Book Reviews 757

the correct term), but also techniques of di- vination, oathing, bride price, and sexual li- cense sanctioned institutionally or ritually. Champion’s monograph makes this reviewer ask again if perhaps some of the distinctions that over the years have grown up in the lit- erature on Bantu- and non-Bantu peoples or on the farmers vs. the herders of East Af- rica are not more apparent than real, and, thus, whether such distinctions do not fail to sort the data at hand along significant lines of contrast. Such a rhetorical question is not a criticism of Champion; on the contrary, it underscores the merit of Middleton’s having discovered and brought to light an older, brief monograph by a nonprofessional an- thropologist that may lead the reader to question some of the distinctions so handily made in the professional literature.

I have several minor comments: the Royal Anthropological Institute published Champion’s manuscript as its Occasional Paper No. 25; the format is a pleasant one, with some interesting photographs, which, unfortunately, are not keyed to the text. Middleton’s instructive and genial footnotes are all grouped at the end, an annoying ar- rangement making it necessary for the reader to flip back and forth thirty-four times -in thirty-eight pages of text. Most of Middleton’s notes are quite brief and could have been placed easily at the bottom of the page to which they refer. One final criti- cism: $4.30 seems a steep price for a 56- page monograph in soft covers.

Social Theory and African Tribal Organiza- tion: The Development of Socio-Legal Theory. KENNETH S . CARLSTON. Urbana & London: University of Illinois Press, 1968. viii + 462 pp., 2 appendices, bibliog- raphy, index. $10.00, 95s (cloth).

Reviewed by RONALD COHEN Northwestern University

This is a big, serious book; according to the blurb it “integrates social theory and law to arrive at new perspectives in the creation of a unified body of social theory.” Along the way it also “contributes valuable infor- mation on the tribal backgrounds to today’s new African states.” The integration of theory is accomplished in Part I of the book in the first two chapters, “The Organization

of Action” and “Elements of a Theory of the Organization of Action.” The first of these is a rather simple and straightforward review of basic social science ideas that C O U ‘ ~ make a good undergraduate level over- view of psychological, political, and legal concepts as these apply to anthropological materials. In one place, however, in dealing with the concept of authority, the author is quite original. He defines authority as “the ability of a decision maker occupying a post or office to effectuate action in accordance with communicated directions or commands and without reasoned persuasion. Authority is thus to be distinguished from the forces that support it, such as legitimacy, power, or force” (p. 17). Later on he speaks of the abuse of authority and the competence of a post of authority. It should be noted, how- ever, that this definition makes no distinc- tion between power and authority because authority includes all available means to “ef- fectuate action.”

The last half of this review chapter is de- voted to conflict. In it the author tries to argue from psychological conflicts, as exem- plified in the frustration-aggression hypothe- sis, to social conflict and war and thence to control, as exemplified by witchcraft and reli- gion, and, finally, to law. For the latter con- cept, traditional legal concepts stemming from Austin are examined and compared to ideas current among anthropologists such as Bohannan, Nader, Hoebel, Pospisil, Gluck- man, and others. All are judged to be ethno- centric (p. 63), and the author then sets up his own definition of law. To Carlston, “law at its minimum comprises valued social norms the violation of which are subject to sanctions” (p. 62), and he feels his own definition is superior to Hoebel’s conception of law as social norms supported by the reg- ularized application of force (p. 63). I fail to see a significant and operational distinc- tion here, but I mention it because the au- thor feels his “own” concept is more useful than those used by others.

Chapter 2 proceeds to summarize a series of two assumptions and 113 propositions that the author believes can be deduced from contemporary social theory, as sur- veyed in Chapter 1 . The flavor of these gen- eralizations can be seen in one more and one less self-evident statement; numbers 51

75 8 American Anthropologist [71, 19691

and 77 respectively: Proposition 51 states basically that control is an “appraisal of past action with a view to determining the con- tent of future action” (p. 72). This is sim- ply a definition. On the other hand, proposi- tion 77 claims that the power of a state is a direct function of whether it (1) is a cre- ative, achieving society; (2) develops and employs science, technology, and organiza- tional technique; (3) reflects mechanical and value rationality in its action; and (4) provides its members with an opportunity to pursue the good life. This is much less self- evident.

After this theorizing, the author summa- rizes the ethnographic data on thirteen Afri- can societies; reference to additional mate- rial on a number of other societies appears in a set of appendices. For anthropologists unfamiliar with these materials, this makes a handy quick guide, but the original material is, of course, far more useful, and it is easily available.

Finally, the author summarizes his findings in a large set of summary sentences, each of which is numbered and supported by refer- ence to the data chapters to which it can be applied. These vary from as many as fourteen references for the generalization that “a pluralistic society exhibits a variety of types of posts and offices exercising authority” to only one for the idea that where fidelity is important in the discharge of an office, then a slave may be appointed to fill it. Almost all of these “hypotheses” or “conclusions” are descriptive and concern the nature of tradi- tional African political systems. A final four page chapter discusses the relevance of these findings to modernization.

As a handy set of summaries about a number of African societies, plus an overall summary of political relationships, this book undoubtedly has some utility. As a contribu- tion to knowledge it has serious shortcom- ings. Carlston’s definition of authority allows him the privilege of seeing the political sys- tem as if it were an idealized ethnographic model derived from customary and obliga- tory actions without ever questioning the relationship of political structure itself to the actual behavior of actors in these African systems. Thus the give and take of everyday life has been carefully siphoned out of these data until we get a series of ethnographic generalizations (called “conclusions”). Their

validity is simply unknown, because they have been abstracted from their original context in the ethnography where at least some estimates of data quality can be made by a discriminating and experienced reader. Worse yet, by subsuming what is usually thought of as power under the concept of authority, he is making the study of process (the interrelationship of power and author- ity) impossible. To me this is the growing point of theory. Also disturbing and exasperating is the

lack of any explanatory theorizing. Why some societies possess one set of institutions while others display another set does not seem to interest the author at all. But then why all this secondary analysis? Certainly we are at the stage where some scholars should be sitting down to assess how far we have come in anthropology. And in the pro- cess of so doing, new explanations of the variations available for study should be at- tempted, new research directions pointed out, and new hypotheses offered up for test- ing by others. Unfortunately, this book fails to provide such a synthesis. Possibly it will interest others outside anthropology to enter the field and ask what our data and theory can do for them and their own scholarly problems. If this book helps in that cause, well and good-one can only hope that fu- ture efforts in this vein will also be of inter- est to anthropologists, as well as outsiders.

MODERNIZATION Urbanism in World Perspective: A Reader.

SYLVIA FLEIS FAVA, ed. New York: Thom- as Y. Crowell Company, 1968. xiii + 620 pp., figures, tables, selected bibliography, index. $5.95 (paper).

Reviewed by PETER C. W. GUTKINLI McGill University

Interest in comparative urban studies is very much on the increase among both an- thropologists and sociologists, although in the last few years historians and political scientists have been rather slow to respond to the opportunities that are opening up.

Dr. Fava has put together some interest- ing and mostly well-known readings-di- verse, lively, and sometimes exciting-pri- marily for undergraduate use. Of the fifty- one readings, about twenty-five deal with the urban situation in American and Western