5 - Spirit-mediums in ritual action

Summary

One of the most significant contributions of the Manchester School to social anthropology was the new and greater emphasis that they gave to detailed case material. Gluckman (1958), Mitchell (1956), Victor Turner (1957) with his development of the notion of social drama and others did not present their readers with ready-made models illustrated by what van Velsen (1967) called ‘apt illustrations’; their analyses of the regularities of social life were derived from the observation and reporting of situations in which people were actually handling their structural relationships.

While it is probably true that the majority of anthropologists in fact develop their analysis from this kind of information, apart from that obtained by formal interviews, village censuses etc …, the members of the Manchester School gave the reader this basic information so that he could not only see for himself how social organisation actually worked, but also challenge the author's analysis should he so wish. The presentation of this type of (almost) raw field material was also a move towards greater intellectual honesty.

Up until now this book has proceeded on what might be called pre-Manchester lines. The reader has been given a ‘competence’ in Zezuru custom and an analytical model which tries to make overall sense of religious belief and the sociology of spirit-mediumship.