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The kind of research that anthropologists do sometimes seems to amount to parachuting themselves into another group of human beings and finding out as much as they can about their way of life. Undoubtedly, as with bird-watching, there is a lot of underrated ethnographic work of that kind, which has its uses in getting a general picture of a particular people. But needless to say, every observer goes to the field with some framework for his observations. In the case of Malinowski's students this was especially marked, partly because as experienced scholars they came in with their own foci of interest (Fortes, the family; Nadel, music; Hofstra, individuality). So I thought it would be of interest to present the research projects they submitted before going to the field, which increasingly bear the strong marks of Malinowski's influence on them. In Fortes' case he presented three versions of his project at different times and I have included all three in order to give some idea of the way he shaped his project under Malinowski's influence so that it moved from a general psychological enquiry to a more specific anthropological one. But it still retained a psychological component which when he later presented the results of his research under the influence of Evans-Pritchard, Radcliffe-Brown and Durkheim had largely disappeared. Only in his account of Tallensi education did he retain an explicit orientation in that direction, although later in life he returned strongly to the theme of the interpretation of sociological and psychological (even psychoanalytic) frames. There are three versions of Meyer Fortes' plans for research of a psychological nature in an anthropological setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the 1930s social anthropology in Britain was taught in London (at the London School of Economics and University College), and at Oxford and Cambridge. In Scotland teaching only began in Edinburgh in 1946 with the appointment of a student of Malinowski, Ralph Piddington, as Reader. Sir James Frazer held a Chair in this subject at Liverpool in 1907 but remained there for only one term. Earlier Tylor had taught at Oxford and the zoologist Haddon at Cambridge. But serious professional teaching after the First World War began at Cambridge with Rivers (as a Lecturer in Psychology) and Radcliffe-Brown (as a Research Fellow) and at the same time with Malinowski (and Seligman) at the London School of Economics. Both Rivers (as psychologist) and Seligman (as a medical doctor) had been members of Haddon's expeditions to the Torres Straits at the end of the 1890s. However, a critical mass of research students only emerged at the LSE under Malinowski at the end of the 1920s. That was the true birth of the subject in Britain, and it branched out slowly after the appointment of Radcliffe-Brown to Oxford in 1937. The end of the Second World War, after Malinowski's death, saw the emergence of Oxford as the main centre of research with the appointment of Evans-Pritchard to the Chair, of Fortes to a Readership and of Gluckman to a Lectureship. When Gluckman left for Manchester in 1950 and Fortes for Cambridge in 1951, those departments came to compete with Oxford and London for students and funds. I myself am far from wedded to the criticism of comparative research and of their predecessors that marked the work of the group of anthropologists that followed Malinowski. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The previous chapter attempted to spell out some of the achievements of anthropological studies based in Britain and carried out in Africa, especially as they affected neighbouring fields. I focussed in particular on West Africa where I myself had worked and I now present an even more egocentric account of my own work, beginning with field research in West Africa. I do this partly for historical reasons (since I worked closely with those on whom this study is focussed) and partly to bring out the interplay between intensive fieldwork and existing and emergent interests of a wider kind. That interplay between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, the general and the particular, seems to me one of the marks of this tradition of social anthropology, though one that can be pursued in a variety of ways. I had originally gone up to Cambridge on a scholarship to read for a degree in English literature and became interested, among other things, in aspects of the sociology of literature. After my first year at the university war broke out and for the next six-and-a-half years I was in the army. In the Middle East I was brought face to face not only with a wide variety of humanity, Greeks, Turks, Egyptians, Palestinians, Jews, but with the remnants of ancient civilisations. I already had some interest in archaeology because of a mathematics master at school who had collected flints in East Anglia, partly because I had lived in St Albans and had watched some of the discoveries of the Roman town at Verulamium under Mortimer Wheeler. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main thrust of the teaching and research in post-war Oxford was on Africa under the aegis of Evans-Pritchard, Fortes (to 1950), Gluckman (to 1949), Bohannan, Lienhardt and others. It was in that context that theoretical interests were largely, though not exclusively, developed and it was to that continent that the bulk of research students went to carry out their work. In the chapters that follow I want to review rather generally some of the achievements of the generation working under the auspices of the International African Institute, then look at post-war developments concentrating on the area I know best, West Africa, and conclude with some remarks on the impact on my own work. The attraction of Oxford was twofold: firstly, the staff and the students that had come there over the years from 1937 to 1947, but effectively since the war; secondly, the fact that they were largely Africanists and that that was the continent where major socio-political changes were then taking place, where a cluster of independent nations was to emerge within the next decade and a half, where much ethnological work needed to be done, where contributions to knowledge were rapidly building up and where many contacts had been made as a result of the war, the new research institutions and the burgeoning university systems. Kofi Busia, author of The Position of the Chief in the Modern Political System of the Ashanti (1951), later Prime Minister of Ghana, and Alex Kyerematen, who also made significant contributions to the ethnography of Ghana, were among the student body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once the Rockefeller Foundation had agreed to sponsor the Fellowship scheme, which started in July 1931, the Institute had to look round for possible recipients. It was here that Malinowski exercised his patronage and made his influence felt. While he had at first no official position with the Institute, his relations with the Foundation, his friendship with Oldham, the missionary administrator of the scheme, and his participation in meetings of the Africa group, which brought him into contact with the influential colonial administrator, Lord Lugard, and others, made his co-operation essential for the fulfilment of the programme, including the training of the participants. In recruiting Fellows Malinowski naturally thought first of his own students, while the Directors of the Institute also played a part. But it was the Bureau, formed to administer the grants, that carried out the interviews and made recommendations to the Council of the Institute. The initial selection included a number of people with whom Malinowski had worked and approved of. ‘What then with Gordon Brown, Fortes, Audrey Richards, Margery Perham and Kirchkoff [sic], we have got quite a good set of young people.’ Additional Rockefeller Fellowships had been previously awarded to Lucy Mair, who was Lecturer in Colonial Administration (and whose mother was secretary of the School, under the Director, Beveridge) and Edith Clarke, a well-connected student of Jamaican background, who was about to go to the Gold Coast. All except Kirchhoff, who had already been employed by Rockefeller and was recommended by Westermann, Director of the Institute, were ‘students’ of Malinowski, though Gordon Brown was at Toronto, Audrey Richards teaching and Fortes had not yet studied anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]