Anthropologists in America Take a First Look at Africa

The author, as an adolescent, wanted to be a polar explorer. He did not seem to care whether he went to the North or the South Pole. But at Northwestern University, he became interested in its African program, one of two major programs in anthropology there. The other was on African cultures in the Caribbean and South America. So as a graduate student, he did a study of African cultural survival in a community along the coast of Georgia. However, he was more interested in Africa at a time when Americans realized, after World War II, how little they knew about it. Government and foundation funds became available, and Ottenberg took advantage of it for his first African research in 1952–1953 on a year's grant for work in Nigeria. That began a long career there, where his interests varied over the years––from children and adult masking to family life to art and other subjects. He found African culture to be anything but simple; rather it is very complex. Each aspect has links to others; it's a web of behaviors to be traced in which language played key roles while Western cultural influences were changing African cultures.

-- Simon Ottenberg