Max Gluckman

Max Herman Gluckman (born 26 January, 1911 – died April 13, 1975) was a South African-born British social anthropologist, who greatly contributed to the field of political anthropology with his analyses of political systems among African tribes. Under his influence a school of thought was formed that became known as the Manchester School.

Life

Max Gluckman was born in Johannesburg, South Africa to Russian-Jewish parents. He grew up in South Africa, and attended the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where he studied anthropology under Agnes Winifred Hoernl and Isaac Schapera (1905-2003). Although initially he enrolled to study law and become a lawyer, after hearing the lectures by Hoernl on anthropology, he decided to dedicate his life to this new developing field of study. In 1934 he went to Oxford as a Transvaal Rhodes Scholar and received his Ph.D. in 1936.

He returned to Africa in 1936 and for the next couple of years carried out a fieldwork in Zululand. He published two books based on his experience among Zulus - The Kingdom of the Zulu of South Africa (1940) and Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand (1940).

In 1939 Gluckman traveled to Northern Rhodesia to conduct a research for the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute among the Lozi of Barotseland. He spent there two years, and after took on the directorship of the Institute. Gluckman eventually continued with the work in Barotseland, studying judicial processes in the Barotse tribal courts. His two books The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia (1955) and The Ideas in Barotse Jurisprudence (1965) come from that period.

In 1947 Gluckman left the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and took the teaching position at [[University of Oxford|Oxford. He remained there only briefly, leaving in 1949 to become the first professor of social anthropology at the University of Manchester. He continued his involvement with the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, training most of the Institute’s research officers and providing the academic environment for their field-study analyses. He was among the first to host the lectures and presentations of the material gathered from the field studies. Under his guidance the Anthropology Department became one of the most prominent in the Britain, proliferating into what became known as the Manchester School of anthropology.

Gluckman served as the professor of social anthropology at the University of Manchester until 1971, and thereafter as the research professor. He died in 1975 in Jerusalem.

Work

Although he attended some Malinowski's lectures and seminars at the London School of Economics, it was the structural analyses of Edward E. Evans-Pritchard and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown that left the strongest mark on Gluckman’s work. Already in his early career he became interested in African legal systems and the dynamics of local conflict and resolution. In his two early works The Kingdom of the Zulu of South Africa (1940) and Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand (1940), Gluckman examined the issues of segmentary opposition, which were the focal point of his work at the time. Segmentary lineage is a way of organization of groups of relatives, found particularly in Northern and Eastern Africa. According to it, close kin relatives unite to stand together against more distant kin relatives (e.g. cousins against second cousins). All relatives, however, unite against any threat from groups of non-kin. Gluckman was particularly interested in the dynamics of the whole process, and how it functions in conflict situations – for example, in regulating inheritance and property rights.

In his early intellectual development, Gluckman came under the influence of Marxist theory, as well as Freudian psychoanalysis. This influence is particularly visible in his views on conflict. Like Freud or Marx he agreed that conflict occurs within the individual, as well as within the groups of people. Moreover, argued Gluckman, conflict and rebellion are inherent in the society, as each individual or a group of individuals struggle to achieve their own private interests. However, unlike Marx who saw conflict leading to revolution, Gluckman claimed that conflict led to resolution. That is, once opposing parties engage in a conflict, the stage of resolution is often reached based on the existing tradition of the society. Marx saw conflict resulting in a new form of government; Gluckman argued that the type of government does not change, only the person in power.

Gluckman saw tensions in the society tamed by the power of tradition. One of Gluckman’s most distinguished studies was on the rituals of rebellion. He showed that ritualized forms of hostility, in which individuals engage in certain types of behavior to express their disagreement with the leaders or those on power, actually have beneficial effects on the social order. Through the controlled expression of hostility to authority, social cohesion is ultimately preserved.

Gluckman always studied African societies in a wider historical context, recognizing that colonization and other influences do play a role in social dynamics on the local, tribal level. In his Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand (1940) he distinguished between pre-colonial, relatively stable forms of conflict, and colonial forms of conflict, characterized by violence and unpredictability.

As a professor, Gluckman always encouraged detailed case studies and the use of statistical methods in the analysis of social structure. He tried to imprint in his students the highest standard of scholarship. After he established the Department of Anthropology at the Manchester University, the department soon grew into what became known as the Manchester School of thought.

Manchester School of thought

After his arrival to the University of Manchester, Gluckman started to organize the newly established anthropological department. He gradually gathered a group of colleagues and students who shared his views and interests. This group eventually became known as the Manchester School.

Gluckman once said for the Manchester school:

”[Anthropologists in the Manchester school] are analyzing the development of social relations themselves, under the conflicting pressures of discrepant principles and values, as the generations change and new persons come to maturity. If we view these relations through a longish period of time, we see how various parties and supporters operate and manipulate mystical beliefs of various kinds to serve their interests. The beliefs are seen in dynamic process with day-to-day social life, and the creation and burgeoning of new groups and relationships” (Politics, law and ritual in tribal society, p.235).

The main features of the school were:

1. focus on internal, inherent conflicts in society;
2. during studies, the main attention is on the material form of existence, i.e. how people provide for food and what technology they use;
3. theory that contradictions and inconsistencies are embedded in social life, in a form of contradictory social roles one plays in everyday life or other social phenomena
4. objects of study were rather small societies.

Other work

Besides his work as a professor and a researcher, Gluckman was a political activist, openly and forcefully anti-colonial. He engaged directly with social conflicts and cultural contradictions of colonialism, with racism, urbanization and labor migration. He was also active in the development of anthropology in Israel, leading or participating in numerous joint research projects organized by Manchester University and several Israeli universities.

Gluckman was also a zealous supporter of an organized sport. He was particularly kin of soccer, and was a known fan in Manchester.

Legacy

The Manchester School of thought, which had developed during Gluckman’s reign at the University of Manchester, became one of the most distinguished anthropological schools of thought in the western world. Gluckman had considerable influence on several anthropologists and sociologists, including J. Clyde Mitchell, A. L. Epstein, Bruce Kapferer, and Victor Turner. Turner was especially influenced, and with great precision carried on Gluckman’s ideas, further analyzing the conflict in society and developing his own theories on the role of ritual.

Publications

• Gluckman, Max. 1940. Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand. Bantu Studies, 14, 1-30.
• Gluckman, Max. 1940. The Kingdom of the Zulu of South Africa. In M. Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard (Eds.) African Political Systems. London: Oxford University Press, 1955.
• Gluckman, Max. 1949. Social beliefs and individual thinking in tribal society. In Robert A. Manners and David Kaplan (eds.) Theory in anthropology: A sourcebook (pp.453-465). Chicago: Aldine 1968. ISBN 0202010414
• Gluckman, Max (Ed.). 1962. Essays on the ritual of social relations. Manchester University Press.
• Gluckman, Max. 1963. Gossip and scandal. Current anthropology, 4, 307-316
• Gluckman, Max. 1969. Ideas and Procedures in African Customary Law (Studies presented and discussed at the Eighth International African Seminar at the Haile Sellassie I University, Addis Ababa, January 1966. London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0197241778
• Gluckman, Max. 1970. The utility of the equilibrium model in the study of social change. American anthropologist, 72, 21-237
• Gluckman, Max. 1972 (original published in 1965). The ideas in Barotse Jurisprudence. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0719010314
• Gluckman, Max. 1974. African traditional law in historical perspective. London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019725716X
• Gluckman, Max. 1975. Anthropology and apartheid: The work of South African anthropologists. In Meyer Fortes and Sheila Patterson (eds.) Studies in African social anthropology (pp.21-39). Academic Press. ISBN 0122622502
• Gluckman, Max. 1994 (original published in 1954). The judicial process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia. Berg Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0854962816
• Gluckman, Max.1999 (original published in 1973). Custom and conflict in Africa. Barnes & Noble. ISBN 0064803252
• Gluckman, Max. 2004 (original published in 1963). Order and rebellion in tribal Africa: Collected essays with an autobiographical introduction. Routledge. ISBN 0415329833
• Gluckman, Max (ed.) 2006 (original published 1964). Closed systems and open minds: The limits of naïvety in social anthropology. Aldine Transaction. ISBN 0202308596
• Gluckman, Max. 2006 (original published in 1965). Politics, law and ritual in tribal society. Aldine Transaction. ISBN 020230860X

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• BookRags.com. Max Gluckman. Retrieved on January 27, 2007 <http://www.bookrags.com/Max_Gluckman>
• Firth, Raymond. 1976. Max Gluckman: Proceedings of the British Academy (Vol. 61). Oxford University Press
• Gulliver, P. H. (Ed.). 1997. Cross Examinations: Essays in Memory of Max Gluckman. Brill Academic Pub. ISBN 9004057390
• Schmidt, Anna. The Manchester School. Department of Anthropology, University of Alabama. Retrieved on January 27, 2007. <http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/manchest.htm>

External links

• Essays on Zulu – Some Gluckman’s full-text essays on Zulu culture
• Max Gluckman and The Manchester School – On the Manchester school of thought and its leading figures
• Photographic essay: Manchester School and background – Photos on many projects and people associated with the Manchester School
• Zululand – Map and information on Zululand

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