Custom and Conflict in Africa.

by Max Gluckman
Review by: Andrew Gunder Frank
American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Jul., 1957), pp. 108-109
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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108 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
This new Reader meets the high standards
set by the Free Press in its previous sociology
readers. It will prove exceedingly useful in
courses on the scope and method of the social
sciences. But the value of the work goes far
beyond such convenience. For the editors felt
that the compendium is "admittedly self-
conscious and in many respects venturesome."
Perhaps the temerity exaggerates the degree,
for political behaviorism is still regarded
askance. But the careful marshaling of able
studies in this Reader should help to overcome
such prejudices.
Included are over forty articles and excerpts
written by more than fifty social scientists.
Very few items date further back than 1950
(the Founding Fathers Graham Wallas, Arthur
Bentley, and Charles Merriam are exhibited
briefly). Most specialists in the behavioral
viewpoint are likely to respect the discretion
which the editors have generally exercised and
will probably even find some new items. Non-
specialists will find the range of materials an
adequate survey. Most key men are represented
and by selections long enough to give the reader
some real feeling for their work.
The Reader incorporates mercifully few
articles on methodology as such, being content
to exhibit methods in actual use illuminating
concrete political subject matter. Opinion struc-
tures, political participation and apathy, leader-
ship and communication, and behavior in inter-
est groups, parties, legislatures, bureaucracies,
and at the polls-these are the categories
within which most of the specific empirical
studies are grouped (though the editors' inter-
est is to exemplify methods of research rather
than a substantive field).
The editors are careful to avoid fighting
with defenders of the legal, historical, and
institutional orientations in political science,
but some skeptics in those more traditional
enterprises may yet doubt if the editors succeed
in demonstrating that recent research in po-
litical behavior contributes significantly to the
main body of political knowledge. In this re-
spect the quality of performance is most un-
even. Yet a certain amount of unsophisticated
promiscuity (the editors call it "catholicity and
eclecticism") may well be pardoned.
The professional sociologist may be pleased
when Eulau, Eldersveld, and Janowitz frankly
declare that the behavioral approach "seeks to
place political theory and research in a frame of
reference common to that of social psychology,
sociology, and cultural anthropology." But he
may dispute their evident view that this can
more fruitfully be done by men who have been
sensitized to political phenomena through
training in the main tradition of political science
than by those whose roots lie in the cognate
disciplines. Close study of the Reader would
give all those interested a broader basis for
weighing the contributions of the various social
sciences to the study of politics.
H. BRADFORD WESTERFIELD
University of Ckicago
Custom and Conflict
in Africa. By MAX GLUCK-
MAN. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1955. Pp.
ix+175. $3.50.
Originally delivered as a set of Third Pro-
gramme lectures over the British Broadcasting
Corporation, this work can be of considerable
interest to the sociologist and anthropologist,
for in it Gluckman attacks an important and
challenging problem: why and how do social
systems hold together despite ever present
internal conflict? He answers that conflict it-
self produces cohesion, and he explains at least
one way in which it does so, relying heavily on
the well-known monographs on Africa by
British social anthropologists and also on his
own field work. He does not intend his conclu-
sions to be limited to Africa, however, and
makes occasional references to his own and
other societies. The cohesive effects of conflict
are examined in the feud, authority, the family,
witchcraft, ritual, and race discimination in
South Africa.
Gluckman analyzes and demonstrates the
cohesive effects of conflict most convincingly in
his opening chapter on "Peace in the Feud."
Referring to the Nuer, he suggests that "cer-
tain customary ties [such as those of a matri-
lineal lineage] link a number of men into a
group. But other ties [such as local allegiances]
divide them by linking them with different
people who may be enemies to the first group"
(p. 10). Then,
"if there are sufficient conflicts of
loyalties at work, settlement will be achieved
and law and social order maintained" (p. 17).
The argument centers on Simmel's distinction
between diad and triad: A two-party social
system can be held together only by the com-
mon interests of Parties A and B, for all their
conflicting interests tear at the bond. But, with
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BOOKS REVIEWS 109
the admission of additional parties, their very
conflict of interest can serve to bind them. The
only requirement for cohesion is that A and B
not be allied against C on all issues but that, to
use Gluckman's words, allegiance and conflict
be cross-linked. Moreover, the greater the num-
ber of parties and interests, the stronger are
conflicting interests' cohesive effects-an argu-
ment he again uses in reference to authority,
the family, and discrimination.
Like others who have discussed the socially
cohesive effects of conflict, Gluckman fails to
distinguish conflict in interests or values from
discord or strife but discusses them sometimes
separately, sometimes together, and claims to
demonstrate with one argument how both
produce cohesion. The distinction turns out to
be critical for Gluckman's work, however, be-
cause he makes no case at all for the cohesive
effect of strife. His arguments may be summar-
ized. An expression of conflict which leads to
cohesion may be ritual, such as ritual role re-
versal between males and females, which may
afford psychological release of tension. At the
same time, Gluckman suggests, the very display
and indeed exaggeration of conflict affirm the
rightness and acceptability of the social order
which gives rise to both conflict and harmony.
In a challenging aside Gluckman suggests that
this is a luxury of strongly cohesive societies in
which personal relations are functionally dif-
fuse. Societies such as our own, in which most
personal regulations are functionally specific,
must be satisfied with direct ritual affirmation of
the social order. Again, in his chapter on author-
ity, he illustrates how rebellion against incum-
bents as distinct from revolution against the
social order maintains that social order through
channels other than cross-linked allegiances.
If the foregoing discussion is intended to refer
to the earlier argument about the cohesive ef-
fects of conflicting interests, it adds little. If not,
it provides evidence only for the much less
interesting proposition that custom defines both
the establishment of conflict and its resolution
and that giving expression to conflict can serve
to resolve conflict through various ill-defined
tension-releasing psychological means.
The idea that conflicting interests may
cement a social system enhances our under-
standing of social organization. Gluckman
handles this idea well, but it is not original with
him; the idea has been developed by Simmel and
his followers, by E. R. Leach and the Wilsons
among anthropologists, and also by some po-
litical scientists. Unhappily, Gluckman does
not seek to relate his work to this growing body
of thought.
The remainder of Gluckman's discussion
contains numerous challenging insights and
ideas which may bear rewarding fruit in contexts
other than that of his present theme, but it does
not support that theme.
ANDREW GUNDER FRANK
Iowa State College
Indonesian Society in Transition: A Study of
Social Change. By W. F. WERTHEIm. The
Hague and Bandung: W. van Hoeve, Ltd.,
1956. Pp. xi-j360. $5.00.
In this work, issued under the auspices of the
Institute of Pacific Relations, Professor Wert-
heim has expanded upon and revised a report
originally prepared for the Institute on the ef-
fect of Western civilization on Indonesian
society. This is the culmination of a distin-
guished social history which does in fact deal
with the dynamics of change rather than in
descriptive reconstructions. Not only a regional
significance, it is an important contribution to
the sociology of social change, acculturation,
assimilation, and nationalism.
Wertheim is a historical sociologist, not a
cultural ethnologist; his sources are primarily
those of Dutch scholars and reporters, from
which he builds a coherent analysis of the mak-
ing of modern Indonesia. Emphasis is upon the
broad patterning of change and the types of
forces at work rather than upon the changing
mode of life in given communities. This is a
product of historic research leavened with
evaluations rooted in personal experience
rather than a contemporary cross-sectional
work in which currents of change are assessed.
First giving a geographical and cultural back-
ground, Wertheim summarizes the political
history of Indonesia from times before contact
with Europe to the present day. There follow
seven chapters dealing with the development of
as many institutions or spheres of life. Thus the
major lines and forces of change are shown of
economic and religious institutions, the status
system, labor relations, urban structure, and
cultural and political nationalism. At no point
does one flounder in detail for the sake of
historicity. Each line of change is treated as
patterned sequences in which various forces
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