Missions and the colonization of African languages: developments in the former Belgian Congo [1983]

Anthropologists often gave profuse advice on such vital American problems as war with exotic societies; rural and urban poverty; the intricacies of ethnic identity; ecology and the use of drugs; marriage, divorce and promiscuity; or simply the future of the species. In many instances, societal interests, expressed in patterns of funding for research, were quickly translated into conceptualizations and theories and have in some cases given rise to sub disciplines and professional alliances of the secret society type. The concept of culture, approaches to death in anthropology has undergone a process of parochialization. Parochialization has had the effect of eliminating a transcendental and universal conception of the problem. Death has ceased a problem of anthropological inquiry; there are only deaths and forms of death-related behaviour. The differences in theoretical and methodological inclination, social-cultural anthropologists presumed as students of human behaviour in as much as it is determined by cultural orientations.