Custom and Conflict in Africa. by Max GluckmanReview by: Andrew Gunder FrankAmerican Journal of Sociology, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Jul., 1957), pp. 108-109Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2772849 .

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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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