Colin TurnbullRezensionen

Ethnography of the Ik, a small group of hunters in Uganda, Sudan and Kenya who were forbidden from traditional hunting grounds. Dramatic culture change and human values

Anthropologist Turnbull studied a number of communities on the African continent. The main lesson of this particular one of the Ik people was that this is what happens in a culture that's in decline and its members had lost touch with their humanity. because of government policy changes, the Ik people had lost their source of sustenance and their ability to continue following their customary patterns. Although research methods in the field of anthropology don't allow for generalizing the structures of one particular community to any other, I still couldn't help seeing parallels to US society -- the self-centered preoccupation with one's personal survival, the indifference to the young, the ailing and the elderly, and ab inability or unwillingness to see life as anything more than physical survival. Some have branded this book as racist but I see it as a warning that we all have choices about how to live our lives.

African pygmys, attested in ancient Egyptian and Greek texts as being nearly mythical inhabitants of central Africa, are described here in an Anthropological tome. I must re-read as I remember little from it.

I first read this book about twenty some years ago, before I had ever met anyone from Africa. When I did meet AFrican students in college, it seemed to me that Turnbull had described something vital about their experience.

Although written by an anthropologist, Colin Turnbull described the life of the Mbuti pygmies with such color, exuberance, detail and a healthy dash of humor that you cannot help but be entranced by this book. It reads like a novel, not a diary or journal. The author lived for three years with them in the Ituri Forest in northwestern Belgian Congo (later Zaire, now DR of Congo). His affection for them is immediately apparent, and his intimate descriptions of individuals allow the reader to enjoy the characters in the book and their lives.

However, there are times when either the author is taking the mickey out of you, or else the Mbuti are taking the mickey out of him. When he takes a few of them on a drive out of the forest into the savanna where buffalo are grazing they wonder what kind of ants are those animals. The animals are far far away, but the people have never ever seen an open vista, so they assume the animals are very close. Good for a few chuckles, but not believable.

In any case, you won't be disappointed reading this book. Instead, you will feel like your are eating a delicious meal with a fine wine, a trip into another world that is almost certainly gone by now, 60 years on.

The life of the MaMbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest (Congo) as described by a young anthrologist who lived among the young men for 3 years during the 1950's. This book delightfully challenges the truths we may have found about families, nature and theology.

Absolutely terrifying, but something that has really reinforced many of the opinions I hold on the socialisation of what we consider "humanity". The Ik are a people who have had their ability to gather the basic resources needed to live removed; the result is the removal of "humanity", as this is something which we have only had the freedom to evolve due to a surpless of food in most situations. I'd recommend it to most sociology and psychology students.

The Forest People, by the late Turnbull, is probably required reading for any new student of Anthropology. Even though it borders on the romantic and some its flow is decisively novel-like, Turnbull's book was then a refreshing look into the culture of the Mbuti Pygmy, a marginalized and little-understood group. I read this book during my first year of college, and together with Elizabeth Fernea's Guests of the Sheikh, it accounts for the beginning of my interest in ethnographic studies. Books like this one are truly like a window into another, completely foreign and utterly fantastic, world.½

informatief boek over Pygmeeën

Though Turnbull describes the Ik, a people that have lost their sense of society, he really describes the human future, one in which individualism and greed will replace family, religion, morality, and humanity. A book that makes you think about "human nature."

Huh. I don't know what edition berthirsch read, but the 1961 one is neither a "tale" nor "the story of a small Pygmy tribe," and there's no suspense. It's a typical 1950s narrative ethnography, as engagingly written as such things tend to be. It describes the economic, social, and [for lack of a better word] cultural practices of BaMbuti (a.k.a. Pygmies), how those practices change over the course of the year, and how they connect to the lives of village farmers. It's written, as I say, in the narrative mode, but does not form a continuous narrative — rather, it's a series of extended anecdotes illuminating one or more aspects of BaMbuti life in that place at that time. It's informative but not data-rich: there is, for example, no kinship diagram (although this is one of the few ethnographies for which that actually would have been useful).

(If you've ever heard the anecdote about the forest-dweller seeing distant animals on the plains for the first time and thinking they were insects, it's from this book [next-to-last chapter]).

This is a classic for the times. Written by a scholar and adventurer it tells the story of a small Pygmy tribe living in the Congo in the 1950's. It is a heartwarming tale with great insight and suspense.

Colin Turnbull was an anthropologist with a special interest in the hunter-gatherer societies of Africa. He lived in the rain forests of Zaire and also in the mountainous areas that border Uganda, Sudan and Kenya. This book is an account of his observations in the latter region.

He writes about the semi-nomadic tribes that traditionally move around and across the frontiers herding cattle, hunting game and engaging in some simple cultivation to supplement the collection of vegetables, roots and berries.

The tribe that he studied in detail called themselves the Ik and had always had their temporary villages in the higher mountains of Uganda. This was a distinguishing feature that differentiated them from other groups such as the Turkana who were plain dwellers and cattle herders. He and his colleague Joseph Towles spent the better part of three years with them between 1964 and 1967.

The interest of the narrative is not so much the study of hunter-gatherer life ( do anthropologists study anything else? ) than the picture of transition that comes out of the book.

The Ik started to get into difficulties at the end of the 2nd World War as the new nation states in the area "hardened" their frontiers. Previously the Ik had moved freely between all three countries hunting game in the Kidepo valley and following it through the mountainous areas into the Sudan. However the Kidepo area was declared a Ugandan National Park and they were no longer allowed to hunt there. Subsequently they had to make a permanent base on the inhospitable mountainous eastern edge of the Park, an area that had previously only been a temporary resting place.

What follows is a narrative of serious non-adaptation as Turnbull shows that the traditional society of loose co-operation for hunting and weak family bonds is insufficient to meet the new challenge that the tribe faces.

He shows in detail how survival becomes a personal affair. Food is no longer shared. Men hunt what they can and eat it far from the village and women collect only for themselves.

As starvation sets in children and old people die as they are not fed, the tribe becomes known for its cattle thieving among the neighbouring groups. The thieving becomes intense among themselves and Turnbull interestingly shows how this becomes the new norm. Honesty becomes foolishness and lying becomes an art with Turnbull as the main target ( he had a Land Rover, cigarettes and plenty of food ).

At this point one can ask whether 1) Turnbull is exaggerating in the interest of a dramatic story or 2) supporting a thesis which is, to quote, "my hope that we who have been civilised into such empty beliefs as the essential beauty and goodness of humanity may discover ourselves before it is too late."

To answer 1) it would be useful to read an independent account by Towles if one exists. He is not a co-author of this book and only appears in it very briefly. All the same Turnbull does give cases where there is some residual co-operation and more honest individuals move away from the tribe.

To answer 2), the story fits in too neatly with the new socio-biological view of the world ( Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. E.O.Wilson) where man can only be understood on the basis of his animal drives. Turnbull doesn't reflect that in similar times of big environmental change other groups are protected by knowledge / co-operation / law ( i.e. culture) so that things don't have to be the disaster that the Ik experience.

When he states that; "we have been civilised into a belief in the essential beauty and goodness of humanity.", this must be taken as literary license but ignoring the odd rhetorical flourish this is still an interesting book that is worth looking out for.

Slecht vertaald, daardoor leest het niet prettig

Beetje saai en ouderwets.

vertaling van:"The forest people"
Door Ohl M.L.
Subtitel: De groen wildernis

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