The Analysis of Social Situations

ed to constitute a system for analysis. Epstein in his study of Politics in an urban African community (I958), conceptualised the situations which he analysed as occurring within an urban field of relationships which he partitioned into semiautonomous ets or sub-fields. Turner (I968), in a recent analysis of the political aspects of an Ndembu ritual, treats the situation as located in a field in a more specific sense deriving from Lewin (I95i: 200); and Swartz (I968) has developed this conception. From this perspective, a situation is viewed as occurring within a field setting whose circumference expands and contracts according to the changing interests and values of the actors in the situation. The field is defined in terms of the interests and involvements of the participants in the processes being studied and its contents include 'the values, meanings, resources and relationships employed by the participants in that process' (Swartz I968: 9). Explicitly this orientation is directed towards the analysis of processes occurring within a field of interaction which may 'cross' institutional nd organisational boundaries and which may persist when groups, organisations and institutions disappear or are modified. The essential attraction of the orientation is that it can be applied not only to the analysis of processes which have traditionally concerned anthropologists but also to the analysis of processes occurring within rapidly changing fields which orthodox forms of institutional nalysis may have difficulty in treating. Essentially similar orientations have been used in studies of, for example, urbanisation (Mitchell I966), labour migration (e.g. Gulliver 1957; Watson i958; van Velsen I960; P. Mayer I96I), the mobilisation of voters in an Indian election (A. C. Mayer I966), political relationships among Bedouin (Peters I967: 28 I), and ecological change in Indonesia (Geertz I968: io). As Bateson (I958) demonstrated in his pioneering treatment of the Naven ritual among the Iatmul-a ritual which is performed by a man whenever his sister's child accomplishes ome significant deed-any social situation displays many different dimensions and is amenable to analysis from different theoretical perspectives. This point has been more recently stressed and developed by Devons and Gluckman (I964). They have argued that the different social and behavioural sciences are 'in the main not distinguished by the events they study but by the kinds of relations between events which they seek to establish' (I964: io). Psychologists, political scientists, economists and social anthropologists may each study the same events from different perspectives. Which theoretical perspective is adopted will determine the dimensions of the 218 G. KINGSLEY GARBETT situation which are studied, the kinds and levels of abstraction made, and the nature of the explanation of the events. Any explanation of an event is only a partial explanation. Partial explanations made in terms of different theoretical perspectives may not always be compatible because the assumptions, explicit or implicit, which underly the perspectives may differ infundamental ways. For example, the explanation ofa situation, interms of an institutional analysis which depends upon some concept of a typical actor as a performer ofroles, where role is defined in terms of expected behaviour, may not be compatible with an explanation offered in terms of exchange theory or game theory, where the typical actor is conceived of as a manipulator and given a specified limit to his rationality, strategies, goals, and so forth (cf Banck I969).