Symbols and knowledge

Fredrik Barth needs no introduction from me. He is already justly well known for his series of ethnographic studies on four different continents, which he has combined with an interest in theoretical problems relating constructively to his empirical enquiries. But I agreed to introduce the present volume both because the particular problem he analyses is one which goes to the heart of the comparative analysis of human interaction among neighbouring peoples, especially in societies without writing, and because it is a question that has also been one of my own implicit concerns. Like Barth in New Guinea, in West Africa I was struck by the degree of similarity that occurred between the economic, linguistic, and to some extent, cultural aspects of LoDagaa society and that of the peoples surrounding them, while at the same time there was a great diversity in other elements, especially the religious and magico- ritual domains. In the latter there were the same kinds of dramatic variation that Barth found among the mountain Ok, where, as he points out, the differences are apparent not just to external observers, but, some of them, indeed, shock the actors themselves, who view them as not merely ‘ungrammatical’, but as actually objectionable. Other differences are more neutral, while yet others are tacit (that is, unperceived or unelaborated).