Societies Around the WorldA Social Science Course at the University of Kentucky

HIS course, Societies Around the World, was T started in September, 1947, by the departments of Sociology and Geography to serve as one of the three courses which students could select to satisfy the social studies requirements in the College of Arts and Sciences. The other choices open to them were American Civilization and European Civilization, both taught jointly by the departments of History and Political Science. Last year the Anthropology Department assumed responsibility for a section of "Societies," as our course is popularly called, and has added considerable strength, particularly to the first semester's work. This current semester the course enrollment is about 700, which shows the student response to this new approach. This course deals with six societies. The Eskimo, the Navajo, and the Baganda of East Africa are treated during the first semester, while the Chinese Peasant, the Cotton South, and the English Midlands are taken up the second semester. These societies, representing a careful selection, provide for the student several types of habitat, differing degrees of social complexity, and varying rates of social and cultural change. Recently, one of the anthropologists who joined our teaching staff said that an astrologer must have helped us in the selection of the societies because they were well-documented and illustrated vividly racial groups with cultures of importance and interest to modern anthropologists. A geographer who joined our staff this year also was enthusiastic about the selection from the geographical standpoint. Social considerations which entered into the selection might be mentioned. For one thing, the six societies represent a movement from a relatively simple social organization to the increasingly complex. In the Eskimo society there is a small community, a small family group, and an indefinite tribe. Among the Navajo the matriineal clan is closely allied with a well-developed property system. The Baganda, in addition to the clan, have an elaborate governmental structure of long standing. The Chinese Peasant, representing the majority of the world's population, which is peasant, shows a mystic attachment to the soil and is strongly familistic. In the Cotton South, a plantation economy has increasingly become mechanized and industrialized and is further complicated by the system of color caste. In the English Midlands, the site of the Industrial Revolution, we find an intricate industrial society. If we look at the six societies from the standpoint of culture change, we find that the Eskimo are political subjects of four modern nations: the Danes, the Canadians, the United States, and the Russians, and that each country has had a different policy toward these native people. The Navajo brings into focus our treatment of the American Indian, and the Baganda provide a case study of British policy in Africa. Parenthetically, it is of interest to notice that almost one million Baganda have become Christians in about seventy-five years, a fact which contrasts strikingly with the relatively few Navajos who have changed from their traditional religion. The Chinese Peasant is facing a choice between the West and the East, while the Cotton South is challenged with the problem of making democracy a living force in daily life. The English Midlands are a splendid case study in the socialization of major segments of a national economy.