Manchester School of Anthropology

is concerned with how cross-cutting ties of loyalty strengthen the social order.

in Custom and Conflict assert that cross-cutting ties of loyalty strengthen the social order, that social cohesion results from conflict itself, and even that 'the whole system depends on the existence of conflicts in smaller sub-systems' (Gluckman 1955'21) (Alan Barnard 85)

is concerned with how order is maintained in stateless societies.

Yet he reacted against the Malinowskian notion that social change was all about culture contact, and sought instead the complex dynamics of African society. He also reacted against functionalist assumptions that African societies were essentially stable, and he set about the study of social action, differences between rules and behaviour, contradictions in social norms, the anatomy of conflict, and the means of dispute settlement. In general works such as Custom and Conflict in Africa (J955) and Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (1965), as well as in a number of specific ethnographies, Gluckman examined the relations between stability and change, the ways in which order is maintained in stateless societies, and the role of conflict in creating order. This last issue was one on which he expressed somewhat different views in different publications, but his classic statements in Custom and Conflict assert that cross-cutting ties of loyalty strengthen the social order, that social cohesion results from conflict itself, and even that 'the whole system depends on the existence of conflicts in smaller sub-systems' (Gluckman 1955'21) (Alan Barnard 85)

is concerned with how social cohesion results from conflict itself.

is concerned with how the whole system depends on the existence of conflicts in smaller sub-systems.

is concerned with questions of stability and change.

is concerned with ways in which conflict creates social cohesion and order.

is grounded in the idea that a change in context changes structureprovokes agents to exercise strategy.

To understand why there is a context, one asks what has changed in the structure to provoke agents into initiating a strategy that leads to (or blocks) a change of structure' (30).

is grounded in the idea that social cohesion results from conflict itself. Social change is guided not by equilibrium, but by conflict and contradiction.

social cohesion results from conflict itself. Not equilibrium, but conflict and contradiction that guide social change. Max Gluckman, F.G. Bailey, John A Barnes, Fredrik Barth, Abner Cohen, Victor Turner, *Edmund Leach, (*Maurice Godelier, *Marshall Sahlins, Claude Meillassoux, Emmanuel Terray) Elizabeth Colson, Bruce Kapferer, J. Clyde Mitchell, Thayer Scudder

manchester school of anthropology, n.All

manchester school of anthropology