In the face of the dominating tradition of British structural functionalism, anthropological studies of political leadership represented an important move towards accounting for the dynamics of centralized, as well as acephalous, polities (for example, Barth 1959 and Baily 1970; cf. Schapera 1956). Moreover, in focusing upon political actors and, by extension, political relations, these studies necessarily took account of the role of the subjects. Yet, despite Gluckman's innovative notion of “rituals of rebellion” (1954; cf. Beidelman 1966), the issue of political leadership has rarely focused upon the political dynamics of the ruler-subject relationship, examining the concerns and responses of those who more or less voluntarily subject themselves to an authority figure. Even such an important contribution as Succession to High Office (Goody 1966) completely ignores this issue.

The Thai monarchy, protected by the law of lèse-majesté, appears to be an anachronism in the age of nation-states. Over the past century, the spread of nationalism has leveled most monarchies, reducing kings (or queens) to the status of semiprivate individuals or preserving them as innocuous symbols. Usually considered mere remnants of feudal pasts, the laws protecting monarchies in the twentieth century have received little scholarly attention, even less perhaps in Thailand, where any critical analysis of the monarchy is discouraged by the threat of the lèse-majesté charge.

The term totalitarian has often been used by scholars to characterize the Soviet Union's system of government, and in many studies the emphasis has fallen on assessing the degree of effectiveness of the ruling apparatus in exercising its total control over society. Whatever the actual condition of public life in the Soviet Union (USSR), a desire to use the totalitarian system undeniably existed; and regardless of the degree to which people were able to retain an autonomous private sphere, their lives were shaped by this urge to total control. The best examples of this come not from the realm of high politics but of mundane personal practices such as the pursuit of hobbies. During the period from 1921 to 1939, the Soviet government redefined the hobby of stamp collecting, socially reconstructing it in terms of the regime's values. In the process, the Soviet regime demonstrated its totalitarian goal in ways that had ramifications in everyday life, as can be seen in the state's relations with the philatelists and in the realm of hobbies. The fact that the government strictly controlled and circumscribed something as seemingly innocuous and insignificant as stamp collecting reveals how strongly the state aspired to have total control of society. More important, this urge sprang not from the top of the Soviet apparatus but, rather, from mid-level officials.

Since 1978, the Chinese economic reforms that Deng Xiaoping initiated have given more room to market forces, legalized private entrepreneurship, and decentralized considerable decision-making power into the hands of the directors of state-owned enterprises through responsibility or contract systems. These reforms have produced some spectacular successes. Currently, the Chinese are richer, better informed, and have more personal freedom than at any other time since the Communist victory in 1949. Yet, despite these results, there seems to be no clear-cut plan of reform. At the national level, the policies of reform are the object of constant debate and infighting between shifting coalitions of Party and state leaders. As a result, the reforms are often inconsistent and display a continually changing pattern of radicalization and retrenchment through an array of policy initiatives, experiments, and new legislation.

The Parisian Faubourg Saint Germain and perhaps the Rue de la Paix and the boulevards seemed the adequate measure of luxury to all of the snobs. The old colonial shell of the Latin American cities little approximated such scenery. The example of Baron de Haussmann and his destructive example strengthened the decision of the new bourgeoisies who wished to erase the past, and some cities began to transform their physiognomy: a sumptuous avenue, a park, a carriage promenade, a luxurious theater, modern architecture revealed that decision even when they were not always able to banish the ghost of the old city. But the bourgeoisies could nourish their illusions by facing one another in the sophisticated atmosphere of an exclusive club or a deluxe restaurant. There they anticipated the steps that would transmute “the great village” into a modern metropolis.

—José Luis Romero

Accounts of first contact in Papua New Guinea have aroused considerable interest over the years (Hides 1936; Leahy and Crain 1937; Nelson 1982; Connelly and Anderson 1987; Schieffelin and Crittenden 1991). No doubt, this has been in part because these accounts have an intrinsic drama and popular romantic appeal (intrepid explorers enter remote mountain valleys and discover vast populations of previously unknown tribes who had never seen white men before and believed they were supernatural beings). More recently, anthropologists and historians have begun examining these sorts of events to explore how historical and cultural forces unique or intrinsic to quite different societies become transformed when they come into contact with each other, a process, that Sahlins has termed the “structure of the conjuncture” (Sahlins 1980, 1985; Dening 1988). Accounts of the period immediately following first contact in Papua,1 during which Australian government officers extended political control over the newly discovered native Papuan tribesmen, however, are usually narratives of European (Australian) colonial history, with little sense of Papuan experience.

When anthropologists come to examine the role of Christian missionaries in the transformation of non-Western societies, as they have done increasingly over the past decade, they soon become deeply embroiled in debates about narrative. Most obvious and immediate are the written and published narratives in which missionaries report their activities, providing the single most important source of data. But the more fundamental issues lie beyond: They have to do with the role of narrative in the social transformation itself, and eventually with the place of narrative in the ethnographic account that anthropology sets itself to produce. In this essay, which arises from a larger project on the encounter of religions in nineteenth-century Yorubaland, the focus of the argument will move through several levels of narrative, but it will start and finish with an argument that demonstrates why narrative is so important for the achievement of a properly historical anthropology.