ABSTRACT
I have written this book for two interrelated reasons. First, I believe that the empirical basis of social anthropological methods of study is worth preserving. This is going to be increasingly difficult if the so-called primitive social systems continue to be the main focus of attention and research. True, there are some parts of the world where, isolated from outside contact by mountain ranges and deep forest, small indigenous populations still follow an immemorial way of life. But situations of this kind in, for example, the more remote areas of New Guinea and Brazil, are now relatively rare; and it is very much more common to find that traditional cultures have been penetrated and influenced at nearly all their most strategic points by industrialization and other ‘modernizing’ forces. Nor does even a high rate of illiteracy necessarily betoken the persistence of tradi tional forms of social organization.
