La structure sociale des Dogon a fait l'objet d'enquêtes consignées, depuis 1931, dans un certain nombre d'ouvrages. Cette population observe dans le cadre de la famille indivise une filiation patrilinéaire et patrilocale, le totem étant hérité en ligne agnatique. Abstraction faite des manages avec les gens de caste (forgerons, griots, travailleurs du bois, du cuir), strictement prohibes, les Dogon pratiquent, au sein des quatre grandes tribus ou groupes qui les composent, l'échange généralisé.

Une synthèse des renseignements recueillis a été effectuée par M. D. Tait qui a procédé à ‘une analyse structurale des matériaux’ et conclu à la nécessité, pour comprendre les problèmes de la structure dogon, d'une ‘investigation plus poussée’.

Towards the end of 1947 I carried out a public-opinion survey among the Cewa tribe of Fort Jameson district, Northern Rhodesia. Although the survey was a failure, judged by the rigorous standards of public-opinion polling, it nevertheless threw light on some of the problems that arise when public-opinion-polling techniques are adapted for use among preliterate peoples. Research of this kind has a place in assessing general morale, in gauging people's reactions to administrative and development policies, and in supplementing the more intensive, but highly selective, observations of the social anthropologist. Because this is an important but almost untouched field, I am recording the lessons that are to be learned from my experiment.

In this essay I propose to discuss three recent studies of African legal systems—Anderson's survey of Mohammedan law in British African territories, Gluckman's book on the Barotse (or Lozi, to mention the tribe mainly considered), and Howell's book on Nuer law. To begin with, this seemed merely a convenient way of combining three reviews; nor did the three books seem to have very much more in common than the date of their publication and the fact that they are all concerned with Africa. The types of law described and the scope of the descriptions differ widely. So does even the background of the authors; for Professor Anderson is a jurist, Professor Gluckman an anthropologist with legal training and interests, and Dr. Howell an administrator-cum-magistrate with anthropological training and interests.

The last decade has seen a considerable revival of interest in the physical anthropology of the Bushman-Hottentot peoples. In the period 1952-5 no fewer than 34 papers with a bearing on this topic have been published, of a total of 46 in the decade 1946-55. This contrasts with 7 works in this category in the four years 1948-51. The subject-matter has been shared fairly evenly between studies on the living and those on skeletal remains. In the former category are studies on Nama Hottentots (Wells), Strandlopers (Dart), Koranas (Grobbelaar, Tobias), Sandawe (Trevor), Lake Chrissie Bushmen (Toerien), Northern Bushmen (Wells, Gusinde, Erikson, Williams, Tobias), River Bushmen (Hurwitz and Harington), Central Bushmen (Tobias), hybrids (Trevor, Wells, Tobias), and on blood groups (Zoutendyck, Kopec and Mourant, Grobbelaar). In the second category are craniological studies by Cosnett, Dart, Drennan, Dreyer and Meiring, Grobbelaar, Hope, Keen, Sauter, Tobias, Toerien, Wells, on a variety of recent, proto-historic, and prehistoric remains. Two thirds of all these studies have been focused primarily upon Bushmen. Furthermore, plans for additional anthropometrical and anthroposcopic surveys of surviving Bushmen are at present being elaborated in the Department of Anatomy of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg—from which Department, under the general direction and inspiration of Professor Raymond A. Dart, more than half the studies referred to have emanated. It is hoped that, in the coming years, a series of expeditions will visit Bushman tribes, more particularly in those areas which have not hitherto been studied from a physical anthropological point of view.