The recent and unfortunate death of Sir David Low (1891–1963), the eminent British political caricaturist, provides social researchers with another opportunity to inquire into the sociological relevance of political caricature. Political caricature is an effective way to create images and to inform the public of political figures and the meaning of events. Political caricature also tends to be universal and repetitive in Western society for about the last 400 years. Caricature for decades has also become for many newspapers and campaigns an important item. For the man in a rush or the reader of only the headlines or lead paragraphs the caricature is a way of catching at a glance the meaning of an event, a person in the news, or a pictorial summary of a current power constellation.

Urbanization may be viewed as a particular manifestation of social change. As such, it is often defined as a process leading originally distinct social systems to a common destination. As an example, it is supposed to facilitate the universal emergence of a European type of nuclear family. In this perspective, many scholars have been eager to determine the extent to which African patterns of familial behavior lose their traditional specific properties. These researchers have in fact equated the problem of measuring urbanization with the problem of measuring the relative decline and persistence of traditional affiliations. Taking as examples the familial systems of two Ivory Coast peoples, the present paper intends to show some of the limitations of this type of analysis.

When Thomas Hobbes arrived in France at the end of 1640, “the first of all that fled” from the growing threat of civil war in England, he began an exile which was to last eleven years, an exile which was moreover to prove the most intellectually fruitful period of his whole life. In Paris he was to reach the height of his polemical powers, conducting his debates with Descartes on the existence of secondary qualities, and with Bishop Bramhall on free will. In Paris he was also to bring to fruition a lifetime of speculation about the science of politics, completing the De Cive and writing the whole of Leviathan.

The basic operation in the comparative method is an arrangement of social or cultural conditions observed among existing peoples into a series that is then taken to represent a process of evolution. This procedure has been used to depict the whole sweep of human history, a limited period of development, or the growth of a particular social or cultural element or group of elements. The method has been applied most commonly, perhaps, in a search for origins of specific cultural items.

“You have given India,” Secretary of State Sir Samuel Hoare once told his officers, “justice such as the East has never known before.” For most Englishmen, having established therule of law” on the Indian subcontinent was probably the proudest achievement of the British raj. They believed that they had substituted legal security for disorder, predictability for uncertainty, and impartiality for whim and nepotism.

I. The Political Meaning of Ethnic Conflict

If politics “in its broadest sense” is conceived as the “distribution of advantages and disadvantages among people” (Froman, p. 3), then the ultimate penalty is subordination (total exclusion from advantages) and the ultimate reward is dominance (total monopoly of advantages). The effort to change the balance of advantages and disadvantages between groups is the nexus of political conflict. In such conflict, ethnicity is a particularly important variable, precisely because it is one criterion found throughout the world by which groups are regularly assigned superior and inferior places.

The existence of a widespread religious phenomenon in Africa appearing under many names, in corporate manifestations as new groups and in individual form as new prophets, is evidenced in many ways. Even the most casual observer driving through a large African town cannot fail to notice the succession of exotic names on sign boards or to meet a white-robed religious procession, and if he tries to trace the bell-ringing, drumming, and chanting that fill the night air for hours on end the chances are that he will be led to one of these sign boards and to some humble structure filled with tireless worshippers. Occasionally the bizarre behaviour of a prophet or “sect’ provides material for the journalist seeking sensation, or leads to an appearance in the police courts, or even to military action, as in Northern Rhodesia in 1964 against the Lenshina movement. Strange churches apply for membership of Christian councils, and ministers and missionaries are perplexed when some of their members secure spiritual help from a semi-literate prophet, or transfer their allegiance to an unknown church with an outlandish name.

In recent years, American scholars have begun to search for the uniqueness of the American institution of Negro slavery, by contrasting it with the experience of the other colonizing nations of Europe in the New World. Even as far back as the 17th century, a sharp difference in slave institutions was noted between English, French and Spanish possessions, yet few historians until recently have attempted to analyze the causes and consequences of these distinctions.

This essay is essentially a historical survey of the whole career of civilized societies. It seeks to list major probabilities and possibilities and to identify ascertained fact. It takes stock of the present state of knowledge after a long period, almost a century, of study.

Charles Rubia's resignation from office as Mayor of Nairobi on September 15, 1964, set off a potentially dangerous political crisis in Kenya. Although Rubia subsequently returned to office the affair split the major political party, aroused considerable tribal passion, provoked the youth-wing into angry demonstrations and the Kikuyu women of Nairobi into their piercing “ululating” cry in front of the City Hall.

Indonesian law and judicial institutions raise almost every conceivable theoretical and practical problem. Professor Jaspan certainly conveys admirably the bewildering confusion of diversity of custom, judicial practices, arguments about theory and policy, and political pressures, describing dilemmas which, on sociological first principles, seem in the short (or even middle) run to be insoluble.

At the end of his suggestive political analysis of Nairobi, Herbert Werlin asserts that a major goal for Kenya politics “is to build up the basis for cooperation” (p. 197). Cooperation existed in Kenya under British colonialism; it exists in Britain today. Lack of cooperation at present makes it more difficult for Kenya and Nairobi to solve acute social and economic problems. For Werlin, cooperation requires an educated, public-spirited citizenry, a politically conscious, reform minded business class, and a corps of dedicated professional administrators (p. 197). Cooperation requires a modern social order which in American cities has functioned to encourage “good government”. But this very modern concept of cooperation tells us more about where Kenya and Nairobi ought to go than how they should get there.

In writing his article, Mr. Klein clearly intended his particular evidence about the influence of different religions to be taken as a proof of general conclusions which would explain the different characteristics of Negro slavery in different parts of the Americas. Quite early, he suggests that his aim is to assess previous comparative studies of American slavery empirically “by subjecting to detailed analysis the slave systems of two colonial powers in the New World … through detailing the operation of one crucial aspect of the slave system, the relationship between infidel Negro and Christian Church, in two highly representative colonies, those of Cuba and Virginia” (p. 295).

I. Attitudes towards Usury

In many ancient societies the very idea of taking interest was considered to be reprehensible and immoral. The term usury, which comes to be applied to lending at rates above the legal rates, has a tinge of something socially and religiously undesirable about it. In early and mediaeval Indian society it is not always possible to draw a precise line between usury and interest, and hence the subject can be best studied by examining the data on interest and money-lending.

The confluence of rivers normally makes for interesting landscapes. With the right topography there are no marshes and, after the initial discovery, the area soon becomes the scene of considerable economic activity. So it is with the confluence of intellectual disciplines. With the right guidelines, the scene becomes one of fertile intellectual interchange.

This paper is concerned with developments in Hinduism in British Guiana. The Hindus of this country are the descendants of immigrants from India who were recruited during the period 1838–1917 to serve as labourers in the sugar plantations. I discuss the effects on religion of changes initiated by immigration.

A major problem in the civic integration of new states is the quickening of “primordial attachments” based on ties of blood, race, language, region, religion or custom. These attachments give rise to separatist, irredentist or factional groupings whose claims to recognition and autonomy cut across the claims of civic unity based on a common national territory.

The particular rebellion in the Congo with which we are concerned in this article is the one that began in the Kwilu Province in January 1964 and, as such, was the first in a chain of rebellions that have erupted in the Congo in the course of the past year.

Interest in the consequences for economic activity of the development of disease, preventive medicine, and of other public health problems is not exactly new. Professor Sigerist, in many ways the doyen of the subject, summarized our background quite well in 1941. “We are”, he wrote, “often inclined to believe that the economic approach to medical problems is new, that we inaugurated it. This is not the case …. Max von Pettenkofer in Munich, reasoned very much along the same lines as we do today” [18:2]. Thus, I have precedent for citing work done in this very city as the logical place to start my discussion. One could, as indeed Sigerist himself did, argue that von Pettenkofer (upon whose work I shall base this analysis) wrote with the knowledge of earlier writers like Chadwick, Simon, Snow, and Budd. But, I am inclined to accept Sigerist's assessment of von Pettenkofer's importance and use his two public lectures as the springboard from which to launch my discussion.