In 'Retrospect.. A Conversation with Meyer Fortes. A. Bujra and K. Prah QU1!:S'I'ION(PRAH) Professor Meyer Fortes, you have for a long time been I:\BBociated with socialscience,partic\tlarlyon A:t'rica. We "QuId like to ' know when and under what oireum~r\:aneeB .;youX' interest in Africa developed? ANSWER Well, you should know that 1: was born and brought up in South Africa. One of my early interests there, in my student days at the University I:\tCape Town were questions on race rela- tions. And one of m;y early, should I call it analytical unde2l'- takings, there was into what I thought to be, certain acrimoniolUJ elements of injustice in the societ,.. So my knowledge of Africa began with my response to certain conditions in South Africa in my youth. Later I, went to London and began my own career by attempting to cOnstruct a set of psychologica~ tests of intelligence which would be cu1t11ra11y neutral. But I dis- covered when I had made tbese tests that it was impossible 1:0 get any tests whiohwere cultural.ly neutral. Therefore, :really the wh'qlebasis of concern shifted laW'a;¥' from i;ests which at that time see!lledto' illeimpossible to be made culturally neutral, the understanding of the nat11i-eof social and cultural pheno- menon.'l'his was the original concernW'hich prompted me to go intbe d-J.rection I SUbsequently went .. qUESTION (BUJRA) That 'lfasto shift; from psychological tests to the st11dy of societies as a whole which means changing from Psychology to Social Anthropology? ANSWER that is what it means. QU]JSTIQN (PRAll) During those early formati~e years, as it were, which were the dominant ideas, which were the leading and current ideas, about social science with which you got into contact and became engaged? ~S,;(ER Well, thati.s'a very broad question to ask. I was a student at that time at the London School of Economics in the 1ears.1928. tl) 31/32. It was a place where almost every contem- porary theoretical way of looking at human nature and society was .represente!i. The people whowere active then were MalinOW$1d; and Morris Ginsberg whowas very influential because; although. it .aY not he known, he was a man who believed that ethics were importan~in Bocial studies and that there is such a thing as the pursuit of the good, that we may not know what it was but it is important. He influenced me too in a senllle; that of intellectual honesty. And ampng the young you can imagine that, tnatwas the lleriQd of radical responses to depressing economic conditiQn$t~t was the time of unemployment, ot: hunger marches and so on; clearlY, there was enough to agitate the minds of students of the LondonSchool of Economics. Seen from the angle oft ahall I say, the state of affairs of the working class and -El$peciallyof cou:r.-se,the urban; problems. of urban dwelling. I did some work in the East End of London. This was my first place of special research where I got interested in y-oungdelin.qtient$<. I. del1fed.a lot into criminology in Which I argued that i;iloe.se youngeriminals were not criminals f'pr psycho- J.o~iea:l.reasons bUtcrilllinall3 partly because of the pressures within.thefalllily. '.ehi/?wa./?what first induced me to look at ~a.I1d..li~sJaX),dwere pa):'tlzrdue to tlie fact that theY' were the .agfiJ,of 14) wfiJrethrOwn into. the .great ma.;tnstrea.m.().t.]lu'b)L~c lifewitht.asks.of contributing in someways to householli economies,at a time when job openings to These Conditions affected my il1te1.'" we 1'ea1& QUESTION Oftheleadin$. peQP:tewaa lUederich Westermann. the great Gti!rmai" Linguist t Rti!nriLabouret who Was a French ex- ~dministratortetc~ We were pl'esided over by Lord LUggard who 'fhe'sp<>nsorship pt this whole thing was made pos" sibl." by grant4$ 'lrom Rocke1:'fellerFoundation. Now we looked at African soeietfes in a 'wide continental sweep spreading all the way fit-omSouth Africa tq l!la$tand We$t and it juat $0 happened th.at three.ofu$ least .kno'llin partsd Atrica wecre in West Afri~-.; ).Eta,stkl10wnin the modern sense. Al1dit ju!St happened that three o!' u.s, that is s. F. Nadel,S. Hofstra, the Dutchman, and myself) saw that it would be useful to work in West Afdca and the three of Us chose three different colonial ter'titories. Nadel went t.o Nigeria to the Nupe and I went to "he Gold .COl;l.lSt pa'ttly beCl;l.useby chance I had read Rattray who in;spiredllleal1d told llIea lot; and Hofstra went to Sierra Leonne. ]: thiJ1.kI. ll1ust 'be emphatic il1 sayil1g that at no time we'te any Obstacles put in the way of my research by the colol1ial administrators; that I had good relations with them and when the1 asked me for information I gave it to them. Mynearest neighbour WaSan Agricultural Officer, c. W. Lane) a man who was trelllen" douslY1iked by the local people; a man who !Studied there the r;l.gb.~.cu.1tJ1reswl:d,ohverevery important forme; a man who had wo;r;-ked-.nqsucceededint;r;-aining local people, to adopt certain mOl'ee!fici.ent 1ll~I1Udnglllethodsthan they had before. So as f'a'tas plain relationship i.seoncerned) I had no initial dealings with the.; .no ini.tialdifficultiea with them. Well, ,a certain .Illou~t of diffiCUlty arO.$e later. ~UESTION (PRAR) You mentioned Rattray? ANSWER Yes. qUESTION (PIlAR) I am sure in the earLY years when;yon came to We6t Africa you were familiar with the works' of people like Oasely Hayford and 5a;r;-bah.;what is your reaction 0,1' impression of the contribution of these previous participants in the study of African specifically in Ghana? in the me read the other works. And I had long conversations with Kobina Sekyi about whole problems that were the .beginnings of some government issues at that time. With Ofori Atta, again we also had conver- sations and with oJ. B. Panquah .. th.esewere the people of the last generation - and many others more. And as regards Case1y Hayford I think I set him. out withmo.re respect for his, should I call it., his imaginative pasa.ion than £01' his contr:tbution to pub1:tshing. So thia is what I t):1ought at that time. So, from my point of view, Sarbah was a distinguished scholar; Case1y Hayford, 'more of a publicist. That is my evaluation of them. QUESTION (1?RAH) Since those early years when you came to West Africa a lot has happened and Africa has seen relativelY ~apid social change; what are yotl,r' impressions of the essential poi,nts and the essen .. tia1 lessons in this broad sweep of time and change which has happened in Africa since you first came here? ANSWER You ask me a question which is more suitable for some- body with ,a grand view of society and humanity than for a mere 1 anthropologist. To me, one of the most remarkable things about Africa, no'\; merely West. AfriCa, but also tot' the other parts of Africa Ikrl\ow, is the emergenc~ of what leall the intellectual. Now, this m\y \ seem ogy which way of talk ... Bible. Also, from my point 'of view, their concept; kind of I amnot dismissing the work of the French anthropologists who madeus aware,more c1early aware than we had been before, in more detail, that there is that side also of the contribution ot the African. You call it pre-capitalist, I call it pre- industrial or wllatever you want, or traditional, intellectual life. Never for a momentfO.rget that there was and is in any Bo-called tribal society a development of significant intellec- tual life. I mean, I am simply saying that, well, I used to sit downand talk with the 'Tallen.si el,ders. I was talking to people whowere thinking about themselves, thinking about the ~osmos, thinking about life in the ways that were available to theDl; partly mythological. Wehave already began understanding that. Now,lllYapproach to Levi-Strauss; I think he has done a great se'rviee to the intelleetu:al life of the West and of the world' while demonstrating what he called the mythologies ot humanity over a Wholerange of simple soeieties, are not just crazy illlagining.fJbut are phenomenathat have form, structure, signifi- cance and implications which we can find our way towards by suggesting what I might call basic 108S of the organizat.ion and the meaningof these things. Aboveall, I think Levi-Strauss himselflllade a very important major contribution to this whole bUSiness by his propositions that these mythologies are ways of reSolving contradictions between the realities of life and death which are humanrealities and the, could! say, aspirations of lllankin.d,tne inlagination of possibility by this, in all an in- valuable state ot. aff'airs. Wewill like to be immortal if we knowwe can,; we will all like to be well gifted in all sorts of things. Howean we resolve this dilemna? . Andhe has suggested; And! think this is an important suggestion; he suggested that this 1an! t merel;r something.yon find in such a place like Amerieabut that this constitutes a form to hum.anthinking mechanialllwhichtherefo.re applies to the mOstexh.alted types of thinking as wen as to. tne simplest types of thinking. So! tltinkhe 'job. Nowwhen we come tQ tl1e. the tion: Do you mean by rephrasing the available facts, or the available material or the available ideas, this is something new? Or do you make new discoveries? Now, do you think that your Marxist way of presenting the known materials is bringing up new discoveries of which we did not know before? Or is it.8. restatement? And to this he said frankly that he thought it waS a restatement but that there was value in Ii. restatement. I am in favour of restating these things so that our attention is drawn to possibilities. I think to some extent they are defi- nitely wrong about some thin~s and I will give you an example Where I think they are definitely wrong. One ,of the proposi- tions which they have put forward is the notion of what they call the lineage mode of production. But lineage in Africa is never a producing organization. Lineage is an ideological and familial organization. Yes. But production is an activity in permanent evolution like a man and his wife or wives. Lineage may have some times the g~neral regulation of land but even this is not always the case. . The state, if we take the Akan system, " is the overlord of the land. Lineage :holds off:i,ce.Lineage arranges marriages. But I think t:hereis not a lineage mode of production. I think that is the simplest example; that they have misunderstood the nature of the West African lineages know. But I must in another way oppose them too; I think they missed out some things. I think one of the things out, for instance (is that when they may say they made a long list of us to believe that you can explain tions always by going back two points whiCh I "am going to other points which in our own way now. Good lqck I am sorry t:hat Weknowthat in E1);glandthere were public eJl:ecutions in the 17th and 18th centuries. The last public eJl:ecution was for,I believe, sheep stealing. And in our life time we have had the Hitler l:1olocauet. So there is no use pretending that thlilreis no witnlilse alll.ongmankind, black or white, in world history; so therlil is no use, as it is, harping on colonialism elllotionally as the source of all the troubllils. Let me tell you one thing I have felt aboutoolonialism: I am going to critio1$e it like anybQdyebe criticises anything in the past, intellec- tually. Somethree or four years ago I was watching the televi- sion'when I think, it WasChinua Achebe, whowas being interviewed tor theBBC by a youngmn. lIe was sitting by a windowand as I rell\l!!mbElred, what happened was that, he was asked a certain ques- tion~lbo\tt thElBiatranWat' and, sO on. This youngmanwas pushing him in the'dit'ectionot saying something rl:1etorical about C010- nialismand. AchebeWaslooking through tl:1lilwindowand l:1eturned round andsidd to the young man sOmething like: "You know if it was not .fot' colonialism I would not be talking to you in the 1anguageot .ShakElspeare •. Colonialism opened a windowon the world to us". Andone point is thi.s, I think that side should be looked at asw_l1as those useful eJl:periences lIIhich were un- pleasant~ CQlonialiSlli, which you at'e critichiing for whatH was in thecOl:onies was ana.spect of things that were going on in the metropolis, t()o.~ ~UESTrON (PRAH) It is.to be by manypeople that colonialism had a double . edge, as it Marx in his writing on the effects of British rule th,at.it was historically to be seen as, which on the one hand set in motion old Asiatic society, and on Western society in Asia. to be dispas'sionate in under- the origins of man, c,e.lc.ni.al.iflm. Well and good. manypeople and observers is a new development in Africa; SOmeof the old mechaJ],is:ms and on that. I think again, I will say something like this: one of the great changes in the world scene in my life time is symbo- lized in the fact that I can get into my home in Cambridge at six O'clock in the afternoon or even later and that I" can be in Accra at six O'clock next morning instead of 16 or 17 days at sea. This is very simple, symbolized in the concord-jet age, you see~. The world is becoming much more of what anyone will call one world. Communications, not merely phYl3ical communica- tions but the fact that we are having discussion.s her.e, sitting here in Lome, the three of us, academics, are having these dis- cussions, is part of what is going on in the world~ Now I think one has got to look at neo-colonialism without perhaps putting aside one's passion, without putting aside one's mO.ral partisan .. ship or <:lne'smoral allegiences but also with a clear head. I don't know whether it complies with colonialism but whether it complies with it or not, there are certain things that are going on in the world that I don't like. I don't like, for instance, (purely personal reasons) I find it, objectionable that Europe is rich and enriching itself because it can draw on the huge labour resources provided by the poorer countries of the Mediterranean and Africa. To me it seems there is something wrong about that. I am not cl;;dming that I folloW its economies, that I have got any good basis for it in figures, statistics, all those other things. I am only claiming that I, from m'! point of: View, don't like it. N<:lw.in so as there similar. things in what l1sedto be the colonial Etlllp;ire,. 1 1 they are objectionable, and are to be 'criticised, talk ed about. Here again, my personal' feelings are involved, feel that way, for what relilsons, believe that one .can help andplltting in a case. is a very sma:).lunit of time, haps in a generation you will get the to be attained, I think, by the kind of thing that is Remember,.it i.a notonlt South Africa which is expanding into Angola. I think you will bear with me that the USSRis also putting a lot of weappnry into Angola. It would be really diffi- cult to be too apecificon thi$. issue. I don't like it, all 1 can say is that whoever is there and has not got the right to be there should !tOt be there. 1 don't think the Russians should be there. I don't think the,Oubans ahould be there. I don't the South Africans should be there. I think the Ang01ans should be left to deal with their proble.ms'by themselves. The way in the end Kenyatta was able to get the British out of Kenya when he said: "We will deal withourown prOblems"• They did not kill all the white settlers, as you know,andtheyachi,eveda way of life. South Africa, I 'think, is in a very peculiar pOsition and I am afraid that there is a lot of ignorance about it. From my point of view, , I think, the fact has to be accepted that the white South Africans have nowhere else to go. They belong to Africa; that is where they are. mheybelong to Africa as muchas an East Asian who came, too, belongs .to Africa. As much, I think as you belong to Africa. I am not enl!p1iringabout your back.groundbut, personally, as much as you do, they belong to Africa. The fact should be faced; that the1 belong to Africa. In'my own lifetime there has been an enormous change, r think, slowlY, gradually and even reluctantly but it has happened. Especia.lly, the Africans of South Africa are trying to understand thei,rown 'destiny. In South Africa! think there ha$. been changes amongthe whit~sl fairly reluctantly, of trying to colll&to.term~ with the fact that the black p.eople of South Africa ar~ potential members,.or alreadY actual membersof world eivilha- tion.Illlean thiais not the kind of change of heart which is de$ign!'