like a kind of stripping agent, making it possible to see and correct our
misguided wandering in the supposedly pure sphere of ideas and feelings.
Consistent with this view, he never explains texts by other texts or enters
the history of ideas by way of ideas, but always refers ideas and affects to
the social, linguistic and above all sensory and technical experience that,
in his understanding, enabled them to emerge. The domain of abstract
ideas (abstracted from what?, he might ask) is only comprehensible if it
is not dissociated from the hold of the physical and social worlds of our
senses, themselves the very tools of our rst investigatory experience.
It would be wrong, however, to consider Haudricourts way of
proceeding as mere sensualism. As he understood it, sensory
experience proposes different values which can be connected with
systems of ideas, such as that by which pork is valued in China and
reviled in the Judeo-Christian world, or by which the plant world has
served as a referent for the East, whereas the West has tended to
conceive of itself in terms of the animal-breeding model. Looking at
222
Alban Bensa
human beings relations to the natural world brings to light not direct
determinations but rather choices based on their observations of and
attempts to imitate animals: swimming like frogs, running like horses,
singing like birds, digging in the earth like pigs, counting in a way
suggested by leaf lobes and so on.
Conversely, animals imitate us when they live in our company: only
domesticated dogs bark as if they wanted to speak to us wild dogs live
in packs and howl. With comments of this kind, often made jokingly,
Haudricourt sought to draw attention to both the reciprocal learning
that might be said to take place between the natural and human
milieus, and the biological processes common to all living species. I
dont separate the natural and the human sciences, he liked to say. This
approach constitutes a refusal to imagine any kind of autonomy for the
symbolic order or any dissociation between the biological and the social
that might be arbitrarily imposed by culture. Close in this to Gregory
Bateson, Haudricourt conceived of the natural milieu and human
beings as having a kind of mutual hold on each other, and he sought to
conceive of that hold by suggesting the possibility of organisational
schemata common to both the natural and cultural orders.
This approach meant that he rejected all spiritualism, as well as
liberal individualism and its psychological presuppositions, working
instead to link conceptions of the world and nature to the history of the
most material practices. He thus identied a few fundamental
functional wholes within which necessary ties might be understood to
have developed between the environment, techniques and representations.
As he saw it, these kinds of contiguities between natural milieus,
societies and schemata for interpreting the world were determining
totalities in which all were inescapably caught up. By refusing to
recognise or posit any break in the continuity between physical and
mental activities, body and soul, Haudricourt developed an anti-dualist,
immanentist, deterministic conception of the human sciences that
intimately links human life, gestures and practices, as well as moral and
religious values, to plant and animal life.
As repeated action, technique is aimed at transforming a material
world that is resistant to humans, their needs and specic interests. For
Haudricourt, technical action is effective both physically and socially
because handling or treating plants and animals forms a continuum
with humans treatment of each other, a continuum both cultural and
geographical, a continuum that might in turn be called a civilisation.
The gradual development or constitution of that continuum and the
relational principles that prevail within it were inspired by technical
initiatives that involved a savoir-faire (physical know-how) and savoirpenser (intellectual understanding) that are closely entwined. The
223
contours of these techno-cultural worlds could only be discerned by

attending to typical, ancient facts. Techniques had been invented by
trial and error and transmitted by teaching and learning; they were
later adapted and modied in the course of a history in which
established ways of doing interacted with local innovations,
conformism with ingenuity, in which local innovations came to
interfere with established ways of doing, and ingenuity with
conformism. Haudricourts method is thus genealogical in the sense
that it encompasses both inheritances and transformations, more or
less unconscious old ways (pesanteurs) and conscious practices, without
establishing any simplistic correspondence between a series of
movements or gestures and a particular mentality. As a historical
conception of societies, it is aimed less at identifying the causes of
individual or collective behaviour than in shedding light on the specic
ecological constraints that may have oriented social relations in this or
that direction and enforced ways of acting and interpreting, each with
its particular logic, ways that varied according to whether one was
raised in China or the Fertile Crescent, for example.
Haudricourts model of determinant interactions

It was during his stay in Vietnam, lasting over a year (194849), that
Haudricourt developed his model of an opposition in the practices of
agriculture and animal breeding between Asia and the West, a model he
never ceased to enrich. Before this decisive experience and the sense it
brought of being entirely elsewhere (Haudricourt and Dibi 1987:
94), there is no mention of any ideas on the pastoral peoples and the
gardening peoples. When discussing his reading of the Bible one of
the funniest books there is with Charles Parain in 1937, for example,
he was more directly interested in farming vehicles and threshing, citing
Isaiah 28:2728 in this connection:
27. For dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge, nor is a cart wheel rolled
over cummin; but dill is beaten out with a stick, and cummin with a rod.
28. Does one crush bread grain? No, he does not thresh it for ever; when he
drives his cart wheel over it with his horses, he does not crush it.
It was his experience of the Far East as the world turned upside down
that led him to wonder about the source of behavioural differences
between persons who had originated in distinct civilisations and to
develop explanatory hypotheses for these differences. He wrote his rst,
as yet unpublished text, Recherche des bases dune tude comparative
Alban Bensa
224
des mentalits extrme-orientales et occidentales in Hanoi in 1948 on

the basis of his unpublished correspondence of the time. Also around
this time, he spoke of his ideas to Jacques Gernet, who found inspiration
in them for a talk entitled Le comportement en Chine archaque,
published in 1952 in the Annales. As Haudricourt later explained: For
my part, I waited ten years longer than Gernet to publish an article I
called Domestication des animaux, cultures des plantes et traitement
dautrui (Haudricourt 1962). Though Lhomme et les plantes cultives,
written with Hdin and published in 1943, and LHomme et la charrue
travers le monde, written with M. Delamarre and published in 1955,
may be considered a point of departure, the fact is that his own writings
on the subject amount to no more than fty pages, namely a series of
short articles published from 1962 to 1986.
In the general schema that Haudricourt constructed, an opposition
is developed between sheep, goat and cattle-breeding societies, which
in the Neolithic Near East also cultivated grain plants (wheat, barley),
and societies in ancient Asia and Oceania, where pig-breeding and
tuber plant gardens (i.e., rice paddies) predominated. These two
technical worlds are understood to have inspired two different sets of
moral, religious and philosophical attitudes, characteristic of two
mentalities that cannot be reduced to one another: the western and
the eastern. The separating of wheat from chaff and the shepherds
direct authority over his herd may be seen as opposite to the gestures
and practices of a Chinese or Oceanian horticulturist or plant grower or
farmer, who accompanies the growth of various tubers without
intervening directly in nature.
Herbivores, cereal grains and transcendence
The rst western herdsmen-breeders were governed by specic
constraints in their approach to animals of the bovine, ovine and equine
families. These animals lived together in herds in wide-open spaces; they
were not at all in competition with humans to nd food, and they did not
spontaneously come near them. To get close to them, hunt or gather
them, and thereby subject them to human authority the law of the stick
or whip camp or village dwellers rst had to follow them and channel
them into tight mountain valleys. In Haudricourts view, this violent
coercion was of crucial importance historically structural, in that it
endowed what would become the monotheistic world of Jews, Christians
and Muslims with a religious, philosophical and political model, the
model of transcendence, dualism and absolute hierarchical authority.
The distance separating wandering herds of herbivores from their
masters-to-be, and shepherds from their beasts after the latter had come
under human control, appears as the rst technical experience of
225
transcendence. The gulf separating these animals from the

communities that domesticated them is cast in the image of the distance
separating God from humans, a god whose authority is expressed by the
arm of Jehovah-the-father raised to threaten humans, homologous
with the stick the shepherd uses to beat the animals in his herd. This
distance is attested by the arbitrary separation of body from soul, of
ideas from their shadow in Platos cave, and it is also to be found in the
Aristotelian political model, where the leader is understood to be a
father imposing his law on a childlike people. Subaltern internalisation
of transcendent authority was nothing more than this feeling of
obligation that dominated the western moral conscience up through
the writings of Kant. For Haudricourt, the categorical imperative had its
origin in what the shepherd does when he leads or directs his herd with
his crook. It is diametrically opposed to eastern pragmatism, wherein
situations are evaluated as a function of immediate circumstances,
without any projection of abstract moral demands from without. This
is particularly clear in the history of pig domestication.
Pigs, tubers and immanence
Haudricourt located the beginning of the chain of constraints he
discerned with regard to pigs in the domain of plants of the variety that
stock a great quantity of nourishment: vegetal growth is indirect in a
way because it is always preceded by the stocking of energy reserves
over a variable length of time, food that will be used later (Haudricourt
and Hdin 1943: 70). Plants that stock great quantities of
underground reserves in the form of carbohydrates or fats and lipids
grow in variable climates where there is one fairly long season that is
unfavourable to vegetation in that it is either extremely dry or cold
(ibid.: 72). This describes the case of rhizomic plants and tubers in
tropical or monsoon regions, where the rain, which brings to an end a
long dry period, enables yams, taro and other edible roots to grow
rapidly and accumulate new reserves for the following season.
Remarkably, this distribution of these plants coincided with the
distribution of zones that were formerly inhabited by wild pigs. These
animals ate tubers and small animals living in fairly loose soil; before
horticulture and breeding, they lived only in the tropical forest zones of
Asia (Sus scrofa, which later moved into Europe), Africa (Potamochoerus
porcus) and North and South America (Dicotyles ajacu). Wild pigs used
their snouts, teeth and tusks to dig up nourishing tubers. As Haudricourt
understood it, as soon as the humans who had settled on the edges of
tropical forests in Africa, and later Asia and Oceania, learned to make
these plants their staple nourishment, they found themselves in
competition with the wild pigs. And he hypothesised that, during the
226
Alban Bensa
proto-agricultural period, they learned from the pigs how to nd and dig
up wild yams and taro roots, replacing the pigs snout with a digging stick.
To eat the tubers found in the forest, people needed to learn how to
make a re and how to wash them before cooking them, because certain
taro and manioc roots become toxic on exposure to the air. While
humans learned to light a re 1.8 million years after the rst hominids
appeared in East Africa in 2.5 million BC, hunting and gathering only
gradually and partially gave way to horticulture, plant growing and
farming much later. Yam and taro cultivation is only attested around
12,000 BC in Southeast Asia; signicantly, it is contemporaneous with
the domestication of Suidae or porcine animals.
With the invention of plant cultivation by means of cuttings and
transplantation into prepared soil, humans entered into direct
competition with wild pigs, which ruined human planting work by
digging up the soil in search of yams and taro roots. To prevent this
damage and neutralise the pigs destructive power, hunting had to be
intensied, planted gardens enclosed and pig movements monitored,
while pigs themselves also became a source of meat for the domestic unit.
In any case, Haudricourt points out, these animals could only have
been domesticated after agriculture began, not before, because raising
and breeding them presupposed their being fed by people, rst indirectly,
when the pigs pillaged the humans gardens and stayed in the general
vicinity of their settlements to eat human excrement, and later directly,
when tubers came to be grown specically as animal fodder. Obviously,
he notes in passing, the domestication of wild pigs, like that of
herbivores, could not be thought of as deliberate. It should rather be
seen as the effect of the gradual invention of tuber plant cultivation,
which required intensied hunting to protect gardens, which in turn
made it possible to produce an abundance of food, the remains of which
could be used to feed the pigs and thereby domesticate them.
A major advance in the process was made when men began
capturing piglets in the forest and giving them to the women of the
village to suckle or nourish with porridge made from tubers, as was still
done until very recently in certain regions of Melanesia. These animals,
which were now attached to the house and family, were not rigorously
separated from their as yet wild relatives. Adult sows were mounted by
wild boars in a kind of semi-breeding, where herd reproduction was not
monitored or controlled. All human efforts were concentrated on
mothering the infant piglets found in distant or relatively close forest
areas. Like children, the piglets beneted from their mothers care; she
fed them, attended to their bodies, even gave them a name. Cohabitation
of this sort, notes Haudricourt, no doubt constituted an important
enrichment of humans relations with natural species, and thus of
227
inter-human, i.e., interpersonal relations. The extension of affectivity to

include nature was an expression of the new closeness to animals
induced by domestication. In return, it increased mutual social
relations among people with personalised affective ties to pigs, dogs and
even plants, which they now thought of as members of their families.
Hunters in the Palaeolithic period and in the area of the Lascaux caves
could only act with regard to wild animals by means of signs. But with
the domestic breeding of animals, namely pigs and dogs, humans began
communicating more directly and indeed physically with individualised
animals on a daily basis, speaking to them, stroking them, caring for
them and feeding them (sometimes even mouth to mouth).
In China, Southeast Asia and Oceania, pigs live under human
dwellings. In contrast to the western attitude, their scatophagic
behaviour is not rejected as dirty or disgusting. A pigs stomach is long
enough to allow it to digest without ruminating, and eating excrement
(i.e. food pre-digested by other animals) has the effect of a kind of AlkaSeltzer, enabling them to digest yet other foods. Pigs, then, suckled at the
human breast almost like children, became human beings permanent
companions and waste disposers.
Pigs reproduced in the forest, as did yams that had been forgotten in
spaces that were once gardens. The yams reverted back to the wild and
produced new clones (Haudricourt 1964). Forests and former gardens,
places where nature manifested its singular power to provide humans
with unexpected resources, were endowed with ambivalent meaning.
Far from village dwellings, they were places where one might get lost
and even perish, but where one might just as easily nd plants and
animals which could be brought back to the family to enrich the usual
menu. Such discoveries were made possible by the ancestors, human
beings who had returned to nature after their death. The ancestors
power was taboo; that is, both negative and positive, because in the
places where they operated, far from habitations, one could meet with
either death or life; there was the risk of losing ones way, but potentially
also the opportunity of nding something that would improve ones
daily life. In Oceania, then, the taboo has nothing to do with notions of
purity and impurity but is what characterises human relations with
spaces that have been abandoned to spontaneous vegetation.
It is therefore not at all surprising that both pigs and yams were
thought of as children found in the wild and thus as assimilable to the
ancestors, who prolonged human society into both the future and the
past. A regularly developed theme in Kanak tales is the discovery, in
spaces far removed from human settlement, of beings who, when
brought back into the domestic space, enrich it with forces that are so
strong and in some cases so new that they become difficult to control
228
Alban Bensa
(Bensa and Rivierre 1983). Making a detour through these wild spaces
favours the renewal and diversication of nature and society. The
products found there are integrated into the household like providential
family extensions. This would seem to explain why plant gathering and
cultivating are described by Oceanians as maternal, mothering
practices. The yam laid in the soil like a newborn in its crib and
transported and swathed like a child at harvest time is likened to a gift
from the ancestors that humans gured out how to reproduce, making
it yield others of its kind. Likewise the pig brought back from the wild,
where the bodies and spirits of the founders of human lineages lie, is
brought up as if it were a child. In this view, there is no boundary
between the natural and supernatural separating socialised beings from
a distant beyond where inaccessible entities live. The ancestors are
there in the visible world, just behind all that is manifest in it. They care
for their descendants by providing the living with food; in return, or for
propitiatory purposes, the living maintain them through rituals that
are in fact gifts of food. In the Kanak world, boiled yams are offered (in
the past it was also the heart and liver of sacriced persons).
These products of the wilderness such as forest yams and pigs,
which were simultaneously ancestors to be maintained and appeased by
gifts of food, and animal babies whose growth was likened to that of
human babies were dependent on the persons who found, captured,
suckled and fed them. The substitution and substitutability obtaining
between the human, the vegetal and the animal accords well with the
notion of the immanence of ancestral powers and the sacred. The
actions of horticulturalists or plant growers and of the breeders of semiwild pigs only facilitated the manifestation of these forces. They
accompanied them rather than sought to impose their will on them,
since they were thought of or understood as integral parts of a whole
in which nature, society and the ancestors were associated rather than
dissociated. The point, then, was to favour the growth of plants by
pulling up weeds and digging a cavity beneath a planted tuber for it to
grow into. In Vanuatu, for example, people feed pigs with boiled tubers
so they do not wear down their teeth by digging in the forest ground
and so that their incisors grow into each other in such a way as to form
bracelets, a precious exchange commodity.
A similar gesture of reception and welcome, of care and
maintenance, can be found in Oceanian political rhetoric, in which the
taboo power of the chief (his mana) is linked to that of a plant or animal
discovered in the bush or on distant shores, a being then transformed
into a child-ancestor that needs to be raised. In New Caledonia, people
speak of child chieftains who bear within them the powers of the bush
and will gradually be domesticated by the old men of the land, the
229
masters of the soil. Further north, in the Melanesian archipelago, pig

accumulation is the focus of rituals accompanying the Big Men: their
power is proportionate to the number of bush-discovered piglets they
are able to raise, that is the number of relations these warrior-hunters
maintain with ancestors who have become their children through the
domesticating labour performed by their wives.
Such was Haudricourts way of thinking about the way the societies
of Asia and Oceania made pigs and yams into ancestors and children
produced by their care, in opposition to the societies of the Fertile
Crescent, where humans were made to depend on the protection they
were granted by larger herbivorous animals. In the Indo-Pacic region,
his thinking went, pigs were thought of as child-ancestors, whereas in
the ancient Mediterranean world, domesticated bovine and equine
animals were understood to have direct kinship with humans. The
contrast is indeed striking between the image of women in Papua New
Guinea suckling piglets and the image of the Christian crib, in which a
baby in a stable is warmed by the breath of a cow and a donkey.
The relation of continuity between human society and animal and
vegetal species obtained in the East was hardly conducive to the
emergence of anything resembling the dualist opposition between the
pure and impure characteristic of civilisations of grain-growing
herbivore breeders who separated the wheat from the chaff and rejected
black sheep (in French, brebis galeuse, literally gall-infected sheep) from
the herd. As Haudricourt liked to point out, the sequence in the scriptures
where Jesus exorcises a man by transforming the demons in him into pigs
was simply unimaginable in the Asian-Pacic cultural universe.
According to this scheme, large herbivorous animals and their
masters were the parents terribles of Middle Eastern humans, whereas
pigs were the pampered, liberally raised children of the Chinese and
Oceanians. The gure of the Biblical or Koranic herder-farmer is thus
for Haudricourt the symmetrical opposite of the gure of the Chinese
gardener with his pigs living beneath the house.
Materialism and determinism

In their famous 1903 article, De quelques formes primitives de
classication: Contribution ltude des reprsentations collectives,
Durkheim and Mauss claimed that sociology was in a position to shed
light on the genesis and thereby the functioning of logical operations.
Similarly, the conclusion of Les formes lmentaires de la vie religieuse
(Durkheim 1912) sums up the point of view of the Ecole Franaise de
Sociologie on the matter: categories are social things that were not
Alban Bensa
230
made to apply exclusively to the social kingdom, but extend to reality

as a whole. Although Haudricourt was a diligent student of Mauss, he
did somewhat modify this argument by making technical gestures and
practices the source of representations, that is, by working to anchor
the social in material practices. In this understanding, categories did
not arise from projecting the social on to the real but rather through
the extending of technical experience and the effectiveness of that
experience to representations of social relations. The social and logical
categories that humans would later think of as obvious, as the givens of
their consciousness of the world, might in fact be thought of as
modelled on the vital relations that humans had with plants and
animals. In the model presented above, two wholes are identied,
corresponding to the different forms taken by agriculture and animal
breeding in the west and in Asia and Oceania, wholes whose
components contexts or milieus (geography), practices and knowhow, ideas and values were tightly intertwined. Two types of
explanation were needed in Haudricourts view to account for the origin
of these networks of correspondences, one biological, focused on the
biological rules that governed interaction among living species, the
other emphasising the history of human populations.
Natural sciences and social sciences
Haudricourts particular way of looking at social facts was profoundly
shaped by his training as an agronomist and his experience as a
botanist. He liked jokingly to differentiate himself from both LeroiGourhan, who he said had come to human sciences via zoology, and
Lvi-Strauss, whose structuralism seemed marked by his geology walks.
As a knowledgeable biologist investigating the capacity of our senses to
inform us about the world, Haudricourt regularly looked to such elds of
inquiry as brain chemistry, the symmetries and asymmetries of the body,
the loss of a developed sense of smell that followed on from anthropoids
adoption of the vertical position (distancing the nose from the ground),
and so on. Because we share with nature the same chemical make-up and
the same physical and biological organisation, it was important never to
lose sight of the continuity between the natural and human sciences.
Plant and animal properties and ways of life were like a force eld
that humans were compelled to deal with. Conversely, life altogether
was organised by rules that applied to or ran through all species.
Haudricourt perpetually situated himself at the junction between
biological inheritances that either accumulated or were lost through
evolution, and inheritances that were transmitted, abandoned or
recurred through teaching, learning and imitation, as well as habits
that had developed within human societies in the course of their
231
histories. It was as a resolute opponent of any form of innatism,

including Chomskys in the case of linguistics, that he explored both
the biological and social origins of sensory and cognitive schemata.
What was left to humans of the sense of smell that their primate cousins
still retained? How was it that seeing was so difficult for people in the
Middle Ages that no one seemed able to draw a plant or animal at all
realistically? How was it that, if everything came down to differences,
classications could be established that grouped together certain
features and excluded others? Constantly seeking explanations,
Haudricourt refused to imagine a cause that was not itself determined
by another cause; he therefore moved ineluctably from the social to the
biological via techniques. The body governed the mind because it was
both a living and an interactive arrangement. The constant externality of
causality was no doubt one of the major traits of his thought, and he used
it to combat not only innatism, mentalism and spiritualism, but also the
idea of arbitrary cultural power or imposition. He was strongly attached
to the determinist dimension of the materialist sciences, and therefore
strongly denied that there was any value in attempts to demonstrate any
sort of discontinuity between the biological, the social and the symbolic.
It is on this essential point that his theoretical orientations seem
incompatible with Lvi-Strauss structural anthropology.
Human sciences, historical sciences
In Haudricourts view, the link between the life sciences and the sciences
of man and society had to do with their shared inscription in a
fundamentally historical order. The relations he established among the
various levels of reality were rst and foremost historical, whether this
meant the biological history of the species or the history of populations
and their environments. We cannot doubt that for Haudricourt the
respective models of grain-growing herdsman and pig-raising tuber
gardener obviously correspond and apply to members of these two
major sets of civilisations, and that this obviously preconditions the
ways they look at the world. However, it was just as clear to him that
the people of the Fertile Crescent and those of the Middle Kingdom or
the Oceanian continent were in control of their breeding and farming
techniques that is, they adjusted their know-how to the situations
they had to deal with in such a way as to ensure at least a minimum of
effectiveness. They were thus inscribed in a historical dynamic of
constant adaptation that accounted for local variations in the model,
which in their turn were to be studied on a case-by-case basis.
In fundamental agreement with Bachelards critique of generality and
corresponding defence of the inescapable importance of detail,
Haudricourt perpetually vaunted particularisms. Differences constituted
232
Alban Bensa
genuine challenges for the idea of the absolute, for the systematic spirit
that had been generated by the concern particular to all the descendants
of Abraham for transcendence, purity and order. And differences were
always to be explained in historical terms. Haudricourt used his
extraordinary erudition in matters of event history, battles and the
movements of peoples and kings knowledge which, of course, implied a
precision regarding dates and locations to reect on thoroughly concrete
singular attitudes. Universality was reserved for the domain of biology,
and Haudricourt took great pleasure in relating his colleagues theoretical
orientations (like the valuing of this or that animal and a specic way of
pruning grapevines) to their particular individual itineraries and the
history of the social groups they belonged to. My Marxism is limited to
relating what people think to the situations they nd themselves in either
by choice or in spite of themselves, he remarked to me one day.
In his view, recurrent attitudes or ones that could be transferred from
one level to another (for example, a way of handling plants to a way of
treating other humans; links between sensory experience and the most
abstract conception, etc.) bore the mark of technical gestures and
practices and the representations governed by them. Those attitudes
also bore traces of the history that had been lived through by the people
who manifested them. Thus rejecting, as Mauss had, any reading of
individual behaviour in strictly psychological terms, he refused, for
example, to imagine that Heideggers interest in being could be
unrelated to the German quest for communal unity, that Levi-Strauss
concern for universalism was not an indirect effect of a desire for social
integration, or that the fashion for developing theories about mtissage,
that is, racial or ethnic mixing and interbreeding, was not also an echo
of the existential problematic at the heart of the experience of so many
excluded communities. At the risk of assuming or seeming to have
assumed a reductionist position as a provocateur, Haudricourt
continually sought out traces of the most concrete experiences in
moral, philosophical and political attitudes.
When his comparative approach encountered linguistic, sociological
or technical similarities in practices, Haudricourt always gave a priority
to the hypothesis of direct contact, either long past or recent, between
the peoples using them. How can we really know, he threw out at the
end of an interview, whether Roman tiles do or do not come from
countries that used split bamboo? This remark evokes his strong
interest in the work of Graebner and diffusionism, a theory that clearly
posed the question of exogenous versus endogenous change. This
problematic is also at the core of Haudricourts linguistic work, in
which he sought to understand the emergence of phonological systems
in a perspective that embraces structural necessities and the effects of
233
historical contact. He was just as willing to underscore the importance

of the sudden and the new (the appearance of a high tone, the
appropriate adoption of a hitherto unknown technical movement, a
fashion, etc.), as of what has been maintained and resists change.
History, as he saw it, was not merely a series of transformations, but
also a storing up of acquisitions in which teaching and learning
replaced the genetic a power, that is, that extended back into the past
and established something similar to an identity.
This oscillation between accumulated, consolidated histories and
historical movement was based on an idea, close to Bourdieus notion of
habitus, of the unconscious recurrence of physical and mental attitudes
Haudricourt compared them to survivals in biology. This enabled him
to engage in a kind of archaeology of societies whose primary materials
were their languages and objects. In this work he was mistrustful of
abstract conceptualisation, and easily raged against the Marxist notions
of modes of production, productive forces and state ideological
apparatus. Notional Marxism, which talked of production but not plants
or animals, power and control but not know-how, relations of
domination but not the domestication of pigs and so on, prevented people
from observing the extraordinary material singularity of the ordinary,
the enormous impact of seemingly utterly unremarkable actions. On a
visit to Leningrad in 1934, he left Soviet researchers thoroughly
perplexed when he explained to them that the fall of the Roman Empire
had less to do with the collapse of a proslavery ideology, programmed by
some sense of history or other, than with the fact that the barbarians
had better military equipment (lances, bridles, etc.).
His functional historicism, with its foundation of concrete erudition,
his defence of facts against linguistic effects and the related suggestion
that reality was the same as mere grammatical games or vague terms
that made no explicit reference to the visible, material world meant that,
throughout his life, Haudricourt stood in an antagonistic relation to the
dominant intellectual environment.
A singular way of seeing
In asserting that he was a real ethnographer, Haudricourt was
claiming the right to look at people and things directly, without mental
or linguistic ourishes, in a way that set reection into motion on the
basis of what is accessible here and now, a way that dismisses everything
that is not rst grounded in observation. He was always surprised to see
that most people were absorbed in their interpersonal relations, and that,
like Victor Hugo on the heath, they kept their eyes xed on their
thoughts rather than on the world around them. Concerned to shatter
all self-generated and self-fuelled mentalism, Haudricourt continually
Alban Bensa
234
reminded us of the presence of the natural world and of human beings

as integral parts of and partakers in this world. His highly concentrated
attention to the most visible details and their innite complexity was a
source of profound jubilation, as if, for him, sensuality and affection
could only be reached through the exercise of observation. In return, he
never failed to fulminate against purveyors of ideas without material
ballast, philosophers of the sort who, like Sartre, did not know the
difference between a lime tree and a chestnut tree.
In direct contrast to many people, specically intellectuals,
Haudricourt did not have to make any particular effort to bring about the
catharsis that frees seeing from parasitical ideas. Spontaneously grasping
the world in its material nudity, and in a perpetual state of amazement
as he did so, he was, as it were, quite naturally disconnected from the kind
of ordinary social communication that is often in itself a problem for
social science researchers wishing to accede to objective seeing. In a
permanent state of scientic wakefulness and attentiveness, Haudricourt
had instead to make his way back to the necessary illusion of social life so
as not to seem completely out of phase with others and society. Let it be
said that he often only managed to do this by means of the salutary halfdistance from ones fellow human beings that humour affords us.
Notes
1. Translated from the French by Amy Jacobs.
References
Bensa, A. and J.-C. Rivierre. 1983. Histoires canaques, Paris: Conseil international de la
langue franaise, Edicef.
Durkheim, . 1968 [1912]. Les formes lmentaires de la vie religieuse, Paris: PUF.
Durkheim, . and M. Mauss. 1903. De quelques formes primitives de classification:
Contribution ltude de reprsentations collectives, LAnne sociologique, 6 (1901
2): 172.
Gernet, J. 1952. Le comportement en Chine archaque, Les Annales en Sciences Sociales,
Paris, ditions Armand Colin, March 1952.
Haudricourt, A.-G. 1962. Domestication des animaux, culture des plantes et traitement
dautrui, LHomme, 2(1): 4050.
1964. Nature et culture dans la civilisation de ligname: lorigine des clones et
des clans, LHomme, 4: 93104.
Haudricourt, A.-G. and J.-B. Delamarre. 1986 [1955]. Lhomme et la charrue travers le
monde, Paris: La Manufacture.
Haudricourt, A.-G. and P. Dibi. 1987. Les pieds sur terre, Paris: ditions Mtaili.
Haudricourt, A.-G. and L. Hdin. 1943. Lhomme et les plantes cultives, Paris: ditions
Gallimard.
Chapter 10
LOUIS DUMONT:
FROM MUSEOLOGY TO STRUCTURALISM VIA INDIA
Robert Parkin
Life and career

Louis Dumont was born in Salonika, Greece, in 1911, where his father,
an engineer, was manager of a company building a railway from there
to Constantinople.1 Louis grandfather, Victor Emile Dumont, was a
commercial artist who created designs for wallpaper in France and for
cashmere produced in India in the nineteenth century. Louis first wife,
Jennie, died in 1977 after forty years of marriage to him. He later
married Suzanne Tardieu, an expert in Norman furniture at the Muse
des Arts et Traditions Populaires. He died without issue in Paris on 19
November 1998, at the advanced age of eighty-seven.
As a youth, Dumont went to the Lyce Saint-Louis to prepare for
entry into the cole polytechnique in Paris, but dropped out at eighteen
because of disgust with the bourgeois lifestyle into which this was
leading him. His mother, who had made considerable sacrifices for the
sake of his education, threw him out, and he turned to a series of jobs,
in insurance, as a proof-reader, and so on. During this time he became
politically engaged as a communist fellow-traveller in support of the
Popular Front government. However, he eventually returned to
academic interests, frequenting the Collge de Sociologie of Georges
Bataille, Roger Caillois and Michel Leiris in the late 1930s and
simultaneously gaining indirect exposure to India for the first time
through a group calling itself Le Grand Jeu. In 1936, thanks to Georges
Henri Rivire, perhaps the most important French museologist of the
236
Robert Parkin
inter-war period, he obtained a clerical job in the Muse des Arts et

Traditions Populaires, which had just been separated from the Muse de
lHomme. Among his tasks was to type up Lvi-Strausss notes on the
Bororo. He also discovered, and followed, Mausss courses in
anthropology, which he was to describe later as a sort of conversion.
Among other things, this inspired his interest in India, and he passed a
certificate in ethnology in 1938. The following year he enrolled in the
cole du Louvre with a view to preparing a thesis in the history of art
on Celtic survivals in modern French tools. However, the Second World
War intervened and put an end to this project.
Figure 10.1. Louis Dumont, taken by himself, among the Kallar, Tamil Nadu (India),
with his chief informant, Muttusami Tevar, 1949. Courtesy Mme Dumont.
Louis Dumont
237
Dumont was taken prisoner early in the war and sent to Germany. He
was set to work as a field hand, then as a worker in a factory in a
Hamburg suburb. During his spare time in captivity he not only learned
German but also translated three German books on French folklore.
Feeling at some point that he had done enough of this, he asked his wife
to send him materials with which he could learn Sanskrit. Even more
extraordinary, with the connivance of a guard he was not only able to
meet Walther Schubring, an expert on the Jains, but to take weekly
lessons from him in Sanskrit too.
After the War, in 1945, he resumed his activities at the Muse des
Arts et Traditions Populaires, in which capacity he undertook a study
of the southern French festival of La Tarasque, the subject of his first
major written work (Dumont 1951). Simultaneously he studied Hindi
and Tamil in preparation for fieldwork in India, which he was able to
undertake from 1948 through a scholarship obtained for him by the
eminent French Sanskritist, Louis Renou. He himself describes this
period as one of unremitting hard work.
Dumont therefore started his substantive career in anthropology
relatively late, at the age of 38. His first trip to India lasted two years
altogether, including eight months with the Pramalai Kallar, a Shudra
caste of former warriors and bandits in Tamil Nadu. It resulted in his
only fieldwork monograph, Une sous-caste de lInde du Sud (1957c). After
a further brief sojourn with the Muse des Arts et Traditions Populaires,
at the instance of Frer-Haimendorf he went to Oxford in 1951 to
replace M. Srinivas, a former student of Radcliffe-Browns, as Lecturer
in Indian Sociology in the then Institute of Social Anthropology. This
was during Evans-Pritchards tenure of the chair, and Dumont referred
to this period as a kind of second training (in Galey 1982b: 18). In
1955 he returned to Paris, took his doctorate, and was appointed to the
chair of the Sociology of India, later changed to a chair in Comparative
Sociology, at the 6th section of the cole Pratique des Hautes tudes
(later the Maison des Sciences de lHomme), where he remained for the
rest of his career. He apparently owed this appointment in great
measure to Lvi-Strauss and Lucien Febvre. Immediately after his
appointment he set up the Centre dtudes Indiennes en Sciences
Sociales, which became the Centre dtudes de lInde et de lAsie du Sud
in 1967, though he left this to pursue other interests in 1970. In 1976
he founded ERASME (quipe de Recherche en Anthropologie Sociale:
Morphologie, changes), a research team set up by CNRS (the Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique) with the aim of comparing whole
cultures on the basis of their key values (the latter being a basic concept
in Dumonts mature thought). These years also saw the launch in 1977
of a book series jointly published by the Maison des Sciences de
Robert Parkin
238
lHomme and Cambridge University Press. In 1982 ERASME was taken

over by Daniel de Coppet, but following his death in 2002 it broke up.
From 1955, Dumont spent fifteen months intermittently in a village
in Uttar Pradesh, but was neither as inspired by nor as successful in this
second period of fieldwork, of which little was published, despite plans
for a monograph on mourning. It was here, however, that he was
confronted with renunciation, from which he later developed the
important notion of the out-worldly individual, a fulcrum in his later
comparison between India and the West. Instead of writing up this stint
of fieldwork, he turned to global accounts of Indian civilisation, first in
the semi-popular La civilisation indienne et nous (1964) and then in his
major work, Homo hierarchicus: essai sur le systme de castes (1966a).
Many of the articles in Contributions to Indian Sociology, the journal he
founded in 1957 with his former student David Pocock, were a
preparation for this task (Pocock ceased to be editor in 1964, Dumont
in 1967). Subsequently Dumont turned to the study of European
ideology, which he saw as fundamentally reversing Indian ideology in
stressing both equality and individualism. This led to the two volumes
of Homo aequalis, Gense et panouissement de lidologie conomique
(1977) and Lidologie allemande (1991), the first charting the
emergence of economic thought as a separate domain from politics in
Europe, the second demonstrating variations in individualism in Europe
(specifically Germany in relation to France). This was supplemented by
a collection of papers entitled Essais sur lindividualisme: une perspective
anthropologique sur lidologie moderne (1983b). All of these works were
eventually translated into English apart from La civilisation indienne et
nous. To complete the picture there is his work on kinship, some of the
major works being collected together in the volume Affinity as a value
(1983a), including the comparative paper Hierarchy and marriage
alliance in south India (originally 1957b), but also consisting of a course
of lectures given in Paris on descent theory and alliance theory,
Introduction deux thories danthropologie sociale (1971).
Ideas
Dumont is known today principally as a structuralist, indeed the leading
structuralist of his generation in French anthropology after LviStrauss himself. Intellectually, however, his thought developed, even
changed radically during the early part of his career. His involvement
with the Muse des Arts et Traditions Populaires seems to have given
him not only an interest in material culture, which was still to be found
in Sous-caste, but also a diffusionist perspective on the past, which
Louis Dumont
239
stimulated his interest in south India specifically. This was because he

was influenced to begin with by sub-stratum theories that postulated, in
this part of India, a Brahmanical or Aryan veneer to local society and
ideology that had been diffused to the area from north India but that
now existed over an earlier and indigenous Dravidian base. Although
this view has since been superseded in mainstream anthropology, not
least thanks to Dumonts own efforts, it has more recently entered
political discourses advocating a specifically Dravidian national identity
and the rejection of Aryan influences from the north. But it was
initially because of a desire to get at the Dravidian sub-stratum that
Dumont chose to study a middle-ranking caste remote from
Brahmanical influences, in a village without Brahmans.
However, Dumont had also gone out to India having read in proof
the relevant chapters of Lvi-Strausss Les structures lmentaires de la
parent (1949), with which the author had himself provided him. This,
plus the fact that the Tamils themselves, born sociologists according to
Dumont (in Galey 1982b: 21), thought like structuralists in terms of
binary oppositions between kin and affines, quickly led Dumont to see
structuralism, not diffusionism, as the best approach towards
understanding south Indian social organisation. This was the second
profound change in attitude he experienced, the first having been the
discovery of Mauss, which initiated the shift in his thought from
cultural to sociological approaches that was completed by his
experiences of south India and of Oxford (the latter still had something
of its Radcliffe-Brownian tradition of social rather than cultural
anthropology that itself drew on Durkheimian precedents). Substratum theories and survivals were therefore progressively abandoned
by Dumont in favour of a combination of Maussian sociological holism
and what became an original form of structuralism. I shall return to
the significance of Mausss teaching for Dumonts comparisons
between India and the West later.
These sociological and structuralist influences remained with
Dumont henceforward, though he was never a slavish imitator of any
of them, his structuralism in particular developing in markedly different
directions from Lvi-Strausss. As Toffin (1999: 12) remarks, although
meaning is still present in Dumonts structuralism, values replace
signifiers and signifieds, and hierarchy replaces structuralism of what
might be called here the simple sort of Lvi-Strauss: in short,
hierarchical oppositions involving encompassment, and reversal
between differently constructed levels, replace simple binary
oppositions that may or may not be asymmetric and whose reversal is
a matter of different contexts only. However, as Toffin also points out,
these differences from Lvi-Strauss are more apparent in Dumonts
240
Robert Parkin
work on India and modernity than in his studies of kinship, where

indigenous values are of lesser importance than general principles.
Another way of putting this is that Dumonts work on kinship freed
itself less from Lvi-Straussian structuralism than his studies of caste
and European modernity. And Galey makes the further point that,
unlike Lvi-Strausss structuralism, Dumonts does not aim at defining
the universal through the similarities of a human nature postulated a
priori (1982a: 8). The focus on values permits Dumont to attempt
instead to recapture the entirety of mankind through the recognition
of intrinsic dissimilarities (ibid.: 9).
As Moffat hints, however, Sous-caste too is closer to Lvi-Straussian
structuralism than Dumonts later work on India: In the years since Une
sous-caste, the divergences have become increasingly apparent.
Dumonts structuralism is more concretely grounded in particular intersocietal comparisons; it has a stronger interest in social action; and it is
more relative and reflexive (1986: xix). Sous-caste recognises fully the
importance of the dichotomy between pure and impure, and therefore of
status, among the Pramalai Kallar, but the absence of Brahmans from
the village Dumont worked in means that the relation of status to power
is left aside here. And although the importance of hierarchy is
recognised, it is not problematised as it was to be in Homo hierarchicus
and related work. This is significant in light of the frequent charge that
Dumonts overall account of caste is excessively Brahmanical: to the
extent that this charge can be made to stick, it does not apply to Souscaste. The early numbers of Contributions also represent a decisive and
explicit break with the past. This was quite deliberate from the outset.
Thus Dumont and Pocock downgraded earlier tribal studies, which had
dominated the anthropology of India hitherto despite tribes being a
definite minority of the population in favour of an advocacy of the
study not just of caste, but of the caste system.
Thus although history, including Maussian world history, remained
important in Dumonts later work, with world-historical perspectives
even becoming central later on, the flirtation with diffusionist survivals
and sub-strata had disappeared from his writings by the late 1950s. At
that point in his career, his attention became focused rather on the need
to study a society like the caste system synchronically and holistically,
as a coherently functioning and structured phenomenon, not as a series
of historical layers and accidental accretions. Caste was also to be
treated as comprehensible in terms of its own values, which were
fundamentally religious, not as a pathological or degenerate system of
naked power and oppression. As Madan (1999: 479) points out,
Dumont controversially saw caste as resolving conflict, unlike
totalitarianism, which was the elevation of power as a value in its own
Louis Dumont
241
right. Dumont also doubted whether caste could be reformed: it could

only cease to exist. From this point of view, modern competition
between castes represented a change not in fundamental values but in
behaviour, a change produced, furthermore, by external influences
introduced under the cover of modernity.
His work on kinship is perhaps even more striking in respect of the
adoption of synchronic, holistic, sociological perspectives over purely
historical and cultural ones, as in the famous article of 1953 on The
Dravidian kinship terminology as an expression of marriage. Although
this part of his corpus is relatively small, it is in part concerned to see in
what he called positive marriage rules elsewhere prescriptive
alliance or cross-cousin marriage a system found in all parts of the
world, even where historical links are unknown, in the manner of LviStrauss. This stands in marked contrast to his arguments that caste is
unique to India. It is exemplified by his re-examination of Australian as
well as Indian material on kinship (the parallels between Australia and
south India in their both having systems of prescriptive alliance, though
with differences in detail, are well known), as well as his lectures on
kinship (Dumont 1971). But even within India, there were two other
examples in which he sought to understand kinship in comparative,
universal terms. One was his largely failed attempt to argue away the
acknowledged differences between north and south Indian kinship,
which he himself recognised was problematic (Dumont 1957a). The
other, much more convincing, was his demonstration that the highly
unusual system of affinity (if such it was) of the matrilineal Nayar in
Kerala could be understood in terms of wider, pan-Indian values and
practices (Dumont 1983a).
As already indicated, a third major impact on Dumont, apart from
Mauss and structuralism, was his four-year sojourn in Oxford with
Evans-Pritchard. Although Dumont evidently doubted whether the
great man entirely understood what he (Dumont) was trying to do, he
saw in The Nuer, with its demonstration of the relativity of groups
through unending processes of fission and fusion, the work of a
structuralist manqu (Dumont 1968). He may also have been influenced
by Evans-Pritchards notion of anthropology as essentially a process of
translation (cf. Madan 1999: 47677). More than anything, though,
the experience seems to have drawn Dumont away from what I would
claim is the common division of labour in France between ethnography
and theory, and towards a more Anglo-Saxon situation where it is more
usual for anthropologists to contribute to both. Certainly, according to
Galey (2000: 325), he admired British ethnography, and Sous-caste,
his only ethnographic monograph, is noticeably influenced by it. This,
plus his interest in India, led him to produce the great majority of his
242
Robert Parkin
work in English, either originally or through eventual translation,

which he always controlled very directly. He is therefore probably the
best-known French anthropologist of his generation in the AngloSaxon world, for many even ahead of Lvi-Strauss himself. Indeed, he
is perhaps better known in Britain, America and of course India than in
his native France, despite his being made a Chevalier de la Legion
dHonneur in 1987 (with Georges Dumzil making the presentation at
Dumonts home in Paris). Together with his reluctance to become
involved in wider political issues and his readiness to occupy a single
post in his career after 1955, this helped cushion him from some of the
competition and rivalries of the Parisian academic hothouse.
Other intellectual positions that Dumont adopted can be traced right
back to his study of the popular festival in southern France known as La
Tarasque, which he set not only in its regional context in southern France,
but also in the wider context of Mediterranean Christianity. Thus the
study combined anthropological fieldwork with a consideration of the
wider context of his study, using insights drawn from history. This
recognition of different contexts is also found in his later work on India
though stretched out over all his subsequent major writings rather than
condensed into just one and with a similarly varied methodology.
Fieldwork in south India described the specifics of a particular caste in a
particular region, Tamil Nadu. This led to a regional south Indian
comparison of kinship in an extended paper, Hierarchy and marriage
alliance in south India (Dumont 1957b), then to wider comparisons
focusing essentially on the different forms of relationship between kinship
and caste in north and south India (see especially Dumont 1966b). As
far as India was concerned, this process culminated in the overall account
presented in Homo hierarchicus (Dumont 1966a), which drew, as already
noted, on localised ethnographies (mainly by other anthropologists) as
well as the more global insights of history and Indology. In this regard, it
is a pity that Dumonts fieldwork in north India was so much less
successful that his research in Tamil Nadu. Not only was the area
physically less pleasant, dry and dusty, and the people not really born
sociologists like the Tamils, but the absence of his wife on this trip
evidently upset him somewhat, as did persistent sickness. More
specifically, though, the village he chose had thirty-six castes living in it,
unlike the Tamil village, where it was a simpler matter to concentrate on
just one caste. The idea behind his later trip to Uttar Pradesh was to extend
regional comparison within India. In the event, in Homo hierarchicus
Dumont had to rely instead on the often outmoded work of earlier
anthropologists to give him a solid ethnographic basis for north India.
But this was not the end of the process of continually expanding
comparative horizons, for Dumonts work on European ideology, taken
Louis Dumont
243
together with that on India, could be seen as forming the starting point
for a global comparison of what he called non-modern and modern
societies. By the time of the work on Europe, ethnography had been left
behind and general ideas had replaced observed facts. The source
material is rather history, especially the history of ideas, to which
Dumonts own account is often seen as having contributed. The chief
inspiration here again appears to have been Mauss. Although Mausss
influence on Dumont is usually seen in terms of his holism and
sociology, Dumonts overall approach to historical change, even after
his conversion to structuralism, was also influenced by the distinctive
evolutionism of the Anne sociologique school that is perhaps most
clearly represented by Mauss. Indeed, Dumonts overall comparison of
India and Europe is cast in the world-historical terms of a contrast
between non-modern and modern ideologies, in a manner very similar
to that routinely adopted by this school. And like much of its work,
Dumonts typological sequences do not entirely match the historical
ones: in particular, while the India Dumont discusses as the paradigm
of non-modern societies is contemporary, the Europe of modern
ideology is mostly historical. Similarly, the separation of economic from
political ideas charted in Homo aequalis I resembles a disassembling in
modernity of aspects of a phenomenon that were fused together
primordially, which one finds regularly in the writings of the Anne
sociologique school and forms a significant aspect of their specific
version of evolutionism (cf. Parkin 2001: Ch. 13).
A further influence of the Anne Sociologique on Dumont as
represented by Mauss concerns the virtues of cooperative work in
academic activities. But this was not the only, nor even the first example
he had encountered that had this impact on him: there was also his early
work in the Muse des Arts et Traditions Populaires, where Dumont and
his colleagues saw their work in preserving Frances folklore heritage as
a duty as much as a profession, in Toffins words (1999: 8). Similar
attitudes informed his later work. Early articles in Contributions were
unsigned, to indicate that they were the joint work of the two editors
(Dumont and Pocock), a policy soon abandoned, however, as it came to
be feared that it was discouraging other scholars from taking part in
these debates. Dumont conceived of the study of India as a joint project
not only between Indologists and anthropologists, but also between
anthropologists undertaking fieldwork in different parts of India, who
provided the local factual underpinnings to his synthetic view of the
whole. This is represented not only in the use made of various materials
in Homo hierarchicus, in terms of both geographical regions and different
disciplines, but also in his engagement with other specialists from these
disciplines after his foundation of the Centre dtudes Indiennes en
244
Robert Parkin
Sciences Sociales (Toffin 1999: 9). ERASME too was intended to go

beyond the usual levels of cooperation, even producing one text jointly
authored by four of its members (Barraud et al. 1984). In general
Dumont appears to have regarded joint work as more akin to scientific
research, though he also felt that this was difficult to sustain in the social
sciences, where the individual researcher is the norm, resulting in what
he called a chronic instability in the major interest or interests of the
profession (in Galey 1982b: 20).
This feeling can also be connected with Dumonts overall view of the
scholars task. An immensely hard-working and precise scholar, with
an eye for detail as well as the wider picture, he explicitly saw himself as
an artisan or craftsman as much as an intellectual, as comes out
especially strongly in his interviews with Jean-Claude Galey (1982b)
and Christian Delacampagne (1981: 4), to whom he described himself
as a jobbing social anthropologist. He felt he had a duty to other
researchers coming later who might want to use his work in being as
comprehensive as possible. Thus Sous-caste, being intended as a
comprehensive account of a particular caste, contains data on many
matters not of pressing concern to Dumont himself but provided in case
they might be of value to scholars coming afterwards. Indeed, as Moffat
points out (1986: xviii), while the earlier chapters in that book are based
on observation, the later ones reflect more directly the peoples own
collective representations; it is easy to see that it is the latter that most
interested Dumont, especially in respect of his later work. Another
aspect of his craftsmanship was that, although allegedly sensitive, even
hostile to criticism (cf. Madan 1999: 490), he was also prepared to
revise his own work, as shown in his successive studies of north Indian
kinship (e.g. Dumont 1962, 1975) and his occasional replies to his
critics. Moffat called him a good experimentalist (1986: xvi), while
Galey remarked that he was neither a man of systems nor a figurehead
(2000: 326), but one scholar among many cooperating scholars,
though undoubtedly at least primus inter pares to his followers.
Rarely engaging as a scholar in the wider world of affairs, Dumont
nonetheless clearly had a scepticism of egalitarianism, recognising that
it had its limits, beyond which ordinary moderns were no longer
prepared to recognise it (as with race in the West); thus his attitude here
was, in a sense, ethnographic, not ideological. He was similarly sceptical,
mainly in conversations reported by others, of the notion of human
rights in contemporary international discourses, seeing it as a form of
universalism based ultimately upon the atomising and egalitarian values
of Western modernity, and therefore quite possibly of doubtful relevance
to other traditions (cf. de Coppet 1990: 12324, Galey 2000: 327).
Louis Dumont
245
Applications
Although he is often compared with de Tocqueville, Dumonts career
thus reversed the earlier Durkheimian project of Clestin Bougl, who
began studying Western notions of equality before turning to India.
Bougl, who never visited India, certainly understood it less well than
Dumont and blamed all its alleged problems on the Brahmans. Few
anthropologists have capitalised more literally than Dumont on the
principle that studying another society teaches us a lot about our own.
As for structuralism, as already noted, in Dumonts case this was always
more ethnographically specific, less universalistic, than Lvi-Strausss.
But it is Dumonts development of Lvi-Strausss structuralist device of
binary opposition into what Dumont called hierarchical opposition that
I want to focus on here. Not only is it the key to Dumonts
understanding of India, it also raises a number of interesting issues
regarding how the West too views itself, as I shall argue below. However,
it has also been widely misunderstood; at the same time, it provides a
method of relating ideology and practice in a way that was not open, I
would argue, to Lvi-Strausss simpler form of structuralism.
Dumont initially applied this revised form of opposition to the
relationship between the Brahman and the Kshatriya in Indian society.
Varnas rather than castes in the strict sense, both Brahmans and
Kshatriyas were associated with different forms of authority. In the
Brahmans case, this meant spiritual authority in a broad sense. The
canonical depiction of the Brahman as a priest reflects reality in India
only partly. There are priests who are not Brahmans, especially those
who serve lower status castes and tribes. There are also Brahmans who
are not priests but landholders, having their land worked by often
untouchable labour, but seeing themselves as restricted or even nontransactors whose lack of dependence on the gifts of clients and the sins
embodied in those gifts allows them to claim superiority over Brahman
priests. The role that these landowning Brahmans claim for themselves
is to study the ancient texts, the Vedas, and to perform rituals, including
exact repetitions of these texts, of profound cosmological significance.
In the traditional system the Kshatriyas, by contrast, have authority
in the secular sphere and are associated with secular rule, power and
warfare. Everyone, including the Brahman, is subject to them, but only
in that sphere. This indicates the inferior status of that sphere compared
to that of the Brahman, who is responsible for cosmic goals
transcending the narrow domain of the practical affairs of the man in
the world, the domain of the Kshatriya. In short, Dumont says, this is
not an ordinary binary opposition of the type exploited by Lvi-Strauss,
whether the poles are seen as equivalent in status (or in value, to use
246
Robert Parkin
Dumonts term) or as asymmetric. The nature of the Brahman

Kshatriya relationship is that it is a hierarchical opposition in which the
values represented by the Kshatriya are encompassed by those of the
Brahman. This is because, while even the Brahman landowner is
subject to the Kshatriya in the secular sphere, that sphere is not only
inferior to, it is also encompassed by, the sphere of the Brahman, which
by virtue of its transcendence is superior overall. This view is reinforced
by the fact that the Kshatriya supports the Brahman in the latters task
(by giving him land in the first case, and in pre-Hindu, Vedic times, by
providing the sacrifice) and protects him physically by providing social
order. In other words, the secular sphere has no purpose other than to
support the transcendental activities of the sphere of the Brahman.
As already noted, this notion of hierarchical opposition is certainly
among the most misunderstood in the whole of post-war anthropology.
A more familiar, though much abused example may make clearer just
what is involved (cf. Dumont 1980: 23940).
In pre-politically correct times, the English word man had a double
meaning. On one level, to use Dumonts term, man was simply opposed
to woman as its opposite. On the other level, it stood for the whole of
humanity, including woman (as in mankind). On this latter level, in
other words, it encompassed its contrary, woman. Clearly this went
along with a whole set of circumstances in which things male were seen
as ideologically more important, of higher value and so on, than things
female. On the level involving encompassment, moreover, women are
simply invisible, thanks precisely to their encompassment. It is only on the
secondary level, that of distinction, that the category woman appears at
all. The two levels are thus differently structured. They are also
ideologically unified into a single structure: they do not simply represent
different contexts in which first one pole of a binary opposition, then the
other, is prominent. The contexts produced by reversing one of LviStrausss merely asymmetric binary oppositions are equivalent, in that
moving between them simply involves reversing the polarity of the
opposition. In moving between Dumonts levels, on the other hand, one is
moving between a superordinate situation of the encompassment (i.e.
non-visibility) of one pole by the other, and a subordinate situation in
which both are present by being distinguished. Thus, to return to India, the
Brahman either stands for (encompasses) the whole of society in its
relations with the cosmos, in rituals in which only he is evident; or else he
appears alongside the Kshatriya as subject to the latters authority in a
subordinate (secular, non-transcendent) situation or level.
So much for encompassment what about hierarchy? First, given
that levels are unequally valued, there must be hierarchy. It is fairly easy
to relate this to a society like Indias, which is still hierarchical today to
Louis Dumont
247
a high degree (e.g. the persistence of caste, but also aspects of modern
life, like office politics, as well as kinship). The problem for Dumonts
critics has been his insistence that this model is pertinent to the West too,
despite the Wests claims to egalitarianism. One result of this has been
that Dumont has been accused of mistaking or ignoring the nature of
equality, and even of actually preferring hierarchy to it as a mode of life.
Even within India, his account has repeatedly been criticised for giving
the Brahmans point of view and ignoring those of other sectors of
society. This can be seen partly with respect to the values of the
renouncer, who turns his (sometimes her) back on society in order to
pursue personal salvation as an individual. Yet the landowning
Brahman may be considered closest to these ideals of anyone still in
society, given his status as a minimal transactor like the renouncer, the
landowning Brahman tries to minimise his dependence on the
householder and also avoids exchange transactions, since they carry
with them some of the sin-laden and otherwise inauspicious substance
of their inferior givers. As already noted, it is this that distinguishes the
landowning from the priestly Brahmans, who are more or less entirely
dependent on such transactions (cf. Dumont 1966, 1980).
Dumonts critics have made some significant points, but they still
tend to misconstrue both his own position and the nature, let alone
existence, of hierarchy in the West. Again, this often reflects sheer
misunderstanding. Hierarchy is not simply the basis of the model of
hierarchical opposition seen objectively as a subjective cultural value,
it may itself partake in this very model by actively being one of the poles
of a hierarchical opposition. It is perhaps a failure to recognise this that
has most misled Dumonts critics. Hierarchy in Dumonts terminology
is not just social stratification: it is the operation of according different
values to different things. Here it is useful, I think, to invoke the notion
of preference. Briefly, we may say that while India prefers the values of
hierarchy to those of equality, so that the former encompass the latter,
the West does the reverse. In other words, in the West the value
equality itself encompasses the value hierarchy in what is clearly
another hierarchical opposition. That is, equality is an ideal, one
associated with other ideals like individuality and freedom. As such,
ordinarily it is stressed to the exclusion of hierarchy. Yet Western society
is still hierarchical in many respects, which mostly relate to practical
(i.e. non-ideological) matters. The world of work in particular is
hierarchical, since however much this may be mystified by modern
industrial relations and personnel practices orders are still given and
obeyed, and firms managed through processes of hiring and firing
subject others. Similarly, the law, government and the military are
domains that are rarely endowed with more than the status of
248
Robert Parkin
necessary evils, in that they too limit the practical exercise of the
Western ideals of liberty and equality, not least because they are
hierarchical, generally quite literally so. Yet significantly they also
appeal to their own support or protection of the ideals of liberty and
equality as their ultimate justification, that is, they explicitly
subordinate themselves to them. In short, there is a hierarchical
opposition in the West that places equality in a superordinate and
therefore encompassing position in relation to its opposite, hierarchy.
The latter only emerges in domains proper to it, and then as a practical
matter necessitated by, but also supporting, the level of fundamentally
egalitarian and individualistic ideals. Thus the relationship between
equality and hierarchy in the West is itself a hierarchical opposition
involving levels and encompassment.
This formulation may seem strange, but that is simply because there
is a fundamental contradiction in the Western way of life that a
hierarchical society like India is not faced with. For Dumont, hierarchy
is unavoidable, anywhere. In India, the parallel to the hierarchical
opposition described above for the West is the reverse situation, in which
hierarchy encompasses egalitarianism, just as society encompasses the
individual and duty encompasses both material interest and freedom
(sometimes represented by pleasure). This can be expressed in
indigenous terms, in respect of the triple but still hierarchical distinction
between the ends of life, dharma, artha and kama, or duty, work and
pleasure: all have their place, but in a descending order of value, and
therefore encompassment. Certainly, as has often been remarked, the
values of the renouncer, which are ultimately concerned with personal
salvation, appear to stress both individuality and the basic equality of
all transcendent approaches to that end. This is far from being a
negligible point, since this is an important form of transcendence,
though one only pursued by a minority of Indian society (since,
moreover, the aim is moksha, that is, liberation from the cycle of
rebirths, it can also be seen as encompassing the above three values). Yet
ideologically the renouncer is not in society, and indeed often marks his
or her removal from it by undergoing a symbolic death ritual, quite
possibly complete with shrouds and immersion into the Ganges or a
river assimilated to it. Conversely the Brahmans role is a social one,
since he keeps the cosmos in being for the good of society and ultimately
of humanity; he can therefore claim to lack the self-centredness of the
path of the renouncer. This is one area where, as Richard Burghart
shows us (1978), the values of the renouncer and the Brahman
conflict, both politically and ideologically.
However that may be, Dumont argues that, in expressing a
preference for hierarchy, the model of hierarchical opposition therefore
Louis Dumont
249
accords with the superordinate value in Indian society; in the West it

does not. In other words, hierarchical societies comfortably exist in
conformity with their ideals, which stress that very hierarchy; egalitarian
ones never can, because for practical reasons they can never entirely
evade the hierarchy they are opposed to all they can do is subordinate
it as a value to the higher emphasis placed on egalitarianism.
This has at least three further consequences. One relates to racism.
Dumont does not oppose this to egalitarianism so much as see it as one of
the latters pathologies. Although the West has influenced some Indian
discourses in the direction of racism, and differences between castes have
probably always been seen in part as differences of substance, modern
racism never appears to have existed in traditional India. In the first place,
the caste system is a system of inclusion rather than exclusion. Although
ones practices (cousin marriage, consuming beef and alcohol, polygyny)
may consign you to a low status within the system, the system will still
find you a place. In other words, hierarchies are flexible, because they are
essentially relational: you are not absolutely different from me, just more
or less pure, and your rank with respect to me reflects this. Even if you
are impure, and although I might shun all contact with you, ideologically
I do not dismiss you entirely but rank you accordingly.
Egalitarianism, on the other hand, can only produce definitions in
substantial terms, since adopting a relational approach to definition
along Indian lines would involve introducing the very hierarchy that
egalitarianism rejects. However, no society that sees itself as ideologically
egalitarian seems to be able to free itself entirely from some urge to
discriminate in practice: this is one of the ironic contradictions that
Dumont locates in modernity. And if a social group is to discriminate
while still maintaining equality within its own boundaries, it can only do
so through a process of exclusion, that is, by defining the object of its
discrimination as wholly different in substantial terms, for example
racially or ethnically. We should not forget that the white populations
that dominated certain multi-racial societies in the fairly recent past, as
in the southern United States or South Africa, saw themselves as
internally equal, at least racially and therefore in terms of substance, if
not always socially (e.g. class). This was, of course, contrasted with the
draconian and often vicious discrimination, also in substantial terms,
meted out to non-whites in the same society. The practical outcomes of
this discrimination were the colour bar in the US and apartheid in South
Africa (cf. Dumont 1980, Appendix).
The second consequence of applying hierarchical opposition to the
egalitarian West relates to questions of discrimination in other ways.
Dumont repeatedly insists on the relationship between making
distinctions and differentially valuing what is distinguished: indeed, for
250
Robert Parkin
him we only distinguish in order to state a preference, that is, to allocate

different values. This is another reason why oppositions cannot be other
than hierarchical. A corollary of this is that if we wish to cease to
discriminate we should not distinguish, that is, should not draw
attention to difference. Up to a point, this reflects practice in the West as
this has evolved over the past few decades. There is a contrast here with
many other parts of the world, where it may be much more common for
individuals to be identified casually with others in terms of race or
ethnicity. In the West such usages are increasingly felt to be wrong, or
at least impolite, and as making an unnecessary point which is not to
say that they have disappeared entirely, of course. Only if ethnic or
racial discrimination is being discussed substantively, for example as an
issue that still needs addressing, does reference to such differences seem
justified. Similar practices have extended to other domains of potential
or actual discrimination, such as sexual orientation, disability or food
preferences (vegetarianism, for example). One might also add gender,
though here the situation is complicated by a continuing compulsion to
make often oblique reference to difference in circumstances of, for
example, flirting and seeking partners. But even here in work
environments, for example discussing work in relation to gender
differences is no longer seen as acceptable except in the context of
overcoming any remaining discrimination (again, I am not saying that
it never happens, only that it is no longer considered politically correct).
Gender also becomes interesting when it is combined with a
consideration of sexual orientation, or at any rate gay politics. In
Britain, at least, the term gay tends to have a double reference of the
sort discussed earlier for man and woman, sometimes covering both
genders, sometimes only men, as in the frequent identifier gay and
lesbian; conversely lesbian is categorically female, never male. This
surely demonstrates the continuing power of hierarchical opposition,
even in social circles that would appear to have the greatest interest in
rejecting not only discrimination, but also the sense of differential value
and hierarchy that goes along with it.
The third consequence of applying hierarchical opposition to the
egalitarian West is the relation of ideology to practice. As Allen notes
(1998: 3), Dumont was well aware of Weberian and Parsonian
sociology, and unlike Lvi-Strauss took them into account by giving the
practical activities they stressed their due place, while characteristically
subordinating them to the level of ideals. It is in the nature of pragmatic
activities that they may conflict with ideals while at the same time
supporting them (e.g. the offerings the wealthy make to the church or
temple from their ill-gotten gains; see Parry and Bloch 1989). As Parry
reminds us (1994), so long as humans have values distinct from the
Louis Dumont
251
world of the practical, their ideals will be unattainable and will thus
always have a separate existence from the actual and the practical. I
have no qualms in suggesting that, even in a period that stresses
practice and agency, ideals remain equally valid objects of enquiry for
the anthropologist. One of the reasons I believe Dumonts work to be of
value is that, through the notion of hierarchical opposition, he has
offered us a way of relating ideology and practice that is rooted in the
Durkheim tradition, yet also goes beyond it. As noted above, the level of
ideals and values always encompasses that of practice, since although
the former may be reliant on the latter for its fulfilment, the latter is
ideologically subordinate, sometimes even ideologically unrecognised.
It is only when the pragmatics of providing worship or the morally
compromised nature of the world of practice become focal points for
discussion that they are at all evident, and then only at the subordinate
level of distinction, not the superordinate level of encompassment.
I therefore suggest that Dumonts name should be added to those
who have attempted to combine practice and agency with ideology,
including in the most recent period Giddens and Bourdieu, in the middle
distance Parsons, and originally Weber himself. However, Dumont
differs from all of these in according ideology a clearly superordinate
value with respect to practice, thus keeping him closer to Durkheim,
while articulating this difference through the uniquely Dumontial
hierarchical opposition.
To recap, therefore, Dumonts intellectual trajectory can be seen as
involving a series of shifts. The first was from early diffusionist,
culturological approaches drawn from his museum experience to
Maussian sociology, holism and world-historical perspectives, supported
by a growing appreciation of Lvi-Straussian structuralism focused on
simple binary oppositions. A second shift was from an early familiarity
with this latter form of structuralism, stimulated also by his early
fieldwork in Tamil Nadu, to the revision of structuralism in the
direction of hierarchical opposition that was stimulated by his wider
comparisons within India, as well as sustained in his yet wider
comparison between India and the West. A third shift was from
observation to ideas, from fieldwork to writings, in forming the
evidential basis of his work, though in both producing ethnography and
using it theoretically he was also adopting a distinctly Anglo-Saxon
rather than French anthropological methodology. Yet, in combination
with a lesser but still real familiarity with non-Durkheimian writers
such as Parsons and Weber, who emphasise practice as much as ideas
and values, hierarchical opposition also gave Dumont a way of relating
and reconciling ideology and practice that was simply not open to LviStrausss simpler form of structuralism. This is in addition to the
Robert Parkin
252
manner in which he used hierarchical opposition to render less opaque

aspects of Western ideology and practice as well as Indian. It is these
latter aspects, I suggest, that give Dumont his greatest claim to our
continuing attention.
Note
1. I never met Dumont personally, though I corresponded with him on one occasion and
saw him speak on another. In this appraisal I am therefore relying on published
sources, especially for Dumonts life (Part 1) and his more private views, namely the
obituaries by Allen (1998), Galey (1999, 2000), Madan (1999) and Toffin (1999),
two interviews given by Dumont (Delacampagne 1981, Galey 1982b), and appraisals
by Galey (1982a) and Moffat (1986). Many of the views I give voice to in Part 2 are also
anticipated in these writings. Part 3 has a little more claim to originality. A slightly
different version of this chapter has already appeared in Spanish (Parkin 2006).
References
Allen, N.J. 1998. Obituary: Louis Dumont 19111998, Journal of the Anthropological
Society of Oxford, 29(1): 14.
Barraud, C., D. de Coppet, A. Iteanu and R. Jamous. 1984. Des relations et des morts:
quatre socits sous langle des changes, in J.-C. Galey (ed.), Diffrences, valeurs,
hirarchie: texts offerts Louis Dumont, Paris: ditions de lcole des Hautes tudes en
Sciences Sociales.
Burghart, R. 1978. Hierarchical models of the Hindu social system, Man (n.s.), 13(4):
51936.
de Coppet, D. 1990. The society as an ultimate value and the socio-cosmic configuration,
Ethnos, 1990(34): 14050.
Delacampagne, C. 1981. Louis Dumont and the Indian mirror, Royal Anthropological
Institute News, 43: 47.
Dumont, L. 1951. La Tarasque: essai de description dun fait local dun point de vue
ethnographique, Paris: Gallimard.
1953. The Dravidian kinship terminology as an expression of marriage, Man, 53:
3439.
1957a. For a sociology of India, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 1: 722.
1957b. Hierarchy and marriage alliance in south India, London: Royal
Anthropological Institute.
1957c. Une sous-caste de lInde du Sud: organisation sociale et religion des Pramalai
Kallar, Paris: Mouton.
1962. Le vocabulaire de parent dans lInde du Nord, LHomme, 2(2): 548.
1964. La civilisation indienne et nous: esquisse de sociologie compare, Paris: Armand
Colin.
1966a. Homo hierarchicus: essai sur le systme des castes, Paris: Gallimard.
1966b. Marriage in India, the present state of the question III: north India in
relation to south India, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 9: 90114.
1968. Preface, in E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Les Nuers, Paris: Gallimard.
1971. Introduction deux theories danthropologie sociale, Paris and The Hague:
Mouton.
Louis Dumont
253
1975. Terminology and prestations revisited, Contributions to Indian Sociology

(n.s.), 9(2): 197215.
1977. Homo aequalis: gense et panouissement de lidologie conomique, Paris:
Gallimard.
1980. Homo hierarchichus: the caste system and its implications (2nd ed.), Chicago:
1983a. Affinity as a value: marriage alliance and south India, Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press.
1983b. Essais sur lindividualisme: une perspective anthropologique sur lidologie
moderne, Paris: Le Seuil.
1991. Homo aequalis II: lidologie allemande, France-Allemagne et retour, Paris:
Gallimard.
Galey, J.-C. 1982a. The spirit of apprenticeship in a master craftsman, in T.N. Madan (ed.),
Way of life: king, householder, renouncer. Essays in honour of Louis Dumont, Delhi: Vikas,
and Paris: ditions de la Maison des Sciences de lHomme.
1982b. A conversation with Louis Dumont, Paris, 12 December 1979, in T.N.
Madan (ed.), Way of life: king, householder, renouncer. Essays in honour of Louis Dumont,
Delhi: Vikas, and Paris: ditions de la Maison des Sciences de lHomme.
1999. Obituary. Louis Dumont (19111998): an enduring consistency, EASA
Newsletter, 25: 1317.
2000. Louis Dumont (19111998): a committed distancing, American
Anthropologist, 102(2): 32429.
Lvi-Strauss, C. 1949. Les structures lmentaires de la parent, Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France.
Madan, T.M. 1999. Louis Dumont (19111998): a memoir, Contributions to Indian
Sociology (n.s.), 33(3): 473501.
Moffat, M. 1986. Preface to Louis Dumont, A south Indian subcaste: social organization and
religion of the Pramalai Kallar, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Parkin, R. 2001. Durkheimian evolution in the work of Marcel Mauss, in R. Parkin,
Perilous transactions: papers in general and Indian anthropology, Bhubaneswar:
Sikshasandhan.
2006. Louis Dumont: estructuralismo, jerarqua e individualism, Revista de
Occidente, 299: 934.
Parry, J. 1994. Death in Banares, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Parry, J. and M. Bloch (eds). 1989. Money and the morality of exchange, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Toffin, G. 1999. Louis Dumont, 19111998, LHomme, 150, 713.
Chapter 11
WILL THE REAL MAURICE

LEENHARDT PLEASE STAND UP?
FOUR ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN SEARCH OF AN
ANCESTOR
Jeremy MacClancy
Students of anthropology have it tough: the courses they are taught on

the history of the subject are usually boring, blinkered and Whiggish to
boot.1 All too often the subject is presented as a deadening chronicle of
disciplinary self-improvement, with each generation identifying, then
moving beyond, the sins of their forefathers (and mothers). Evolutionism,
this story tells us, was racist, functionalism dovetailed with colonialism,
structural-functionalism ignored history, high structuralism was for
mystics, postmodernism was an apolitical dead-end, while diffusionism
was just plain wrong-headed. Only the present holds out much promise.
Onward, ever upward is the underlying agenda to this all-too common
tale. At times I am surprised our students stay with us.
Of course, this party line of constant self-advancement only appears
coherent because it wilfully excludes so much. At an Oxford lecture I
attended several years ago, Stephen Jay Gould argued that we humans are
not at the apical growing tip of some evolutionary tree but out on a limb, and
we ignore all the other branches we happened not to go down at our peril.
It was a salutary reminder of just how random our development can be.
Anthropology is little different. The conventional format of our
history remains oddly silent about a whole host of different approaches
which did not make it for the wrong reasons. And there are even more,
still worthy of our consideration today, which contain valuable insights
and suggestive agendas. In other words, what our students need is not
256
Jeremy MacClancy
Figure 11.1. Maurice Leenhardt (back row, centre), with Melanesian pastors during a
conference, Nouvelle Caldonie 1916. Archives de la Nouvelle-Caldonie, Fonds
Maurice et Raymond Leenhardt, 12 J.
just a history of anthropology, but an anthropology of that history as

well. They need to learn why some ideas are yet propagated while the
rest are left to lie fallow. For if anthropology is about putting ideas and
customs into their contexts, surely it behoves us to do the same with
our own practices. We are not special.
There are, of course, exceptions. Not all historians of anthropology
are Whigs with a wilfully exclusionary style. Some have tried to rewrite
the past by vigorously promoting the forgotten, the neglected, the
marginalised. But this is not a high-minded, Lazarus-like revival of the
otherwise dead, merely a variant of the tired self-interested strategy of
those striving for hegemony. I could cite several examples. Instead I will
stick with the one I know best. In the 1960s and 1970s, Rodney
Needham persuaded the University of Chicago Press to establish a series,
with him as editor, dedicated to the re-printing of nineteenth-century
works, each with a lengthy introduction by himself or one of his brighter
students. Needhams aim was manifold. First, these books gently
subverted established historiographies by exposing their structuring
conventions. Second, they acted as cautionary tales for students,
reminding them that ideas then being touted as new were not in fact
quite that novel. Third, they implicitly criticised high structuralist
abstraction and love of apparent paradox by demonstrating that
anthropological ideas could be discussed in a pellucid, seemingly
Will the real Maurice Leenhardt please stand up?
257
unpretentious nineteenth-century prose (which happened to chime with

Needhams own literary style). Fourth, and perhaps above all, these
books reflected, and so further established, the singularity and historical
depth of his own vision of our discipline: who else had had the insight to
realise the contemporary value of these forsaken classics? These books
could thus act as supplementary means of advancing the project more
explicitly stated in his major essays and books. They were, if you like, the
soft sell complementing the hard sell of his key articles and tomes.
Though a former student of Needhams, I am still rather surprised to
find myself treading a somewhat similar path, albeit in a far less illustrious
mode. In a variety of papers, I have tried to re-illuminate once bright
corners of anthropology, almost forcibly bringing them to others
attention (e.g. MacClancy 1986, 1995, 1996, 2000). In this chapter,
however, I wish to do something different. Instead of attempting to
resuscitate a long-dead figure, I wish to examine how others have tried to
do so, and to what effect. In the process we might learn something about
the way histories of anthropology are negotiated for present-day purposes.
My object of attention is Maurice Leenhardt. If the aim of this
volume is to demonstrate that French anthropology has not been, as
the stereotype has it, all grand theorising from afar and that, to the
contrary, it has in fact a long tradition of empirical fieldwork with its
own grounded theory, then Leenhardt fits the bill extremely well. For in
the 1930s and 1940s, he was hailed by his peers as one of the greatest
fieldworkers of his day, and certainly the most long-term one. Moreover,
as we shall see, he had his own particular theoretical approach, born in
his case out of his missionary concerns.
In this chapter, I first sketch his life; then examine the interests of his
varied would-be resuscitators, including those who wish to revive the man,
only in order to put the knife back in; I end with some general comments.
A life
We can be brief. Our subjects biography has already been recounted
many times, most memorably by Clifford (1982).
The Leenhardts were a pious family of bourgeois Protestants inclined
towards the liberal professions and the pastorate. Franz Leenhardt
(18461922) was an eminent geologist who desired to fuse theology with
positive science. His fourth child, Maurice (born 1878), was a mediocre,
occasionally troublesome student, who went deaf in one ear and failed his
baccalaureate three times. Inclined towards the missions from an early
age, he married in 1902 and was ordained three months later; four days
after that, the couple left to establish a mission in New Caledonia.
258
Jeremy MacClancy
Life on the former penal colony was not easy. The locals were
increasingly hemmed in by expansionist colonists: farmers, herdsmen,
miners, Catholic missionaries, administrators. Between 1855 and 1900
the local population dropped by almost half, their death hastened by
imported alcohol, diseases and firearms, while the rebellion of 187879
led to the killing of two hundred Europeans and several times that
number of indigenes. Leenhardt had to contend with demoralised but
still proud locals (known as Canaques), territorial priests and colonials
keen to keep their potential labour-force subdued, not educated. The highminded young missionary was forced to learn, by painful mistakes, how
to be diplomatic yet firm if he wished to assist those he defended. To the
colonial government of the day, he became a long-term irritant.
He established his mission station, Do Neva, on the eastern coast
and worked intensively with his natas, pastor-evangelists. They were the
central plank of his conversion strategy: he saw his own role as
protecting and encouraging an autonomous Melanesian church. Thus
educating the natas became his first priority, essentially through
practical exercises in the comparative analysis of religious languages:
the biblical and the indigenous forms. Leenhardt would make tours to
visit his natas stationed in villages along the coast and in the bush, and
he and his wife also ran a school for local children.
Though his church steadily grew, Leenhardt remained concerned about
the thoroughness of locals conversions. In order to understand this process
better, he realised he would have to comprehend indigenous ways as deeply
as possible. So, during his first leave home in 19089, he broached the work
of Durkheims Anne Sociologique group and of Lvy-Bruhl, while his father,
as usual, urged him toward more precise observation and stressed the
importance of collecting genealogies (Clifford 1982: 75). On his return to
Do Neva, he commenced in earnest an ethnographic study of his
neighbours. He wished, through repeated discussions and encounters, to
probe the lived reality of customary life, and so derive the most apposite
terms and forms for a New Caledonian Bible. Working with his natas, he
aimed to translate the words of God into expressions meaningful to a living
Melanesian language. To Leenhardt, this laborious co-operative translation
was the key to any worthwhile conversion.
In 1920 he and his family returned to France. There he began to
engage seriously with university anthropology. At his father-in-laws
house, he met Lucien Lvy-Bruhl. This proved to be the start of a long
and productive friendship, the philosopher eager to learn from the
fieldworker about Melanesian conceptions and Leenhardt keen to
discuss his companions ideas about the prelogical and modes of
participation. He gave papers at academic meetings, met with Marcel
Mauss, and at his request published a long article on a key New
259
Caledonian festival. In 1922 he embarked on a seventeen-month

investigative tour of all the French Protestant missions in sub-Saharan
Africa. During these visits he was able to check and prove the worth of
the guiding ideas he had elaborated in New Caledonia.
In late 1923 he went back to Do Neva, this time without his family.
It was to be a difficult stay, with Leenhardt wishing to see the principles
of his evangelising approach well-rooted, so that it would survive his
departure. He believed in a strong indigenous church, with great
autonomy, little hierarchy, and reliant on local pastors. To his great
disappointment, his ideas would be rejected by his metropolitan
superiors. They continued to regard their independent, critical
colleague with suspicion; his recommendations were quietly ignored.
Back, this time definitively, in Paris in 1926, Leenhardt had to look for
work, as his Mission Society would not give him a position of responsibility.
He gained employment as an urban missionary, attending to the needy
of the city. That took up half his time; the rest of each week he dedicated
to writing and teaching, for both anthropological and missionary
audiences. He established and edited a bimonthly journal about
missionary matters, Propos missionaires, and besides producing numerous
articles of ethnography, published a trilogy of works: Notes dethnologie
no-caldonienne (1930), Documents no-caldoniens (1932), and Vocabulaire
et grammaire de la langue houalou (1935). Thanks to his growing friendship
with Mauss, he began in 1933 to teach at the cole Pratique des Hautes
tudes. Within a few years he was doing half of Mausss teaching.
In 1937 he accepted an invitation to publish a popular account of
indigenous life, grounded in fieldwork. His Gens de la Grande Terre
presents a sympathetic account of New Caledonians as bearers of a
rich, rounded tradition, worthy of our interest and increasingly
threatened by colonialist inroads. Shortly after its publication in 1938
Leenhardt and his wife returned for more than a years stay to carry
out a survey of the languages and dialects of New Caledonia and
nearby islands. The result, Langues et dialects de lAustro-Melanesie, is a
somewhat forbidding compendium of grammatical sketches and
vocabularies. Of course Leenhardt, while conducting his survey, did not
act as an aloof academic, but attempted to intercede in important issues
of the day. Many of his supporters now venerated their white-bearded
Missi, while his white opponents continued to regard him, with unease,
as an influential, interfering ngrophile.
When, in 1940, the anti-Semitic laws of the Vichy government
forced Mauss to resign from the cole Pratique des Hautes tudes, he
had Leenhardt replace him. Leenhardt turned the lectures he gave there
into his most famous, most challenging book, Do Kamo: la personne et le
mythe dans le monde mlansien (1947). The next year he returned, for
Jeremy MacClancy
260
the last time, to New Caledonia as the founding director of a

government research station in the capital, the Institut Franais
dOcanie. As before, colonialist differences made his stay initially very
tense. While waiting patiently for these criticisms to peter out, he gently
encouraged the work of his junior colleagues and so cemented the
reputation of the fledgling institute.
In Paris, Leenhardt, who was now well into his seventies, kept up an
exemplary list of activities: organising, teaching, writing. In 1952 he
accepted the presidency of the Alliance Evanglique Universelle. The
next year he planned a final trip to la Grande Terre. But that summer he
was diagnosed with cancer, and died in January 1954.
In search of an ancestor
In my sketch of his life, I have coasted over Leenhardts central ideas,
because exactly what they were is the key issue of this chapter. Instead
of advancing my own exegesis of his words, I wish to examine how
others have interpreted his thoughts.
Leenhardt the post-structuralist avant la lettre
In the mid-1970s Jim Clifford was an unknown, young academic with
a first degree in literature from Harvard, where he had become
acquainted with the first signs of what is now termed a poststructuralist approach. He went to Paris to do doctoral research on the
history of French anthropology during the interwar period. After
reading Do Kamo and then Leenhardts unpublished letters and
journals, he chose to focus on this by then neglected figure.
Throughout his book, Clifford takes pains to stress the open-ended,
dynamic nature of Leenhardts thoughts and approaches. He portrays
an assiduous, sensitive priest who engaged with anthropology in order
to further his missionary project. According to Clifford, Leenhardt
wanted to comprehend the amplitude and profundity of New
Caledonian thought in order to ascertain the most effective way towards
meaningful conversion. He did not arrive at a final, definitive position
but thought and rethought a difficult and inspiring involvement with
the Melanesian world (Clifford 1982: 1). Moreover, this rethinking had
reflexive effect, making Leenhardt reconsider the very nature of
Christianity and its teachings. In the process, theological abstraction
came to yield first place to the power of a concrete immediacy.
Clifford lays stress on Leenhardts radical notion of selves without
unifying centres: There is no experience of a defining body. The
Melanesian feels no physical envelope that separates a personal inside
261
from an objective outside (ibid.: 185). Rather, the self is that

amalgamation of dualistic relationships which each New Caledonian
accumulates and participates in. Instead of a centralising ego, an
indigene is made up of dualities, between himself and his parent, uncle,
spouse, cross-cousin, clan, ancestor, totem, and so on. Leenhardt did
not speak of traditional locals as individuals but as each having a
personage, a relational ensemble of such dualities.
Myths are not to be seen as stories but as geographically rooted providers
of images which, through juxtaposition, enable locals to experience
complex emotional states. Thus myths are not so much narrated as lived.
Especially at heightened, ritualised moments, a New Caledonian may
participate, via these dualities, in a socio-mythic space, where time and
distance, in conventional Western terms, are collapsed, transcended.
Leenhardt wished to forge a Western vocabulary to render the
distinctiveness of New Caledonian ways. He wished, for instance, to
emphasise the lack of distinction for indigenes between thought, on the
one hand, and expression and concrete action on the other. In modern
parlance, he wanted to emphasise the illocutionary dimension of
utterance. Here, saying is doing, and utterance a speech act. For him
parole, which his English commentators have translated as the word or
words, dissolved the conventional gap between speech and language.
But he wished to give parole a much broader compass than those
linguistic dimensions. Not tied to elocution, it was positioned more
concretely in gestures. While it could not be separated from thinking,
thought was here understood as solidified emotion rather than intellect.
In sum, this remarkably wide version of parole was whatever manifests
the person, was more likely to be exemplified by things than words, and
was to be understood as expressivity rather than structure.
Cliffords analysis is subtle and gracefully couched. Indeed, he does
the job so well that almost all subsequent Anglophone re-interpreters of
Leenhardt are to a certain extent influenced by his reading of the mans
work. However, what is of particular interest here is his stress on the
contemporary relevance of Leenhardt, whom he portrays as a bypassed
trailblazer: What is important ... is that his mistrust of systematic
closure, his emphasis on reciprocal interpretation and cultural
expressivity, placed him on the boundary of a science that, since Tylor,
had concerned itself with the study of whole, integrated ways of life in
more or less continuous development (ibid.: 173). Cliffords Leenhardt
is an institutionally marginal figure, whose interests and approaches
dovetail remarkably well with ideas only then beginning to percolate
through into the anthropology of the early 1980s. On a perhaps
flippant, more likely designedly polemical note, Clifford even terms
Leenhardt a post-structuralist, albeit one avant la lettre (ibid.: 173).
262
Jeremy MacClancy
The various concerns which Clifford underlines in his biography

reciprocity, reflexivity, open-endedness, persistent provisionality, the
decentred self, and the problems of translation are all, of course, now
classically post-modernist matters. And the first raisers of that banner
in social anthropology were Clifford himself and his colleague George
Marcus in the book they edited, Writing culture: the poetics and politics of
ethnography (1986), today as notorious as it is famous.
In a recently translated book, the Parisian historian of ideas Franois
Cusset (2008) argues that in the 1980s American academics
trumpeted the ideas of French theoreticians (e.g. Derrida, Foucault,
Baudrillard), which they branded poststructuralism, just as those
approaches were rapidly losing favour on their home turf. The very term
poststructuralism is itself an American coinage; it does not exist in
France (Wolin 2008). The postwar saw was When a philosophy dies, it
comes to Oxford. For the 1980s, replace Oxford with America. Cusset
does not discuss anthropology in his account, but Cliffords importation
of Leenhardt into US academe slips all too easily into this interpretation
of the trans-Atlantic trade in ideas.
For these reasons, it is not overly cynical to see Clifford as in effect
exploiting the figure of Leenhardt as a means to bring poststructuralism into anthropology. At the same time, of course, it is also
an exploitation of Leenhardt in order to advance his own academic
career, to be recognised as a standard-bearer of the then
anthropological avant-garde. I contend that this interpretation is not
too cynical because Sangren, in one of the first incisive critiques of postmodernism, exposed the hegemonic pretensions of Clifford and
Marcuss movement (Sangren 1988). For, by claiming the equality and
diversity of different theoretical approaches, they quietly failed to state
the superiority of one theory: their own. When Sangren links this bid
for hegemony to their own desire for institutional self-advancement,
Clifford, an otherwise very astute respondent, complains of innuendo
about career strategies (Clifford 1988: 425).2
Leenhardt the phenomenologist Romantic
The American anthropologist Thomas Maschio did fieldwork in the
mid-1980s among the Rauto of southwestern New Britain. In his
magisterial ethnography of them, he openly acknowledges the
influence of Leenhardts seminal work on the character of New
Caledonian religious experience. It is an insight that to my mind has
neither been applied, nor even recognised, save tangentially, by the
anthropology of religion (Maschio 1994: 28).
What Maschio finds so useful in Leenhardt is his conception of the
role of mythic consciousness in a New Caledonians progress towards
263
authentic personhood. Dissatisfied with well-established anthropological

approaches which stress the discursive interpretation of symbolic
representation, Maschio is stimulated by Leenhardts phenomenological
focus. Following his exemplar, Maschio does not wish to comprehend
local ways according to the structuring constraints of a Western
semiology, but to explore the ways Rauto ritual and poetic performances
enable the enactment, expression and invention of the self. Thus,
openly inspired by Leenhardt, he sees Rauto religious performance and
expression as ways to transform nostalgia, anger and other emotions
into a style of cultural memory, one which juxtaposes patterned
cultural meaning with an emotional feeling of plenitude.
While he acknowledges the use of Cliffords reading of Leenhardt,
Maschio goes further, for he wishes to associate Leenhardt with a
longstanding strand within Western ideas. First he points out how
Leenhardts portrayal of the link between individuation and mythic
consciousness resonates with Jungs characterisation of the
individuation process. The ideas of both intellectuals about the mythic
image being somehow basic to human existence dovetail with Barthes
conception of it as retaining the obtuse and sometimes obscure
meaning of primary intuitive experience ... as a way of knowing that
eschews clear conceptual thought and language (ibid.: 31). While
Leenhardt and Jung saw mythic thought as central, they both regarded
it as only the foundation for individuation. Both considered that mythic
thinking needed to be coupled with rationality so that a person could
bring about a psychologically balanced form of individuation (ibid.:
220). Openly opposing them to modern symbolic anthropologists who
employ metaphors of reading, writing and editing, Maschio groups
Leenhardt and Jung into a long line of Romantic thinkers, especially
Vico, who were concerned with the relations between image, memory
and experience (ibid.: 33).3
In other words, in order to understand Leenhardt within his
plenitude, Maschio places him within a strand of Western thought
which goes back centuries while retaining much relevance for
anthropologists of religion today. According to Maschio, Leenhardt can
yet be a guide for our times.
Leenhardt the existentialist
Deborah van Heekeren sees Leenhardt as a crypto-existentialist who
embedded a Heideggerian perspective into his ethnography. Since
Leenhardt did not explicitly acknowledge any debts to the philosopher,
she grounds her argument on several struts: Cliffords note about
Leenhardts regular conversations with a translator of Heidegger (Clifford
1982: 250, n. 39); the ethnographers concern to focus on experience
264
Jeremy MacClancy
and thus, if need be, to transcend western categories of analysis; and the
parallels between his concept of mythic participation and Heideggers
notion of Dasein, an ontological term which he employed to designate
man in respect of his being (van Heekeren 2004: 433).
Heidegger argued that the essential nature of existence could be
revealed in certain limit situations, such as struggle and death. Only
in these situations might the presence of being become evident. To van
Heekeren, these situations, which she designates existential events,
resonate with Leenhardts stress on clusters of participations in which
mythic thought is lived. Just as the philosopher thought authentic being
was discovered in a situation such as death, so the ethnographer
considered that New Caledonian authenticity was discovered in sociomythic events: a moment experienced as passion/flight/transformation,
or perhaps fear or despair, that is universally recognised yet deeply and
individually experienced (ibid.: 438). Similarly, she sees Leenhardts
idea of the collapse in socio-mythic space of distance between people
and things as strikingly similar to Sartres comment on the annihilation
of distance between subject and object (ibid.: 438). She concludes that
both Leenhardt and Heidegger recognised a mode of being that
participates with the world. This being-with-the-world is at the same time
a being-with-others. However, to be with others authentically, one has to
experience the mode of relation to the other which promotes existence
in the full sense (ibid.: 446). If Heidegger was concerned about the
survival of authenticity in the modern world, Leenhardt was similarly
troubled about the continuation of plenitude in colonialist times.
The value of van Heekerens approach is heuristic, or pragmatic: it is
to be judged in terms of its results. A fieldworker of Papua New Guinea,
she claims, I have been particularly impressed by the way Leenhardts
writing resonates with the work of indigenous authors in so far as each
seems to capture a fundamental sense of being that other models elide
(ibid.: 432). Analysing her own field-data, she wishes to demonstrate
that mythic dimensions to ontology can also be uncovered in other parts
of Melanesia. To her, this is the greatest legacy of Leenhardt: his
interpretation of myth as more than story or charter, leading to an
outstanding philosophy of Melanesian existence (ibid.: 433).
The problem with approaches such as van Heekerens is that the game
is rarely worth the candle. It is all too easy to speculate on possible
precursors whom Leenhardt might have read and who might have
influenced him. Heidegger is one candidate. Bergson and Mach are others.
But how to choose between them, unless we have substantiated evidence?4
265
Leenhardt the decentred soul

If there is a key volume in Marilyn Stratherns oeuvre, it is her Gender of
the gift (Strathern 1988). And if there is a key, much commented-upon
idea in that book, it is her portrayal of Melanesians as dividuals, an
idea first formulated by Marriott in his South Asian ethnography (ibid.:
34849, n. 7). Recognising dividuality means regarding persons in
primarily relational terms, constructed as the plural and composite site
of the relationships that produced them (ibid.: 13). While praising the
brilliance of Leenhardt for charting the extent to which persons
appear through their relationships, Strathern bluntly states that he
made the mistake of thinking there is a centre, albeit an empty one, to
New Caledonian personhood (ibid.: 26869). Instead she wishes to
speak almost exclusively of relationships.
Bill Maurer, who wishes to promote a lateral anthropology, strongly
queries Stratherns desire to call Leenhardt mistaken: Refusing the
structure of error, I would simply add that this language lies alongside
others, where mistakes can be made and where the very idea of a
mistake can be obviated by multiple and polyvalent emergences
(Maurer 2005: 19). Edward LiPuma, a fellow Melanesianist, criticises
her on precisely this point. He contends that she has exploited the
much-used tactic of criticising predecessors on the grounds that they
have been compromised by ethnocentric presuppositions, in this case
Leenhardt. He considers that the power of her argument rests on a
usually unexamined theory of anthropological progress based on
increasing epistemological awareness of the uniqueness of others
cultures (LiPuma 1998: 55). In other words, he regards her as a Whig.
Eric Hirsch, a Melanesianist colleague of Stratherns, counter-argues
that LiPuma has misrepresented her. She did not ignore the individual
aspect of personhood. As Hirsch emphasises, Strathern states early on
in her book: Far from being regarded as unique entities, Melanesian
persons are as dividually as they are individually conceived (ibid.: 13,
Hirsch 2001: 140).5 Even though we take this point, it does not puncture
the power of LiPumas criticism of Stratherns discriminating dismissal
of Leenhardt. I might add that if, as Hirsch claims, her interest is not to
deny the relevance of the individual to Melanesian social life (ibid.: 140),
how are we meant to conceive of individuals without centres? It would
seem difficult for Hirsch to answer that convincingly without having to
modulate Stratherns criticism of Leenhardt.
Jeremy MacClancy
266
Towards an assessment?
Leenhardt as post-structualist (Clifford), romantic (Maschio),
existentialist (van Heekeren), decentred soul (Strathern): one man, four
anthropologists, four rather different interpretations of the same work:
why the diversity? We have already mentioned the felt need of some
academics to cut their own road, and to be seen to be doing so. In other
words, it pays the ambitious to come up with an individual interpretation
of Leenhardt which advances their own interests. But there is a further
reason why he is such a suitable candidate for multiple interpretation.
Do Kamo is not easy to read. It is at times a confusing jumble of
inconsistent language and unannounced shifts in style. Its English
translator stresses its labile vocabulary and eccentric organisation
(Gulati 1979; see also Clifford 1982: 172). Bensa claims that Leenhardt
proceeds less by progressive analyses than by inspired affirmations
(Bensa 2000: 95). Crapanzano notes that in Do Kamo, Leenhardt can
confuse role and person, and fails to separate the concept of the person
from the experience of being a person. He also highlights the sudden
intrusion of the concrete in the abstract and the abstract in the
concrete, indeed the idiosyncrasy of its language (Crapanzano 1979:
xvi, xxiv). Jamin, while sympathetic to Leenhardts desire to produce
an effective translation, queries the limits of his endeavour:
By turning translation upside down, that is to say by trying to adapt and
bend his own language to that of others, he certainly reinstated the original
grammar, but immediately risked a loss of meaning: because he so
wanted to learn, say and transcribe difference, he risked making it
incomprehensible. (Jamin 1978: 56)
In other words, by attempting to render into French the almost

unnameable, Leenhardt produces the almost unreadable.
Several criticise his inconsistent use of myth. Crapanzano contends
that he confuses a mode of knowledge with a cultural reality of some
never quite clear status. According to him, Leenhardt elided a
construct, analytically derived by himself, from observed behaviour
with an experientially felt reality portrayed by him and then attributed
to New Caledonians (Crapanzano 1979: xviiixix; see also Young 1983:
15). To put that another way, how much of Do Kamos mythic
consciousness represents indigenous patterns of thought, and how
much is Leenhardts own mystifying creation? One reason this question
is so difficult to answer is that, unlike Malinowski, Leenhardt did not
provide the social contexts associated with individual myths (Young
1983: 1516). Thus several of his analyses can appear more literary
than social, and some even anecdotal (Crapanzano 1979: xx).
267
Furthermore, Leenhardts central notion of participation can be

easily questioned. Thus Naepels points out that Leenhardt, when
speaking of a related pair, such as an uncle and his nephew, claims that
a local does not perceive two persons but the unity of that pair, without
truly being conscious of the individuals composing it. As he argues,
though indigenes might speak of their parents, that does not mean
that they are not clearly aware of the individual existence of their
mothers and fathers (Naepels 2007: 77). Naepels, himself a veteran
fieldworker of New Caledonia, here speaks with some authority.
Some have argued that Leenhardt lacked a modern appreciation of
metaphor, in effect denying New Caledonians ability for metaphorical
play and beauty. Instead he tended to confound local descriptions of
experience with evidence for description (Young 1983: 15; see also
Naepels 2007: 79). This criticism could stand as a particular instance
of the more general fear that Leenhardt appears to give a determining
weight to linguistic structures as reflecting ways of thought (Naepels
2007: 71). It is therefore of great concern to learn that Leenhardt, even
though he had lived among the locals for so long, could still get it badly
wrong. Clifford starts the key chapter of his book, Chapter Eleven
Structures of the person, with the following:
Leenhardt never tired of recounting a conversation with Boesoou Erijisi in
which he proposed to his oldest convert: In short, what weve brought into
your thinking is the notion of spirit. To which came the correction: Spirit?
Bah! Weve always known about the spirit. What you brought was the body.
The largest part of Leenhardts ethnological theorizing was direct or
indirect exegesis of this retort. (Clifford 1982: 172)
Clifford makes such a grand claim because, he states, the response made
Leenhardt revaluate the applicability of the Western notion of body to
New Caledonians, and so enabled him to conceive of indigenous
personages as transcending European ideas of corporal limits. It is all
the more worrying, therefore, that Leenhardt can here be accused of
mistranslation. Naepels, who is able to read Leenhardts texts in their
indigenous languages, contends that he incorrectly translated the term
used by Boesoou Erijisi, karo, as body (corps). The nata made his
remark in the course of a conversation about Pauls Epistle to the
Romans, in which he argued that what the missionaries had brought
was the flesh, in the Pauline sense of the carnal, the fleshy, the sinful.
Naepels is emphatic that Leenhardts transcription of his friends words
does not justify his claim that New Caledonians had been unaware of
their bodies as bodies, as the support or prop of individual existence:
268
Jeremy MacClancy
When Leenhardt, unconscious of the conceptual difference between flesh

and body, quoted the decontextualized translation of this dialogue, he
turned his very subtle indigenous pupil into the involuntary witness of the
primitive absence of the consciousness of self. (Naepels 2007: 84)
If Naepels is correct, a central feature of Do Kamo is exposed as the

outcome of a single miscomprehension.
It is criticisms such as these which enable some of Leenhardts
commentators to characterise him in less than eulogistic terms. Thus
LEstoile points out that his work in places suffers from an evolutionist,
truly primitivist vision of New Caledonians (LEstoile 2007: 2932),
while even Clifford, otherwise a panegyrist of Leenhardt, feels forced at
one point to admit that his rather mystical Canaque is an exaggeration
(Clifford 1982: 137). Not surprisingly, then, at least one Melanesianist
has accused Leenhardt of explicit racism (Guidieri 1984: 75, n. 1).
Alban Bensa, a French anthropologist of New Caledonia, has questioned
much of Leenhardts ethnographic analysis.6 But he goes further.
According to him, Parisian intellectuals cited Do Kamo so often because
its portrait of Canaques dovetailed neatly with the long-grounded
stereotype of the primitive, still inhabiting an Eden long denied to us.
In other words Leenhardts language seduced an anguished
intelligentsia. Bensa concludes, somewhat rhetorically, by asking, how
Leenhardt, who had done such lengthy, painstaking fieldwork, could
come up with a vision of the Canaque world so strange and so distant
from those of his predecessors and of his successors? (Bensa 2000: 97).
Jean Guiart, Leenhardts most distinguished pupil, stung by the
criticisms of his Parisian colleagues, tried to defend his revered teacher
by writing a short biography of him. Unintentionally, in his hagiography
he provides his enemies with further arms. For he reveals that, in
Documents no-caldoniens (1932), Leenhardt quoted long extracts,
without any attribution whatsoever, from the notebooks of one especially
talented nata (Guiart 1998). As Naepels notes, this is surely plagiarism
and verges dangerously close to colonial exploitation (Naepels 2000).
While Leenhardts work is now much utilised and praised by Canaques
in their struggle to regain a sense of cultural dignity, Bensa worries that the
ideas in Do Kamo are also being used to explain, against all evidence, the
scholastic failure and economic difficulties of native New Caledonians.
Far from assisting politicised Canaques, Do Kamo may be exploited to show
the indigenes up as living in an archaic world (Bensa 2000: 94).7
Leenhardts eulogisers might wish us to view him as an exemplary,
activist anthropologist, prepared to fight against the worst excesses of
colonialism, but, according to his critics, he was still very much a man
of his time. However hard he was prepared to rethink his position and
269
understanding of New Caledonian ways, he was, unsurprisingly, not

able to free himself of all the prejudices of his varied milieux. Indeed, is
it unfair to think that he could?
Towards a lateral history of anthropology

Every complex thinker, over the course of their life, stakes a variety of
positions. Moreover, the different facets of his or her work can be picked
up by commentators in a plurality of ways. We have already seen
Leenhardt in four different guises. More, of course, are possible: such as
Leenhardt as a pioneer of ethnolinguistics (Calame-Griaule 1978: 43,
Laroche 1978: 46) or as the first French anthropologist to carry out
serious ethnography (Cavignac 2001: 8); he is praised by
phenomenologists and mythologists for his contribution to their fields,
and by clinical psychologists as one of the very few anthropologists who
influenced the psychological and psychiatric theories of his time
(Dardel 1954, Garelli 1995, Mouchenik 2005).8 Others are surely
possible.9 This interpretative process is further enriched if the thinker
does not write in a pellucid prose. Given the spasmodic abstruseness of
Do Kamo, it is not surprising that many of his commentators preface
their remarks with If I understand him correctly. Of course, this lack
of clarity only fuels the exegetic challenge, facilitating multiple and
often competing interpretations.
The obvious question most commentators here raise is why, if their
man is so worthy of critical attention, was his work marginalised for so
long? Jamin, for instance, says Leenhardt was unappreciated, forgotten,
neglected (Jamin 1978: 55). No commentator suggests that there was
any discernible, deliberate intention by succeeding generations of French
anthropologists to sideline him and his oeuvre. Rather, structuralism
came very strongly to the fore, and his approach simply went out of
fashion. Lvi-Strauss, who replaced Leenhardt at the cole Pratique des
Hautes tudes, practised a very different kind of anthropology, much
more rationalist in style and with almost no concern for
phenomenological issues. He did not need to criticise Leenhardt he just
asked an alternative, maybe complementary set of questions. This
explanation is all the more likely because it was precisely when the vogue
for structuralism had passed and its replacements were first being touted
that the re-evaluation of Leenhardts work commenced.10
If (and that is a big if ) the influence of Leenhardts writings can be
easily summarised for todays anthropologists, it is as an exemplar of
experience-rich ethnography which strives to grapple with translating
the non-discursive. What the resurrection of his work strongly suggests
Jeremy MacClancy
270
is that Whiggish approaches to the history of our subject are deeply

misleading, if not downright distorting. Imagine the difference if,
instead of teaching it in a hierarchical format, grounded on an illusion
of progress, we presented its past practitioners and their ideas in a
lateral, multi-layered manner (e.g. Maurer 2005: 19). How much
richer, more suggestive, more open-ended, more receptive to alternative
styles our subject could be!
Notes
1. My thanks to Peter Parkes for comments, and to Anne de Sales for assistance in
obtaining French references. All translations from the French are by myself.
2. Marcus, in a joint reply with his fellow postmodernist promoters Michael Fischer and
Stephen Tyler, complains of an unsavory, ad hominem charge of bad faith, a totally
unsupported charge of scheming careerists who wish merely to advance themselves
(Fischer, Marcus and Tyler 1988: 426).
3. Stephen, who did fieldwork in southeast Papua New Guinea, judges Leenhardts
understanding of New Caledonians mythic participation to have been romantic
(Stephen 1995: 141).
4. Given that several commentators on Leenhardt note parallels between his work and
Malinowskis, especially regarding the formers concern with myth and the latters
with magic, it might be entertaining to play with the idea of Mach (on whom
Malinowski wrote his doctorate) influencing both, but in divergent ways. But would
the enterprise rise above the level of entertainment?
5. Hemer, who quotes the same phrase, states that it is only on close reading of your book
that one can spot that Stratherns analysis does allow space for non-relational aspects
of Melanesian personhood. In a review of recent work on personhood in the region,
she notes the divergence of subsequent Melanesianists from Stratherns approach and
stresses the need to make a distinction between individuality (recognised and perhaps
valued) and individualism (recognised and not valued) (Hemer 2008).
6. See, for example, Bensas critique of Leenhardts approach to totemism (Bensa 1990)
and of his conception of the relation between grammatical categories and forms of
thought (Bensa 1995); also Bensa and Leblic 2000. For further criticisms of
Leenhardts notions of totemism, see Naepels (1998), Salomon (2000).
7. For examples of Leenhardts relevance to contemporary New Caledonia, see
http://www.adck.nc/html_en/programme/mwavee.pho?num=38 (accessed 20 April
2005). Mouchenik, a clinical psychologist, is concerned that Leenhardts ideas
directly influenced psychiatric ideas in New Caledonia until recently, allowing most
local psychiatrists to neglect the more multiple evolutions of contemporary
psychoanalysis: familial, group, and transcultural (Mouchenik 2006: 664).
8. Dardel, one of the earliest exponents of social geography in France, was also
Leenhardts brother-in-law.
9. There is, for instance, the literary Leenhardt, in a short story, Boys smell like oranges,
by Guy Davenport, a university friend of Needhams (Davenport 1996). Needham
himself praised Leenhardt for Do Kamo, which he regarded as an exemplary
ethnography of a particular concept (Needham 1972: 15253). When I asked him,
in 2006, where he had first heard of Leenhardt, he said he did not know. Leenhardt
was someone he seemed to have learnt of from very early on (Needham, personal
communication).
271
10. My colleague Peter Parkes comments: Lvi-Strausss refusal to speak of Leenhardt is

still curious: I dont think he was anti-phenomenology, at least with respect to
Merleau-Ponty, more against what he called shop-girl philosophy, maybe regarding
his EHESS predecessor as a sentimental precursor to Sartre (Parkes, personal
communication.). In his reply dated 23 September 2008 to a letter of my own about
his silence, Professor Lvi-Strauss stated, I am unfortunately too oldto try
answering your query. The old fox!
References
Bensa, A. 1990. Des anctres et des hommes: introduction aux thories kanak de la
nature, de laction et de lhistoire (Nouvelle-Caldonie), in R. Boulay (ed.), De jade et
de nacre: patrimoine artistique kanak, Paris: Runion des Muses nationaux.
1995. Chroniques kanak: lethnologie en marche, Paris: Ethnies-Document.
2000. Les ralits mythiques de Maurice Leenhardt, Gradhiva, 27: 9397.
Bensa, A. and I. Leblic (eds). 2000. En pays Kanak: ethnologie, linguistique, archologie,
histoire de la Nouvelle Caldonie, Paris: ditions de la Maison des Sciences de lHomme.
Calame-Griaule, G. 1978. Maurice Leenhardt, pionnier de lethnolinguistique, Journal de
la Socit des Ocanistes, 34: 4344.
Cavignac, J.A. 2001. Maurice Leenhardt e o incio de pesquisa de campo na antropologia
francesa, cchla.ufrn.br/tapera/equipe/julie/maurice_leenhardt.pdf (accessed 4 July
2008).
Clifford, J. 1982. Person and myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian world, Berkeley:
University of California Press.
1988. Comment (on Sangren 1988), Current Anthropology, 29: 42425.
Clifford, J. and G. Marcus (eds). 1986. Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography,
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Crapanzano, V. 1979. Preface to English translation of Do Kamo by Maurice Leenhardt,
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Cusset, F. 2008. French theory: how Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. transformed the
intellectual life of the United States, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Dardel, E. 1954. The mythic: according to the ethnological work of Maurice Leenhardt,
Diogenes, 7: 3351.
Davenport, G. 1996. The Cardiff team: ten stories. New York: New Directions.
Fischer, M. and G. Marcus with S. Tyler. 1988. Comment (on Sangren 1988), Current
Garelli, J. 1995. La phnomnologie du jugement et la dimension cosmomorphique du
corps chez les Canaques, selon Maurice Leenhardt, Droits et cultures, 29: 25574.
Guiart, J. 1998. Maurice Leenhardt: le lien dun homme avec un peuple qui ne voulait pas
mourir, Nouma: Le Rocher--la-Voile.
Guidieri, R. 1984. Labondance des pauvres: six aperus critiques sur lanthropologie, Paris:
Seuil.
Gulati, B.M. 1979. Translators note, to English translation of Do Kamo by Maurice
Leenhardt, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Hemer, S.R. 2008. Poit, personhood, place and mobility in Lihir, Papua New Guinea,
Oceania, 78(1): 10925.
Hirsch, E. 2001. When was modernity in Melanesia?, Social Anthropology, 9(2): 13146.
Jamin, J. 1978. De lidentit la difference: la personne colonise, Journal de la Socit des
Ocanistes, 34: 5156.
Laroche, M.-C. 1978. Lenseignement de Maurice Leenhardt, Journal de la Socit des
Ocanistes, 34: 4548.
272
Jeremy MacClancy
Leenhardt, M. 1930. Notes dethnologie no-caldonienne, Paris: Institut dEthnologie

(Travaux et Mmoires, 8).
1932. Documents no-caldoniens, Paris: Institut dEthnologie (Travaux et Mmoires, 9).
1935. Vocabulaire et grammaire de la langue houalou, Paris: Institut dEthnologie
1937. Gens de la Grande Terre: Nouvelle Caldonie, Paris: Gallimard.
1946. Langues et dialects de lAustro-Melansie, Paris: Institut dEthnologie
1947. Do Kamo: la personne et le mythe dans le monde mlansien, Paris: Gallimard.
LEstoile, B. de. 2007. Une politique de lme: ethnologies et humanisme colonial, in M.
Naepels and C. Salomon (eds), Terrains et destins de Maurice Leenhardt, Paris: EHESS.
LiPuma, E. 1998. Modernity and forms of personhood in Melanesia, in M. Lambek and
A. Strathern (eds), Bodies and persons: comparative perspectives from Africa and
Melanesia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
MacClancy, J. 1986. Unconventional character and disciplinary convention: John Layard,
Jungian and anthropologist, in G. Stocking (ed.), Malinowski, Rivers, Benedict and
others: essays on culture and personality (History of Anthropology 4), Madison:
1995. Brief encounter: the meeting, in Mass Observation, of British surrealism and
popular anthropology, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1(3), 495512.
1996. Popularizing anthropology, in J. MacClancy and C. McDonaugh (eds),
Popularizing anthropology, London: Routledge.
2000. The decline of Carlism (The Basque Series), Reno: University of Nevada Press.
Maschio, T. 1994. To remember the faces of the dead: the plenitude of memory in southwestern
New Britain, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Maurer, B. 2005. Mutual life, Limited: Islamic banking, alternative currencies, lateral reason,
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mouchenik, Y. 2006. Maurice Leenhardt et linvention dune personnalit indigne en
Nouvelle-Caldonie, Annales mdico-psychologiques, 164(8): 65967.
Naepels, M. 1998. Histoires de terres kanaks: conflits fonciers et rapports sociaux dans le region
de Houalou (Nouvelle-Caldonie), Paris: Belin.
2000. Review of Guiart 1998, Oceania, 70(4): 37071.
2007. Notion de personne et dynamique missionaire, in M. Naepels and C.
Salomon (eds), Terrains et destins de Maurice Leenhardt, Paris: EHESS.
Needham, R. 1972. Belief, language and experience, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Salomon, C. 2000. Savoirs et pouvoirs thrapeutiques kanaks, Paris: PUF-INSERM.
Sangren, S. 1988. Rhetoric and the Authority of Ethnography: Post-Modernism and
the Social Reproduction of Texts, Current Anthropology, 29: 40535.
Stephen, M. 1995. Aaisas gifts: a study of magic and the self (Studies in Melanesian
Anthropology 13), Berkeley: University of California Press.
Strathern, M. 1988. The gender of the gift: problems with women and problems with society
in Melanesia, Berkeley: University of California Press.
van Heekeren, D. 2004. Dont tell the crocodile: an existentialist view of Melanesian
myth, Critique of Anthropology, 24(4): 43054.
Wolin, R. 2008. The state of literary theory: Americas tolerance for French radicalism
(review of Cusset 2008), The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle Review, 13 June,
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=ww474bgn53kn7fv2g17ytbnzwr2rxhpt
(accessed 26 June 2008).
Young, M. 1983. Magicians of Manumanua: living myth in Kaluana, Berkeley: University of
California Press.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Alban Bensa, anthropologist and Directeur dtudes at lcole des
Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales (IRIS), Paris, is a specialist in the
Kanak societies of New Caledonia, where Andr-Georges Haudricourt
sent him on a mission starting in 1973. He has conducted ethnolinguistic and social anthropological research focused on politics and
narrative, as well as on the relationship between anthropology and
history. Among his recent publications are La fin de lexotisme:
lanthropologie autrement, Toulouse: Anacharsis 2006; and with Didier
Fassin (eds.), Les politiques de lenqute: preuves ethnographiques, Paris: La
Dcouverte, 2008.
Margaret Buckner completed graduate studies in anthropology at
the University of Paris X-Nanterre under the direction of Professor Eric
de Dampierre, whom she met as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bangassou,
Central African Republic. Still a member of the Laboratoire dethnologie
et de sociologie comparative, she now teaches cultural and linguistic
anthropology at Missouri State University. She has published several
articles on the Zande, but since 1991 has also been carrying out
research among the Manjako of Guinea-Bissau.
Stefania Capone took her PhD from Paris X-Nanterre in 1997 and
her habilitation in 2005. She is currently Directrice de recherche
(Tenured Senior Researcher) at Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the New York
University, and a researcher at CIRHUS, the Center for International
Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, CNRS/NYU (New
York). She is the author of La qute de lAfrique dans le candombl (Paris,
1999; Brazilian edition, 2004; American edition, 2010, Duke
University Press); and Les Yoruba du Nouveau Monde: religion, ethnicit et
nationalisme noir aux tats-Unis (Paris, 2005; Brazilian edition, 2009).
Girodana Charuty is a Directrice dtudes at the cole Pratique des
Hautes tudes in Paris. A Europeanist, she has worked on the
medicalization of madness, Christian custom in Mediterranean Europe
274
Notes on Contributors
and social practices of writing. Her current research is on the history of

Italian anthropology and on ethnographic knowledge developed in the
course of the nineteenth century in the context of missionary activity.
Her publications include: Le Couvent des fous: linternement et ses usages
en Languedoc aux XIXe et XXe sicles, Paris, Flammarion, 1985; Nel paese
del tempo: antropologia dellEuropa cristiana, Naples, Liguori, 1995; Folie,
mariage et mort: pratiques chrtiennes de la folie en Europe occidentale, Paris,
Le Seuil, 1997; and De Martino: les vies antrieures dun anthropologue,
Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, Parenthses/MMSH, 2009.
Anne de Sales is a Researcher in anthropology at the Centre National
de la Recherche Scientifique, a member of the Laboratoire dEthnologie
et de Sociologie Comparative in Nanterre (CNRS-LESC), and a Research
Associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (Oxford).
She has carried out extended periods of fieldwork in Nepal, where her
studies of shamanic practices and oral literature include the monograph
Je suis n de vos jeux de tambours: La religion chamanique des Magar du nord
(Nanterre: Socit dethnologie, 1991). More recently she has published
a series of articles towards a comprehensive ethnography of the Maoist
insurrection that overthrew the royal regime in Nepal in 2006.
Paul Henley is Professor of Visual Anthropology at the University of
Manchester, where he has been Director of the Granada Centre for
Visual Anthropology since its foundation in 1987. Having begun his
career as an Amazonist specialist, he moved into visual anthropology
after training as a documentarist at the National Film and Television
School through a scheme managed by the Royal Anthropological
Institute and funded by the Leverhulme Trust. He has recently
published The Adventure of the Real, a major study of the film methods
of Jean Rouch, with the University of Chicago Press.
Jeremy MacClancy, Professor of Social Anthropology, Oxford Brookes
University, has done major fieldwork in Vanuatu and the Basque
Country. He has published extensively on the histories of anthropology
and of its interchange with literature. His latest book is Expressing
identities in the Basque arena (Oxford: James Currey, 2008).
Peter Parkes is Reader in Historical Anthropology at the University
of Kent. His fieldwork has concentrated on the Hindu Kush region of
eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, particularly among the
non-Islamic Kalasha (Kalash Kafirs) of Chitral District, NWFP,
Pakistan. His research interests include mountain subsistence and
development, verbal arts, visual anthropology, and historical
Notes on contributors
275
anthropology. He has also published extensively on fosterage and

adoptive kinship in Eurasia.
Robert Parkin is a Departmental Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the
University of Oxford. His interests include kinship, the anthropologies of
South Asia and eastern Europe, and the history of French anthropology.
His main works regarding the latter are The dark side of humanity: the work
of Robert Hertz and its legacy (Harwood, 1995), Louis Dumont and
hierarchical opposition (Berghahn, 2003) and The French-speaking
countries, in Fredrik Barth et al., One discipline, four ways (The University
of Chicago Press, 2005). He has also translated work by Henri Hubert,
Robert Hertz and Louis Dumont into English, including Dumonts
Introduction to two theories of social anthropology (Berghahn, 2006).
Laura Rival is University Lecturer in Ecological Anthropology and
Development, and a Fellow of Linacre College. Her doctoral research was
among the Huaorani Indians, on whom she has published numerous
articles and two books (Hijos del Sol, Padres del Jaguar: Los Huaorani de
Ayer y Hoy, Abya Yala 1996, and Trekking Through History: The Huaorani
of Amazonian Ecuador, Columbia University Press 2002). Her research
interests include the impact of development policies on indigenous
peoples; Amerindian conceptualisations of nature and society; and
nationalism, citizenship and state education in Latin America.
Peter Rivire is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at the
University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford.
He has had a life-long interest in the Native Peoples of Lowland South
America. His main works include Marriage among the Trio (1969),
Individual and Society in Guiana (1984), Absent-minded Imperialism
(1995), and a two-volume work, The Guiana Travels of Robert
Schomburgk 18351844 (2006). He has recently edited A History of
Oxford Anthropology (2007), published by Berghahn.
Grard Toffin is an anthropologist, Directeur de recherche at CNRS
and a specialist on the Himalayas. He has worked on the material
culture, social structures and religions of several ethnic groups in Nepal,
in particular the Newar of the Kathmandu valley. His main publications
are Man and his house in the Himalayas (1991), Le palais et le
temple (1993), Lethnologie: la qute de lautre (2005) and Newar society:
city, village and periphery (2007). He is currently preparing a book on a
major Nepali royal festival and is interested in the anthropology of space.
SUBJECT INDEX
A
abian (novices), 185
Acadmie des Sciences de Paris, 127
acculturation, 16, 179, 187
action, 197, 261
action, social, 19, 240
activism, political, 20
ada (custom), 64
adatrecht, 62, 68
advocacy, 57, 59
affinity, 241
Africa, 14, 16, 21, 77, 80, 103, 105,
106, 109, 119, 153, 171, 1828,
1902, 207, 225
East, 226
French West, 62
South, 19, 22, 249
West, 78, 79, 813, 93, 97
Afro-Americanism, 171
agency, 251
agriculture, 2046, 208, 212, 213
swidden (slash and burn), 208
Aguaruna, 137
Ait Amar, 49, 59
Ait Iraten (Kabyles), 48, 49, 52, 57, 61
Albania, 67
Algeria, 11, 12, 27, 45, 47, 60, 65, 66
Algiers, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 58, 60, 68
alim (ulema) (religious scholar[s), 49
alliance, prescriptive, 241
Alliance Evanglique Universelle, 260
alliance theory, 238
alterity, 9, 29, 156, 171
Altiplano, 152, 157, 165, 166
Amazon, 7, 23, 143
America, 22, 182, 225, 242
Black, 171
Latin, 143
South, 142, 154, 163, 225
American Man, 13840
Amerindians, 21, 148, 163
amin (president), 54, 61
anaya (protection), 54, 57, 63

Ancoaquil, 166
Andes, 125, 136, 139, 140, 142, 143, 164
Anduze, 173
Angola, 180, 193
animism, 159
Anne du Patrimoine, 25
Anne sociologique, 6, 8, 22, 26, 31, 160,
192, 243, 258
Anthropologie, 28
anthropology
Anglo-Saxon, 76, 81, 83, 86, 87,
95100, 143, 241, 242, 251
armchair, 43, 46
biological, 144
British, 2, 6, 8, 26, 109, 162, 198,
211, 212
cognitive, 9
cultural, 8
dialogical, 86, 95
four-field, 105
French, passim
lateral, 265, 26970
physical, 3, 29, 105, 128, 130, 136,
139, 141, 144, 147
shared, 86, 96, 97
structural, 144
visual, 75100
anthropometry, 128, 133, 138, 139, 142
Antioquia, 131
antisemitism, 41
anti-structuralism, 17, 20
Aosta, 199
apartheid, 249
apegado, 1345
Apulia, 39
Arabic, 48
Arabs, 134
archaeology, 8, 129, 138, 139, 143,
198, 233
archives, 27
Argentina, 15, 151, 152, 157
278
Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 99
Armenians, 16, 176
art, 171, 172, 175, 178
art, history of, 236
Art Ngre, 77
artefacts, 145
artha, 248
Arts populaires et loisirs ouvriers, 34
Aryans, 239
Ashluslay, 154
Asia, 143, 224, 225, 229, 230
South, 208
Southeast, 197, 200, 208, 209, 210,
215, 226, 227
Asie du Sud-Est et le Monde Indonsien
(ASEMI), 210
Assam, 200
Astrophel and Stella, 1
asymmetry, 118
atlases, linguistic, 210
Auraucanians, 156, 165
Aurs, 10
Australians, 143, 148, 153, 241
Austroasiatic, 209
Aymara, 153, 164
Azande history and political institutions, 114
B
babalawo (diviner), 185, 186
Bahia, 180, 181, 184, 185, 187, 192, 193
Bahnar, 4
ballet, 91
Bandia, 11316, 120, 122
Bandiagara Cliffs, 77, 82
Bangassou, 103, 104, 1079, 113, 114, 120
Bangladesh, 199
Bangui, 109
bantu, 193
barbarians, 233
Baroque, 178
Bastidiana, 171
Belm de Par, 187
belief, 174
Bella, 84
Bendo, 120
Bengal, East, 211, 213
Bnin, 172, 186
Berbers, 12, 45, 46, 48, 60, 62, 668
Bering Straits, 143
Bernice Bishop Museum, 152
Beyliks, 59
bia (soul etc.), 93
Subject index
Bible, 223, 258
Big Men, 229
binaries (binary oppositions), 239, 245,
246, 251
biology, 30, 133, 142, 219, 232, 233
bitti (drum), 89, 91
Blnod-les-Toul, 126
blood groups, 142
Bocage, 39
body, 23, 41, 42, 206, 230, 231, 260, 267
Bogat, 131
Bolivia, 1513, 157, 166
Bonneville, 30
bor, 185, 193
Bororo, 160, 177, 236
botany, 208, 213, 230
Bourg la Reine, 34
Bourgogne, 39
Brahmans, 239, 240, 2458
Brantes, 201
Brazil, 15, 153, 164, 171, 17783, 187,
188, 1903
Bresle Valley, 213
Brianon, 36
brideprice, 67
bridewealth, 114
Brotas, 184
Bureau of American Ethnology, 153
Bureau Politique des Affarires Arabes
(bureaux arabes), 47, 50, 53, 58, 66, 67
Burma, 197, 200, 203, 20911
Burmese, 17, 216
bush school, 30
C
Cak, 200, 201, 206, 209, 216
Calchaqu, 151, 157, 158, 161
Canaques, 23, 258, 268; see also Kanaks
candombl, 16, 172, 17781, 184, 187,
188, 1913
candombl de caboclo, 193
cannibalism, 156, 158
canons, 46
Carhuauz, 164
Caribbean, 140, 187
Cartesianism, 171, 183
cartography, 34
Casa Branca, 193
Casa de Oxumar, 193
caste, 19, 21, 160, 183, 202, 240, 241,
245, 247, 249
catalogues, 35
Subject index
categories, 230
Catholicism, 134
Cauca, 131
Caucasus, 67
causality, 231
Central African Republic, 14, 103, 104, 107
Centre dAnthropologie de Toulouse, 40
Centre dEtudes de lInde et de lAsie du
Sud, 237
Centre dEtudes Indiennes en Sciences
Sociales, 237, 2434
Centre dEtudes Sociologiques, 106
Centre de Documentation et de
Recherches sur lAsie du Sud-Est et le
Monde Indonsien (Cedrasemi), 200
Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique (CNRS), 8, 78, 89, 93,
106, 108, 193, 200, 237
Cvennes, 173
charivari, 41, 43
chiasmus, 183
Chicago, 107
Chile, 151
Chin, 209
China, 210, 220, 223, 224, 227, 229
Chinese, 199, 211
Chipaya, 152, 157
Chiriguano, 152, 157, 158, 160
Chittagong Hills, 197, 199200, 209
Christ, 125
Christianity, 39, 41, 43, 59, 67, 91, 140,
224, 242, 260
Christmas, 41
Chronicle of a summer, 89, 92
Chroniques, 11, 2832, 35
cin-eye, 93
cin-poems, 78
cin-trance, 13, 16, 21, 75, 8992, 94,
956
cinema, ethnographic, 75100
cinema-vrit, 92, 93, 94
circumcision, female, 21
class, 249
Clermont-Ferrand, 178
Clisthenes, 120
Code Civil, 55, 56, 57
Code Pnal, 57
coffee, 116
cognition, 211
Collge de France, 6, 28, 198, 2001, 208
Collge de Sociologie, 182, 235
Colombia, 15, 131, 138, 140, 141, 143, 147
279
Colombian Society of Ethnology, 131
Colonial Exhibition (French), 7, 9
colonialism, 9, 12, 14, 21, 46, 50, 605,
80, 84, 97, 117, 129, 134, 135, 207,
255, 25860, 264, 268
Comit de Vigilance des Intellectuels
Antifascistes, 131
Commune, Paris, 60
comparison, 11, 38
compartmentalization, principle of, 176,
192
concierto, 1345
conflict, 240
congo, 193
Congress of Popular Art, 28
consciousness, collective, 175, 189
Constantople, 235
Contributions to Indian Sociology, 238,
240, 243
cosmology, 81, 83, 246, 248
coutumiers, 5, 61
Creoles, 143, 144
cults, 21, 81, 135, 181, 185, 187, 191, 193
cultural relativism, 8
culture
contact, 179
heroes, 156
material, 133, 136, 138, 1402, 147,
158, 159, 205, 206, 208
and nature, 18
and personality school, 199
D
Dahomey, 186
Dakar, 79
Dakar-Djibouti Expedition, 7, 32, 77
dance, 22, 38, 81, 85
Dasein, 264
Dauphinois, 36
deduction, 2, 171
Dellys, 50
democracy, 50, 58
depth levels, 189
depth sociology, 17, 190
descent theory, 238
dharma, 248
Diaguita, 151
dichotomies, 63
Dieu deau, 98
diffusionism, 7, 17, 20, 140, 142, 143,
210, 213, 232, 238, 239, 240, 251,
255
280
diglossia, 40
Dionysian, 91, 96
Direct Cinema Group, 878, 92
disability, 250
discourse, 14
discrimination, 249, 250
distinction, 246, 251
dividuals, 265
Do Kamo, 259, 260, 266, 268, 269, 270
Do Neva, 258, 259
Dogon, 16, 7785, 98, 99, 160, 182
domestication, 227
Dra el-Mizan, 48, 52, 67
Dravidian, 239
drawing, 33
dreams, 182
dualism, 18, 224, 261
Dutch East Indies, 62
E
Easter Island, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157,
158, 159, 162, 163
Ecole des Annales, 212
Ecole des Chartes, 151
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales (EHESS), 197, 198, 271
Ecole du Louvre, 28, 236
Ecole Franaise dExtrme-Orient, 5, 198,
204
Ecole Franaise de Sociologie, 22930
Ecole Nationale des Langues Orientales
Vivantes, 25, 151, 161, 215
Ecole Polytechnique, 47, 56, 58, 235
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE),
25, 27, 108, 130, 151, 153, 188,
190, 197, 200, 202, 205, 210, 237,
259, 269
Ecole Speciale des Langues Orientales, 215
Ecuador, 15, 125, 127, 129, 132, 138
47
education, 204
efon, 193
efun (chalk), 187
egalitarianism, 19, 24450
egun (revanent), 187
Empire, French, 4, 7
Empire, Second, 60, 64
empiricism, British, 2, 95
encompassment (of contrary etc.), 239,
246, 248, 251
Encyclopdie, 25
epilepsy, 41
Subject index
Epiphany, 41
Equipe de Recherche en Anthropologie
Sociale: Morphologie, Echanges
(ERASME), 2378, 244
Escuela Nacional de Antropologa, 153
Essai sur la religion bambara, 81
essentialism, ethnographic, 2, 3, 8, 9, 11,
17, 20, 22, 172
Ethiopian church movement, 19
ethnicity, 250
ethnobotany, 17, 200, 208, 214
ethnocentrism, 174
ethnofiction, 78
Ethnographie, 28
ethnography
ancient, 146
canonical, 12, 13, 66
dialogical, 12, 13
French, passim
ethnolinguistics, 209, 269
ethnology, 6, 27, 28, 37, 42, 77, 103,
105, 109, 129, 130, 132, 141, 144,
146, 147, 199, 200, 236
ethnopoetics, 66
ethnopsychiatry, 41
ethnozoology, 208
Europe, 37, 2423
evolutionism, 4, 20, 213, 243, 255, 268
exchange, 247
existential events, 264
existentialism, 8, 19, 2634, 266
experience, 16, 18, 21, 22, 29, 33, 41,
174, 221, 263, 266
Exploration scientifique dAlgrie, 66
F
facts, 2, 6, 7, 11, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22,
137, 155, 161, 164, 220, 223, 233,
243
facts, social, 174, 175
family, 4, 134, 136, 137, 160, 203, 207
Far East, 18
fascism, 21, 146
feeding the head, 193
feitura do santo, 193
Fertile Crescent, 223, 229, 231
fertility, 39, 40
fieldwork, passim
fiqh, 49, 56
First World War, 6, 43, 129, 146, 173
fission, 241
Florida, 153
Subject index
folklore, 4, 5, 11, 20, 25, 27, 29, 32, 36,
37, 39, 139, 214, 243
Folklore du Dauphin, 34
food, 133, 136
Fort-Napolon, 12, 47, 48, 51, 52, 53,
57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 67, 68
Fort-National, 61, 68
Franco-Prussian War, 126
Freudianism, 87
Fulani, 84, 90
functionalism, 213, 255
funlade (spirit), 187
fusion, 241
G
Ganges, 248
gay, 250
gender, 250
Gender of the gift, 265
genealogical method, 203
genealogies, 202, 223, 258
Geneva, 165
geography, 35, 139, 177, 212, 213, 243
human, 34, 38
social, 270
Germans, 11, 189, 232
Germany, 21, 22, 134, 146, 237
Gestapo, 131
gestures, 261
Gien, 199
gifts, 245
Godeste, 108
Gold Coast, 76
Gothenburg, 151, 154
government, 247
Gran Chaco, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156,
157, 159
Grand Jeu, 235
Greece, 235
Greeks, 14, 119
Groupement des Universits et Grand
Ecoles de France, 177
Guianas, 156
H
habitus, 233
Haiti, 155, 159, 166, 213, 216
Handbook of American Indian Languages, 147
Handbook of South American Indians, 153
Hanoi, 5, 224
Hanunoo, 208, 211
harp, 112, 117, 118
281
Harvard, 260
Hautes-Alps, 35
Hawaii, 152
hegemony, 262
hierarchy, 3, 18, 191, 224, 239, 240,
245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251,
252, 259, 270
Hierarchy and marriage alliance in south
India, 242
Himalayas, 210
Hindi, 237
Hispanics, 140
Historical Society of Algeria, 50, 66
Histories of the Berbers, 48
historiography, 256
history, 18, 42, 81, 105, 110, 139,
1446, 154, 156, 159, 175, 177,
201, 219, 2313, 240, 242, 243, 255
cultural, 39
of ideas, 243
life, 111
oral, 5, 110
of religions, 25, 42
social, 38
world, 240, 251
holism, 20, 175, 204, 2391, 243
holism, methodological, 190
homicide, 57
LHomme, 162
Homo Aequalis, 238
Homo Hierarchicus, 238, 240, 242
Honolulu, 152
horticulture, 226
householder, 247
houses, 41, 204, 207, 213
Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), 152
human rights, 244
humanism, 15, 1445
hurma (moral reputation), 54, 57
hybridity, 140, 143
Hylean Amazon Project, 153
hysteria, 41
I
ia, 180
Ibarra, 147
ideals, 251
ideas, 221
identity, 15, 19
ideology, 19, 245
idiophones, 112
If cult, 185
282
Ifanhin, 172
ijex, 193
ikhwan (religious confraternities), 59
illocutionary, 261
ilm i-qalam (Islamic jurisprudence), 60
immigrants, 176
Imprimerie Nationale, 199
impurity, 227, 229, 240, 249; see also
pure-impure
imrabden (marabouts), 59
Incas, 134, 139, 140
India, 18, 21, 203, 211, 23552
Indians (American), 1336, 139, 140, 156
indirect rule, 66
individualism, 19, 238, 247, 248, 265, 270
individuation, 263
Indo-China, 62, 68
Indo-European, 140, 142
Indology, 242, 243
Indus Valley, 154
Informants
indirect, 138
intermediary, 137
secondary, 144
inheritance, 52, 53
initiation, 172, 184, 187, 188, 191, 193
Inle Lake, 200
Institut dAmrique Latine, 188
Institut dEthnologie, 6, 14, 129, 146, 207
Institut dEtudes Politiques, 103
Institut des Langues et Civilisations
Orientales, 215
Institut Franais dAfrique Noire (IFAN),
79, 193
Institut Franais dAnthropologie, 1289
Institut Franais dOcanie, 260
Institut International de Coopration
Intellectuelle, 28, 34
Institut National dAgronomie, 219
Institut National des Langues et des
Civilisations Orientales, 200
Institut pour la Recherche et de
Dveloppement (IRD), 22
Institute of Social Anthropology
(Oxford), 237
Instituto de Etnologa, 152
Instituts franco-brsiliens de Haute
Culture, 177
Instruments, musical, 111
intellectualists, 5, 88
interdisciplinarity, 212
International Labour Office, 153
Subject index
internationalism, 146
interpreters, 20
Intha, 200, 201
Inuit, 85
Iroquois, 46
Isre, 34
Islam, 59, 60, 62, 68
Italy, 6, 37, 42
izerf (Berber customary law), 68
J
Jains, 237
jamaa (public assemblies), 46, 53, 54,
57, 61, 64
jazz, 77
J.B. Baillire, 216
J, 160
jeje, 193
Jerusalem, 123
Jews, 224
Jibaros, 132, 1368
jihad (holy war), 59, 60
Journal dAgronomie Tropicale et de
Botanique Appliqu, 208
Journal de la Socit des Amricanistes, 146,
147
Judeo-Christians, 221
jurisprudence, 63, 64
Jurjura massif, 45, 51, 61, 66
K
Kabylia, Kabyle, 1213, 21, 27, 4568
Kadu, 200
Kallar, Pramalai, 236, 237, 240
kama, 248
Kanaks (see also Canaques), 2278
karo (body), 267
Kathmandu, 210, 215
Kayap, 160, 164
Kengu (river), 116
ketu, 193
khoja (interpreter/secretary), 12, 489
Khyang, 209
kinship, 58, 112, 158, 160, 200, 203,
204, 209, 238, 240, 241, 242, 244,
247
kinship, spiritual, 41
kisoro (board game), 112
Kontiki expedition, 159
Kshatriyas, 2456
Kubenkankrey, 164
Kyoto, 206
Subject index
L
LAnthropologie, 29
Lethnographie, 28
La Kabyle et les coutumes kabyles, 4568
La Maison Rustique, 216
La notion de personne en Afrique noire, 89
La pens sauvage, 27
La religion et la magie songhay, 81
La Tarasque, 4, 199, 237, 242
Laboratoire dEthnologie et de Sociologie
Comparative, 108, 122
Laboratoire de Sociologie de la
Connaissance, 189
labour, division of 204
language(s), 111, 118, 138, 140, 142,
182, 197, 199, 203, 233, 258
Indo-European, 142
Melanesian, 19
North American, 141
Romance, 35
South American, 142
Langues O, 215
Laos, 21011
Lascaux caves, 227
Latin, 180
Lausanne, 151
lavagem das contas (washing of the
necklaces), 184, 192
law(s), 45, 46, 48, 516, 58, 62, 68,
160, 191, 207, 247
Le rve plus fort que la mort, 75
League of the Iroquois, 46
learned societies, 3, 33
Leiden, 62, 68
Leningrad, 233
Les demi-savants, 27
Les forms lmentaires de la vie religieuse,
26, 174, 229
Les langues du monde, 129
Les rites de passage, 5, 26, 27
Les structures lmentaires de la parent, 239
Les tabours davant: tourou et bitti, 89
lesbian, 250
levels, 239, 246, 247, 250
Lexotique est quotidian, 23
liberty, 248
life-cycle, 204
liminality, 12, 37
limit situations, 264
linguistics, 25, 40, 129, 130, 135, 138,
140, 1425, 146, 147, 20913,
2313, 267
structural, 8
283
literature, 15, 35, 42, 1267, 175, 179,
180, 188
oral, 112
Loiret, 199
Lorraine, 126
Lucania, 37
Lyce St Louis, 219, 235
M
Madabazouma, 104
me-de-santo (chief priestess), 184, 193
Maghrib, 60, 62
magic, 379, 155, 156, 191, 192, 270
magico-religious, 42
Maison des Sciences de lHomme, 237
Maison Franco-Japonaise, 206
Malayo-Polynesian, 143, 148, 153, 165
Mali, 77
Maliki, 49, 52, 56, 59, 63, 64
Malvire-sur-Desle, 105
mamara college, 67
Man with a movie camera, 923
mana, 228
Mandalay, 200
mandrel, 110
Manuel dethnographie, 6, 207, 212, 216
Manuel de folklore franaise contemporaine,
4, 25, 28, 30, 32, 36, 37, 3943
maps, 210
Mapuche, 165
marabouts, 59
Maranho, 187, 192
Marbial Valley, 166
marginal man, 179
marginality, 173
Marma, 200, 201, 204, 207, 208, 211,
213, 216
marriage, 40, 43, 115, 134, 136, 158,
160, 201, 203, 205, 214, 249
cross-cousin, 241
rules, positive, 241
voodoo, 159
Marxism, 2, 8, 17, 38, 87, 189, 190,
202, 232, 233
Masai, 29
Masques dogon, 98
Massif Central, 210
Mataco, 152, 154, 157, 160
materiality, 219, 221, 222, 230, 233, 234
matriarchy, 67
Max Planck Institute of Social
Anthropology (Halle), 22
Mboki, 108, 111
284
Mbomu (river), 116
meaning, 42
medicine, 41, 43, 127
Mediterranean, 37, 242
mediums, 13
Melanesia, 18, 19, 226, 229, 256, 258,
260, 264, 265, 268, 270
Mlanges de sociologie religieuse et de
folklore, 31
memory, 39, 177, 190, 263
Mendoza, 151
mentality, 183
mentality, pre-logical, 176, 258
Mercure de France, 11, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33,
36, 43
mestizos, 132, 136, 143, 144
metaphor, 13, 11718, 263
metaphysics, 41, 175, 181, 187
Mthode de lethnographie, 81
mtissage, 21, 1403, 232
Mexico City, 153
Middle East, 18
Middle Kingdom, 231
migration, 143, 156, 221
mind, 231
Mindoro, 208
Minot, 39
Minotaure, 77
miscenegation, 140
Mission Society, 259
Mission Sociologique du Haut-Oubangui
(MSHO), 108, 122, 123
missionaries, 4, 5, 19, 23, 37, 135, 156,
257, 258, 260
Modern Art Week, 178
modernism, modernity, 14, 87, 178,
2404, 249
moksha, 248
Mon-Khmer, 209
monographic approach, 2013
montage, 93
Montauban, 19
Moqrani, 68
Morocco, 62
Mu river, 200
Mukhtasar, 56
multiculturalism, 9
Muse dEthnographie, 4
Muse dHistoire Naturelle, 3
Muse de lHomme, 9, 14, 22, 108, 125,
127, 1302, 146, 147, 198, 199,
204, 206, 236
Subject index
Muse des Arts et Traditions Populaires,
4, 25, 28, 29, 2358, 243
Muse du Quai Branly, 9, 22, 131, 146
museology, 235
Musum National dHistoire Naturelle
(MNHN), 28, 12730, 146, 147, 208,
209
museums, 3, 910, 27, 141, 251
music, 14, 111, 113, 117, 193
Muslim (s), 51, 52, 55, 59, 62, 64, 224
mysticism, 15, 16, 1726, 178, 1828,
191, 192
myth(s), 19, 137, 138, 1557, 160, 165,
181, 2614, 266, 270
Mythes et legends dAustralie, 26
mythico-ritual, 63
mythologists, 269
N
Nag, 180, 186, 193
Nambikwara, 177
Nancy, 126
Nandi, 29
Nanook of the North, 85
Nanterre, 14, 103, 108, 122, 123, 200
nata (pastor-evangelist), 258, 267, 268
National Committee of Geography, 216
National Film Board of Canada, 87
National Institute of Anthropology, 147
National Institute of Ethnology, 131
National Philosophy Faculty, 179
National University of Tucumn, 152
nationalism, 146
nature, 18
Nayar, 241
Near East, 224
Negev, 123
Neolithic, 16, 21, 163, 224
Nepal, 207, 210, 213, 215
Neuchtel, 27, 33
New Britain, 262
New Caledonia, 4, 19, 21, 228, 25662,
2659, 270
New Guinea, 229, 264, 270
New School of Social Research, 8
New World, 4
New York, 8, 179
Newar, 207, 215
Ngbandi, 114
nguinza (money), 105
Niamey, 79, 89
Nice, 30
Subject index
Niger
river, 78, 80
territory, 79, 84, 89
Nmes, 173
Nivacle, 154
non-modern, 243
Normandy, 39, 199, 209
Notes and Queries, 203, 216
Nouvelle Caldonie, see New Caledonia
Nouville, 17, 199, 2014, 209, 211,
213, 214, 216
Nzakara, 14, 21, 103, 10722
O
ob, obaj, 180, 193
observation, 19
participant, 9, 83, 185, 188, 203
Oceania, 224, 225, 227231
ogan, 180, 193
Oju Oba, 186
opposition
binary, 19, 239, 245, 246, 251
hierarchical, 18, 239, 2457,
24952
Organisation pour la Recherche
Scientifique et Technicque de lOutreMer (ORSTOM), 8, 107
orix (saint), 180, 193
Oryza, 208
Oxford, 18, 237, 241, 255
P
pai-de-santo (chief priest), 184, 193
Pakistan, East, 199200, 209, 216
Papua New Guinea, 229, 264, 270
Paris, 7, 19, 25, 77, 78, 107, 109, 128,
130, 143, 187, 188, 199, 207, 237,
242, 258, 259, 260
parody, 40
parole, 261
participation, mythic, 264, 267, 270
participations, law of, modes of, 190, 258
paysannat system, 116
peasants, 213
personage, 261, 267
personhood, 19, 38, 41, 42, 261, 2637,
270
perspectivism, 156
Peru, 151, 153
phatic speech, 221
phenomenology, 8, 12, 19, 189, 269, 271
philology, 57
philosophy, 15, 42, 105, 1267, 130,
285
146, 173, 175, 258
photography, 33, 98, 184, 188, 202
Picardy, 199, 219
pigs, 2289
Pilaga, 157, 160
plants, 18
poetry, poets, 48, 77, 109, 11112, 126,
172, 175, 181, 182, 193, 263
Poland, 27
politeness, 221
politics, 14, 20, 204, 211
polygyny, 249
Polynesia, 155, 158, 159, 163, 207
Ponts et Chausses (Grand Ecole), 79
Popular Front, 131
Portuguese, 180, 204
positivism, 56, 174, 190
possession, spirit, 13, 16, 78, 79, 84, 89,
90, 934
postmodernism, 8, 13, 76, 867, 255,
262, 271
post-structuralism, 19, 23, 2602, 266
potlatch, 153
pottery, 27
power, 42, 211, 240, 245
practice(s), 8, 13, 21, 62, 221, 222, 230,
245, 2501, 252
practice, theory of, 63
Prague, 28
Pramali Kallar, 237, 240
Pre-Colombian, 139, 147
predation, 156
prehistory, 29, 105, 147
pre-logical, 176, 258
primitivism, 268
Protestant(s), 19, 173, 257, 259
Provence, 36, 199
psychiatry, 270
psychoanalysis, 8, 32, 178, 270
psychology, 18, 105, 1746, 189, 203,
204, 269
social, 105, 174, 179, 192
pure/impure, 18, 227, 229, 240, 249
purity, 232
Pyangaon, 215
Q
qadi (judge), 61
qanun (qawanin) (canon), 12, 4668
Quechua, 1326, 140, 142, 147, 153
questionnaires, 137
Quito, 147
286
R
race, 15, 128, 134, 136, 13941, 153,
190, 244, 250
racism, 61, 135, 141, 144, 146, 249,
255, 268
Rafai, 114
Rahmaniyya order, 59, 60, 67
raqba (feud), 57
rationality, 2, 135, 182, 263, 269
Cartesian, 171
Rauto, 262, 263
realism, 93
reason, 162, 191
reasoning, deductive, 2, 171
rebirth, 248
Recherches en sciences humaines, 106
Rechtsgeschichte, 55
Recife, 179, 187, 192
reflexivity, 171
regionalism, 335
relativism, cultural, 8
relativity of groups, 241
religion(s), 6, 15, 18, 3942, 81, 1358,
155, 158, 159, 165, 171, 173, 174,
1769, 182, 187, 204, 206, 207,
211, 215, 240, 262, 263
African, 16, 190
Afro-Brazilian, 16
history of, 25, 29
Muslim, 59
remainders, 118
Renaissance, 143
renunciation, 238, 247, 248
representations, 18, 221, 230
collective, 175, 244
reproduction, cultural, 7
republicanism, 58
resistance, 11
reversal, 239
Revue Africaine, 50
Revue de lHistoire des Religions, 26
rice, 208, 210
rights, human, 244
Rio de Janeiro, 177, 179
Riobamba, 1326
ritual(s), 7, 12, 30, 33, 3543, 77, 85,
133, 135, 158, 178, 1845, 205,
228, 245, 246, 248
rituals of atonement, 42
role, 266
Romans, 55, 233, 267
rtie, 40
Subject index
Roussillon, 199
Rules of sociological method, 22
S
sacred, 178, 182
sacrifice, 246
saints, 43, 180
Salonica, 129, 235
Salvador de Bahia, 178, 179, 183, 184, 193
Salvation, 247
Sanga, 82
Sango, 122
Sanskrit, 237
sanza (thumb piano), 112
So Liuz do Maranho, 192
So Paulo, 16, 177, 178, 187, 188, 192
Sar Luk, 23
Savoy, 30, 36
Sayyid, 12, 49
science, 181
science fiction, 78
Sciences Po, 103
Second Empire, 60, 64
Second World War, 7, 8, 11, 27, 39, 153,
236
Sedan, 60
Seine-Maritime, 209
self, 2601, 263
self-development, 19
semiology, 263
Senegal, 4
shamanism, 156, 165
sharia, 51, 55, 59, 61
Shudras, 237
Sigui, 85, 98
singularity (seeing, thinking in), 14,
11821, 2334
Sirens, 185, 191
Smithsonian Institution, 131, 147, 153
socialism, 134
Socialist Party, 131
Sociedad Colombiana de Etnologa, 131
Socit dAnthropologie de Paris, 128
Socit dEtudes Alfred Mtraux, 165
Socit de Folklore Franais, 28
Socit des Amricanistes de Paris, 128,
129, 131, 147
Socit des Nations, 28
Socit des Observateurs de lHomme, 3, 10
Socit des Sultanats, 117
Socit Franaise de Psychologie, 212
sociography, 2001
Subject index
sociology, 48, 18, 20, 27, 42, 105, 109,
130, 1729, 183, 18792, 204, 237,
239, 243
depth, 17, 190
rural, 213
sociometry, 1045
Somme, 209
Songhay, 13, 78, 80, 81, 84, 85, 93, 94, 99
Sorbonne, 28, 79, 130, 198, 210
sorcery, 39
Sorko, 84
Soudan, 77
soul(s), 23, 159, 183, 185, 187
Soviet Union, 233
space, 207, 213, 220
Spain, 67
Spanish, 134, 139, 142, 191
Sre, 22
St Besse (cult), 6, 31, 199
St Paul, 267
state, 19
status, 240
Stimmung, 91, 94, 96
Strasbourg, 179
stratification, social, 247
structural-functionalism, 8, 255
structuralism, 2, 3, 7, 8, 17, 18, 20, 40,
87, 88, 125, 144, 145, 148, 171,
198, 202, 213, 230, 231, 235,
23845, 251, 255, 256
structure, 19
substance, 249
sub-stratum theories, 239, 240
Sud e magia, 38
suelto, 1345
suicide, 137, 153
superstition, 15, 39
surrealism, surrealists, 13, 767, 88, 91,
96, 99, 163, 182
survivals, 32, 239
Sweden, 15, 151
Switzerland, 15, 27, 35, 151, 191
symbolism, 19, 3742, 206, 263
symmetry, 118
syncretism, 16, 178, 187, 192, 194
T
taboo, 227, 228
Tabou et totemisme Madagascar, 28
taddart (village), 54
Tahoua, 75
tajmaat (assembly), 53
287
Tamang, 207
Tamazirt, 51, 61, 67
Tamil, 237
Tamil Nadu, 236, 237, 242, 251
Tamils, 18, 239, 242
tapirage, 165
tarentism, 39
techniques, technology, 17, 200, 2059,
2223, 232
Terre Humaine, 10
terreiro (cult house), 1801, 1847, 193
Thai, 209
theology, 257
theory, 2, 10, 15 22, 160, 172, 189,
198, 213, 241, 257
of practice, 13
Third Republic, 21, 46
Tibetan, 199
Tibeto-Burman, 200, 209, 215
time, 389, 40, 118, 203
Toba, 152, 157, 160
Torres Straits expedition, 7
total, totalities, 21112, 222
totalitarianism, 240
totemism, 6, 30, 136, 160, 270
Toulouse, 40
tourou (drum), 89, 90, 91, 94
tradition, invention of, 12
trance, 13, 16, 21, 91, 180, 186, 192
transactionalism, 12
transactions, 63
transcendence, 2245, 232, 246, 248
transition, 12
translation, 241, 262
travellers, 9, 28
tribes, 240
Trickster, 119
Tristes tropiques, 16, 22, 167, 186, 200
Trobriands, 125
Trocadro, 4, 9, 10, 14, 22, 28, 130,
146, 147, 198
Tsachilas, 136
Tuareg, 48, 65
Tucumn, 152, 153
Tup-Guaran, 15, 151, 156
Tupinamba, 151, 156, 157
Turks, 59
twins, 118
U
Ubangui river, 113, 120, 122
Uele river, 113
Subject index
288
ulama, 46, see also alim
Ulysses, 191
Une esthtique perdue, 14
UNESCO, 21, 123, 153, 159, 165, 166,
199, 203, 216
Union Rationaliste, 219
United States, 249
universalism, 232
universities, 3, 8
Untouchables, 245
urf (customary usages), 64
Uro, 157, 166
Uro(u)-Chipaya, 152, 157, 158
Uttar Pradesh, 238, 242
W
war, 158, 245
washing of the necklace, 184, 192
Wayapi, 156
Wasigny, 126
weapons, 136
West, 19, 239, 244, 245, 24752
wheat, 18
Whigs, 255, 256, 265, 270
Whites, 134, 191
witch doctors, 133
witchcraft, 136, 137
work, 250
Writing culture, 262
V
Valence, 16, 176
value(s), 3, 1819, 207, 237, 23941,
24550
Vanuatu, 228
varnas, 245
Vedas, 245, 246
vegetarianism, 250
Versailles, 177
Vichy, 79, 84, 131, 259
Vienna school, 140, 143
Vietnam, 4, 17, 22, 21011, 223
Vincennes, 7
Virgin, 41
voodoo, 159, 160, 162, 166
Vungara dynasty, 113, 114
Y
Yale, 152
Yoruba, 186
youth, 41
Yuma, 148
Z
Zande, 14, 107, 108, 11123
Zen, 220
Zerma, 84, 89, 93
zima (cult priests), 90
zoology, 230
NAME INDEX
A
Ageron, C.R., 58, 61, 66, 67, 68, 69
Alain, 131
Aleijadinho, 178
Allen, N.J., 22, 23, 24, 70, 130, 148,
250, 252
Allier, R., 173
Althusser, L., 1, 2, 8
Amadign Dolo, 85
Amado, J., 179, 180, 184
Andrade, M. de, 178
Andrade, O. de, 178
Ans, A.-M. d, 164, 167
Anthony, R., 128
Aruz, J., 146, 147, 148, 149
Arbousse-Bastide, P., 173, 177
Archaimbault, C., 198
Aristotle, 182
Armstrong, L., 91
Aron, R., 106, 117, 123
Aucapitaine, H., 66, 67, 69
Aurgan, P., 23
Auroi, C., 152, 154, 167
B
Bachelard, G., 231
Baillire, J.B., 205, 216
Baker, J., 77
Balandier, G., 9, 191, 193, 194
Bangbanzi, R., 117
Barrau, J., 208, 244, 252
Barraud, C., 244, 252
Barthes, R., 1, 263
Bastide, R. 5, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 70,
171196
Bataille, G., 151, 161, 167, 169, 182, 235
Bate, D., 98, 100
Bateson, G., 222
Baudrillard, J., 1, 262
Beaud, S., 22, 23
Bdoucha, G., 215
Behar, R., 67, 69
Bellwood, P., 143, 148
Belmont, N., 25, 28
Bensa, A., 17, 18, 266, 268, 270, 271,
273
Berbrugger, L.A., 50, 66

Berger, L., 22, 24
Bergson, H., 264
Bernand, C., 147, 148, 149
Bernard, A., 47, 50, 51, 52, 56, 60, 62,
66, 67, 68, 69
Bernot, D, 199, 216
Bernot, L., 2, 5, 9, 10, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20,
21, 197218
Berque, J., 45, 66, 67, 68
Berrouet, E., 159
Bertholet, D., 148
Betts, R.F., 61, 69
Beylier, C., 192, 194
Bing, F., 162, 163, 166, 167
Blancard, R., 199, 203, 204, 214, 217
Blanckaert, C., 9, 23, 63, 69, 149
Bloch, Marc, 212
Bloch, Maurice, 145, 149, 250, 253
Blue, J., 88, 100
Boas, F., 8, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145,
146, 147, 148, 151
Bougl, C., 160, 245
Boulbet, J., 198
Bourdieu, P., 1, 8, 13, 62, 63, 68, 69, 71,
233, 251
Bousquet, G.H., 55, 62, 67, 68, 69, 71
Braudel, F., 177, 180
Breton, A., 91
Broca, H., 28
Bromberger, C., 11, 24, 43
Bruneau, M., 201, 217
Buckner, M., 14, 273
Burghart, R., 248, 252
Burke, E., 68, 69
Burns, P., 68, 70
C
Caillois, R., 182, 194, 235
Campbell, L., 142, 149
Capone, S., 273
Cardoso, I., 178, 195
Carelli, M., 177, 192, 195
Carette, E., 48, 66, 70
Carlos, A., 150
Castelain, J.P., 136, 149
Name index
290
Cfa, D., 9, 23
Certeau, M. de, 1
Cervoni, A., 99, 100
Chaix, B., 35
Chanock, M., 68, 70
Charuty, G., 4, 11, 12, 274
Chevasse, P., 127, 148, 149
Chirac, A., 105, 123
Chiva, D., 25, 28, 43
Chomsky, N., 231
Christelow, A., 68, 70
Clancy-Smith, J.A., 67, 70
Clastres, P., 16, 19
Clifford, J., 19, 22, 77, 80, 83, 98, 100,
198, 217, 257, 258, 260, 261, 262,
263, 266, 267, 268, 271
Cohen, M., 28, 150
Colleyn, J.P., 97
Colonna, F., 68, 70
Comte, A., 56
Condominas, G., 9, 17, 23, 200, 214
Conklin, H.C., 208, 211, 217
Cooper, J., 154, 155, 167, 169
Copans, J., 10, 22, 23
Coppet, D. de, 3, 238, 244, 252
Crapanzano, V., 43, 57, 266, 271
Cuisenier, J., 25, 43
Cusset, F., 10, 22, 23, 262, 271, 272
D
Da Silva, V.G., 188, 195
Damour Zika, 84
Dampierre, E. de, 9, 103124
Daumas, E., 48, 57, 66, 67
Davis, N.Z., 24, 43
Davis, W., 161
De Martino, E., 37, 38, 39, 43, 44, 274
Delacampagne, C., 3, 23, 244, 252
Delafosse, M., 6, 7, 9
Delamarre, M., 224, 234
Demangeon, A., 212
Derrida, J., 23, 262
Descola, P., 8
Dias, N., 129, 138, 141, 145, 146, 149
Dieterlen, G., 7, 11, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85,
88, 98, 100
Dion, R., 212
Djabir, 115,
Dostal, W., 48, 57, 66, 67
Douglas, M., 98, 100
Dournes, J., 22
Dresch, P., 68, 70
Drew, R., 87
Duarte, P., 131, 178
Dumas, G., 177, 195
Dumzil, G., 242
Dumont, J., 235
Dumont, L., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 14, 15, 16, 18,
19, 20, 21, 23, 199, 200, 202, 217,
235254
Dumont, V.E., 235
Dundes, A., 27, 43
Durham, M.E., 67, 70
Durkheim, E., 1, 5, 6, 7, 11, 18, 22, 23,
26, 28, 31, 37, 42, 43, 68, 72, 128
Dussn de Reichel, 126, 132, 140, 142,
148, 149
Duvigneaud, J., 193, 195
E
Eaton, M., 98, 100
Echeverria, R., 185, 186, 193, 196
Ellington, D., 91
Emerit, M., 67, 70
Evan-Pritchard, E.E., 14, 18, 23, 112, 113,
114, 122, 123, 124, 237, 241, 252
F
Fabar, P., 48, 57, 70
Fabre, D., 25, 28, 40, 43
Fabre-Vassas, C., 41, 44
Faron, L., 165, 167
Favret-Saada, J., 39, 44, 45
Febvre, L., 177, 188, 192, 195, 199,
212, 215, 216, 217, 237
Fraud, L.C., 66, 70
Fernandes, F., 156
Ferry, J., 117, 124
Fieschi, J.-A., 88, 100
Fine, A., 41
Flaherty, R., 85
Forbes, J., 98, 100
Foucault, M., 1, 8, 262
Fox, R.G., 11, 24
Francqui, Commandant, 115
Frazer, J.G., 37, 148, 150, 158, 161
Frmaux, J., 66, 70
Friedberg, C., 208
Friedemann, N.S. de, 131, 149
Fulchignoni, E., 91, 94, 99, 100
G
Gaillard, G., 3, 4, 24
Galey, J.-C., 240, 241, 244
Name index
291
Gellner, E., 68, 69, 70

Georgakas, D., 98, 100
Gernet, J., 224, 234
Giddens, A., 251
Gil, G., 186
Gilissen, J., 68, 70
Gingrich, A., 11, 24
Giorgio de Chirico, 77, 99
Gjeov, S., 67, 70
Godelier, M., 2, 8, 24
Gnzalez Surez, F., 136, 139, 147, 149
Goodman, J.E., 66, 70
Gould, S.J., 255
Gourmont, R. de, 28, 36
Graebner, F., 232
Granet, M., 190
Grenand, P., 156, 167
Griaule, M., 68, 11, 13, 16, 224, 32,
77, 7985, 88, 98, 99, 100, 160,
181, 182, 198, 269, 271
Gruzinski, S. 136, 149
Gueydon, (Admiral de), 61, 70
Guiart, J., 268, 271, 272
Guimaraes, A.S.A., 192, 195
Gurvitch, G., 8, 17, 98, 178, 179, 188,
189, 190, 193, 194, 195
Hirsch, E., 265, 271

Hobbes, T., 63
Hocart, A., 213, 217
Hodgson, B., 210
Holleman, J.F., 68, 71
Hornborg, A., 143, 149
Horton, R., 106
Hubert, H., 175, 275
Hugo, V., 233
Hurgronje, R., 8
Hurgronje, S., 62
H
Hacoun-Campredon, P., 67, 70
Haekel, J., 140, 149
Haffner, P., 97, 100
Hall, G., 147, 149
Hallbwachs, M., 173, 175, 176
Hamy, E.-T., 4, 8, 17, 98, 128
Hannemann, T., 45, 52, 56, 60, 63, 66,
67, 70
Hanoteau, A., 12, 13, 20, 21, 4573
Harcourt, R. d, 126, 149
Harris, O., 147
Hasluck, M., 67, 71
Haudricourt, A.-G., 9, 10; 17, 18, 20,
200, 206, 208, 213, 214, 219234
Heekeren, D. van, 263, 234, 266, 272
Heidegger, 19, 232, 263, 264
Henley, P., 7, 13, 16, 75102, 274
Hennebelle, G., 97, 101
Hritier, F., 8
Herskovits, M., 179, 192, 195, 196
Hertz, R., 6, 24, 31, 43, 44, 128
Heusch, L. de, 1, 8, 100
Hevezy, G. de, 154
Heyerdahl,T., 159
K
Kalt, J.P., 147, 149
Kant, E., 225
Karsten, 147
Kemlin, J., 4
Kemper, M., 67, 68, 70, 71
Kerns, V., 131, 149
Khalil ibn Ishaq, 56, 60, 71
Koch-Grnberg, 147
Kovalevsky, M.M., 68, 71
Krickeberg, 147
Kropotkin, P., 68, 71
I
Illo Gaoudel, 84
Izard, M., 147, 148
J
Jamin, J., 10, 23, 43, 44, 77, 98, 101,
130, 148, 148, 195, 266, 269, 271
Jijn caamano, J., 147
Johnson, C., 141, 144, 146, 148, 149
Jolas, T., 39
Julien, C.-A., 66, 68, 71
Jung, 19, 272, 263
Just, R., 71
Jutra, C., 99, 101
L
LEstoile, B. de, 7, 9, 10, 22, 24, 268, 272
Lacan, J., 1, 8
Lam Ibrahim Dia, 84
Landaburu, J., 142, 147, 149
Langevin, P., 131
Laplantine, F., 22, 24
Laroche, M.C., 163, 167, 269, 271
Latour, B., 1
Laurire, C., 127, 128, 129, 130, 136,
137, 138, 141, 146, 147, 148, 149
Laveleye, E., 68, 71
292
Lazreg, M., 67, 71
Le Bouler, J.-P., 151, 167, 193, 195, 196
Le Chatelier, A., 200
Le Cour Grandmaison, O., 68, 71
Le Play, F., 4, 5, 28
Leach, E., 138, 149, 166, 167
Leacock, R., 87
Lautaud, P., 36
Leenhardt, F., 257
Leenhardt, M., 5, 19, 21, 23, 160, 176,
190, 195, 255272
Lefvre, L., 67, 71
Lehmann, 147
Leiris, M., 7, 22, 24, 43, 44, 100, 101,
107, 108, 161, 167, 182, 193, 195,
198, 235,
Len, L., 25, 127, 139, 146, 147, 149
Leontovitch, F.I., 71
Leroi-Gourhan, A., 4, 6, 17, 198, 199,
200, 206, 214, 216, 230
Letourneux, A., 12, 13, 4574
Levallois, M., 67, 71
Lvi-Strauss, C., 1, 2, 7, 8, 14, 16, 17,
18, 19, 22, 24, 27, 37, 39, 42, 44,
125, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148,
149, 160, 165, 166, 167, 171, 186,
191, 195, 198, 199, 200, 214, 216,
217, 230, 231, 232, 236, 237, 238,
240, 241, 242, 245, 246, 250, 251,
253, 269, 271
Lvy-Bruhl, L., 6, 14, 28, 37, 128, 129,
130, 131, 146, 161, 162, 166, 175,
176, 190, 195
Linant de Bellefonds, Y., 66, 71
Linton, R., 179, 196
LiPuma, E., 265, 272
Lorcin, P.M.E., 61, 66, 67
Lottman, H., 131, 149
Lowie, R., 131, 154, 160
Luc, B., 51, 57, 71
Luce, G.H., 209, 216
Lhning, A., 180, 193, 195
Lyautey, M., 7, 68, 69
M
MacCarthy, O., 47, 71
MacClancy, J., 5, 6, 19, 24, 255272
Mach, 264, 270
MacMahon (Marshal), 57, 71
Madan, T.M., 240, 241, 244, 252, 253
Mah, A., 45, 53, 57, 61, 63, 66, 67, 68
Maine, H., 160
Name index
Malaurie, J., 22
Malinowski, B., 7, 15, 19, 42, 53, 62, 63,
81, 82, 98, 99, 101, 125, 149, 150,
160, 176
Mamber, S., 87, 98, 101
Mamdani, M., 68, 71
Marcel, J.-C., 189, 190, 194, 195
Marcorelles, L., 87, 101
Marcus, G., 19, 271
Marcy, G., 67, 71
Marillier, L., 25
Marin, L., 28
Mary, A., 191, 194, 195
Maschio, T., 262, 263, 266, 272
Masqueray, E., 45, 67, 72, 68, 70
Massignon, L., 201
Maunier, R., 63, 72
Maurer, B., 265, 270, 272
Mauss, M., 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15,
17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26,
27, 28, 37, 44, 63, 80, 81, 86, 88,
128, 129, 130, 146, 148, 151, 152,
153, 175, 176, 189, 192, 196, 204,
206, 207, 211, 212, 216, 217, 229,
230, 232, 234, 236, 239, 240, 241,
243, 251, 253, 259
Meillassoux, C., 2
Merleau-Ponty, M., 1, 8, 271
Mtraux, A., 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 105,
131, 151169, 185, 186, 193, 196
Mzires, B. de, 116
Michelet, J., 67, 72
Millet, S., 178
Milliot, L., 47, 50, 51, 52, 56, 60, 62, 66,
67, 68, 69, 72
Mistral, F., 36
Moffat, M., 240, 244, 252, 253
Monbeig, P., 177
Monnier, A., 152, 154, 167
Montagne, R., 45, 68, 72
Montesquieu, 55
Moore, S.F., 68, 72
Morand, M., 67, 72
Morchand, G., 198
Moreno, Dr., 104, 124
Morgan, L. H., 46, 73
Morin, E., 89, 92
Motta, R., 181, 196
Moura, C.E.M., 193, 196
Moussa Hamidou, 84
Murra, J., 193, 196
Muttusami, Tevar, 236
Name index
N
Naepels, 267, 268, 270, 272
Nauton, P., 210, 217
Needham, J., 206, 217
Needham, R., 27, 44, 256, 257, 270, 272
Nef, J., 105
Neumann-Spallart, F.X., 105
Neveu, E. de, 67, 72
Nietzsche, F. 91, 99
Nobrega, C., 185, 186, 193, 196
Nordenskild, N.E., 15, 143, 147, 151,
154, 155, 158, 165, 169
O
Ould-Braham, O., 67, 72
P
Parain, C., 202, 223
Park, R.E., 179, 196
Parker, E., 46
Parkes, P., 12, 13, 270, 271, 274
Parry, J., 250, 253
Parsons, T., 251
Patorni, F., 53, 72
Patrinos, H.A., 147, 149
Paulme, D., 7, 11, 107, 160
Peixoto, F.A., 174, 175, 177, 178, 182,
192, 195, 196
Pergaud, L., 36
Perkins, K.J., 66, 67, 72
Pessoa, J., 179
Piault, M.-H., 98, 101
Pina-Cabral, J., 149
Pineda Camacho, R., 126, 130, 138,
141, 142, 143, 147, 148
Pingaud, M.C., 39
Plato, 119, 182, 225
Pocock, D., 238, 240, 243
Poussereau, L.M., 66, 67, 72
Prdal, R., 75, 100, 101
Preuss, 147
Price, S., 67, 98, 101
Prins, H., 152, 165, 166, 169
Privat, J.M., 29, 44
Pythagorus, 119
Q
Quatrefages, A. de, 4, 9
Queirz, M.I.P. de, 173, 180, 183, 185, 196
293
R
Rabih, 110
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R., 160, 237, 239
Ramos, A., 179, 192, 195, 196
Randon, Marshal, 48, 49, 58, 61, 64, 66
Ravalet, C., 184, 192, 196
Redfield, R., 105, 179, 196
Reichel-Dolmatoff, G., 131
Renan, E., 36, 51, 72
Renou, L., 237
Renshaw, J., 160, 169
Rey, P.P., 2, 8
Richard, G., 173, 174, 175, 192, 196
Richardson, M., 98, 101
Ricoeur, P., 1
Rinn, L., 68, 72
Rival, L., 1, 8, 14, 15, 23, 275
Rivers, W.H.R., 203, 217
Rivet, P., 6, 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22,
28, 125150, 152, 153, 154, 165, 198
Rivire, G.-H., 4, 22, 28, 235
Rivire, P., 15, 16, 21, 275
Roberts, H., 68, 72
Robin, J.N., 68, 72
Rochereau, H.J., 138, 150
Rogers, S., 5, 24
Rohmer, E., 87, 101
Rosfelder, R., 82
Rouch, J., 7, 9, 11, 13, 16, 20, 21,
75102, 274
Rouget, G., 113, 124
Rousseau, 163, 167
Royer, L., 36
S
Sabatier, L., 5, 68
Sadoul, G., 99, 101
Saint-Simon, 50, 58, 67, 71
Saintyves, P., 31
Salemink, M.B., 68, 72
Salemink, O., 68, 72
Sand, G., 35
Sangren, P., 262, 271, 272
Sartre, J.P., 8, 234, 264, 271
Saussure, F. de, 8, 9
Savigny, 55
Schaeffner, A., 107
Scheele, J., 63, 66, 67, 68, 72
Schubring, W., 237
Schweinfurth, G., 110, 124
Segalen, M., 5
Segall, L., 178
294
Senhora, 184, 185, 186
Shafer, R., 209, 217
Shinar, P., 68, 72
Si Lunis, 49, 51, 60, 61, 67
Si Mula, 49, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 60,
61, 64, 66, 67, 68
Sibeud, E., 22, 24, 68, 72
Slane, W. de, 48
Snyder, F., 68, 72
Sorre, M., 212
Souty, J., 187, 193, 196
Sperber, D., 9
Srinivas, M., 237
Stendhal, 35, 36
Steward, J., 131
Stewart, F., 68, 72
Stocking, G., 127, 132, 138, 140, 142,
150, 203, 217, 225
Stoller, P., 98, 99, 100, 101
Strathern, M., 9, 265, 266, 270, 272, 275
Strauss, L., 105, 106
Surdon, G., 68, 73
T
Tallou Mouzourane, 84
Tarde, G., 174, 175, 192, 196
Tardieu, S., 235
Tardits, C., 165, 169
Taylor, L., 78, 98, 99, 102, 191
Teixeira, A., 179, 196
Ter Haar, B., 68, 73
Terray, E., 2, 8
Thomas, J., 215, 217, 218
Thompson, C., 77, 98, 100, 101, 102
Tillion, G., 11, 24
Tocqueville, A., 245
Todorov, T., 11, 24
Toffin, G., 14, 17, 239, 243, 244, 252,
253, 275
Tooker, E., 46, 73
Trautmann, T.R., 46, 73
Tupper, C.L., 68, 73
Tylor, E., 150, 160, 217, 261
Name index
U
Urbain, I., 50, 58, 59, 66, 67, 71
Uribe, T. 139, 150
V
Valls, J., 36
van Gennep, A., 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 20, 21,
23, 24, 2544, 160
Vangele, 110
Vaux, P. de, 113, 124
Velay-Valentin, C., 25, 44
Verdier, Y., 39, 40, 44
Verger, P., 16, 164, 169, 172, 173, 180,
183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 191,
193, 194, 195, 196
Verneau, R., 128, 129
Vertov, D., 92, 93, 94, 95, 96
Vico, 263
Vidal, J.E., 208
Viveiros de Castro, E., 156
Vollenhoven, C. van, 62, 71
W
Wagley, C., 154, 157, 160, 161, 169
Weber, F., 22, 23
Weber, M., 106, 113, 124, 171, 175,
189, 190, 250, 251
Wilder, G., 148, 150
Winston, B., 98, 102
Wylie, L., 199, 218
Y
Young, C., 98, 102, 266, 267
Z
Zerilli, F., 126, 137, 140, 141, 147, 150
Zin, D.L., 43
Zonabend, F., 5, 39, 199, 218

(Methodology and History in Anthropology) Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales (Editors)-Out of the Study and Into the Field_ Ethnographic Theory and Practice in French Anthropology (Methodology and Histor

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Methodology and History in Anthropology) Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales (Editors)-Out of the Study and Into the Field_ Ethnographic Theory and Practice in French Anthropology (Methodology and Histor

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

OUT OF THE STUDY AND INTO THE FIELD

Methodology and History in Anthropology

OUT OF THE STUDY AND INTO THE FIELD

Ethnographic Theory and Practice in French Anthropology

Parkin & DeSales text_v4:Layout 2

First published in 2010 by

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

List of authors discussed in this volume

Introduction: ethnographic practice and theory in France

Canonical ethnography: Hanoteau and Letourneux on Kabyle

Postcards at the service of the Imaginary: Jean Rouch,

Eric de Dampierre and the art of eldwork

What sort of anthropologist was Paul Rivet?

Alfred Mtraux: empiricist and romanticist

Roger Bastide or the darknesses of alterity

The art and craft of ethnography: Lucien Bernot, 19191993

Andr-Georges Haudricourt: a thorough materialist

2.1. Commandant Adolphe Hanoteau at Fort-Napolon, 1861.

2.2. Opening column of qanun rulings transcribed in Arabic with French

2.4. Submission of the Kabyle tribes to Marshall Randon in 1857.

2.5. Hanoteau and two Tuareg, 1858.

3.1. Jean Rouch shooting in a market in the Gold Coast in 1954.

4.1. Eric de Dampierre at Madabazouma, thirty kilometres from

5.1. Paul Rivet.

7.1. Roger Bastide, seated left on bench, Ifanhin, Bnin, 1958.

9.1. Andr-Georges Haudricourt: le matre la recherche de la petite bte

11.1. Maurice Leenhardt (back row, centre), with Melanesian pastors

LIST OF AUTHORS DISCUSSED

Main eldwork area(s)

ETHNOGRAPHIC PRACTICE AND

Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales

first is that it is dominated by theory based mainly on rationality and

theoretical framework within which to do so (which, however, was often

Fieldwork in French anthropology: a brief history

Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales

founded in France, namely the Muse dEthnographie, housed in the

Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales

connected with amateur, antiquarian folklore. This attitude is reflected

been to promulgate and often to establish the facts deriving from

Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales

Although Griaules influence persisted after the Second World War,

of Georges Balandier or Eric de Dampierre; the cognitive anthropology

French studies of fieldwork in French anthropology

Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales

collected, but also the Other is confronted on a human level of mutual

The present collection

French women ethnographers, now deceased, such as Germaine

Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales

exotic world one is examining; and such experiences should be embodied

Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales

Margaret Buckners chapter on Eric de Dampierre (19281997) is one

A pupil of literature and philosophy at school who then trained as a

Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales

Mtrauxs attitude to fieldwork and the collection of data through it

much as the people he is studying. Bastides subsequent return to Paris

Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales

being restricted to what can be known through the senses alone. He

of the caste system ultimately replaced the simple binary oppositions

Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales

evolutionist, despite his awareness of Maussian holism. If he seems

seek to understand, say, the caste system in India or female circumcision

Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales

collection, exotic cultures, ethnographic subjects as fellow human

Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales