Godfrey Lienhardt

Ronald Godfrey Lienhardt (born January 17, 1921 in Bradford , † November 9, 1993 in Oxford ) was a British anthropologist and religious scholar . He researched the religion and society of the Dinka and Anuak in Sudan . His findings on the self-image and the religious ideas of the Dinka were understood as the basis for a general anthropology and developed further in this direction. Thanks to clear and understandable language, he also attracted attention beyond his specialist area.

Life

The German name "Gottfried Lienhardt" refers to the father's Swiss origins; his mother was English. From 1939 to 1941 Lienhardt studied English literature at Downing College at the University of Cambridge . During the Second World War he was stationed as a lieutenant in the British Army in East Africa . In 1947 he graduated from Cambridge with a degree in ethnology and archeology . The government of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan supported Lienhardt, like his teacher and colleague Edward E. Evans-Pritchard before, with a grant for field research with the Dinka in South Sudan, where he spent two years from 1947 to 1950. He published his doctoral thesis in 1952 under the title: The Dinka of the Southern Sudan. Religion and Social Structure. During this time he was also a lecturer in African Studies at Oxford. In the years 1950–1952 he carried out field research with the Anuak in the southern border area between Sudan and Ethiopia with a grant from the International African Institute .

1955-1956 he set up the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Baghdad . In the following years Lienhardt was a member of the research institution Queen Elizabeth House of the Department of International Development at Oxford University , where he wrote his work on the Dinka religion, Divinity and Experience in 1961 . The Religion of the Dinka , completed. In 1964 he received a visiting professorship at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Ghana in Accra . He then returned to Oxford, where he was appointed to the board of directors of Wolfson College in 1967, in which he took over the chairmanship from 1973 to 1975. From Northwestern University in Illinois Lienhardt was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1983 .

Oxford University regularly awards a scholarship dedicated to his memory, the Godfrey Lienhardt Memorial Fund , for research projects in sub-Saharan Africa. His brother Peter Lienhardt made contributions to the history of Islam in Arabia, Egypt and Sudan.

As a teacher at Oxford, he maintained personal contact with his students. Some remember the evening technical discussions in the pub .

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Study of the religion and society of the Dinka

By the time Lienhardt began his field research with the Dinka, Evans-Pritchard had already given a thorough ethnographic description of the neighboring and in many ways similar Nuer . An equally detailed presentation of the Dinka Society might have resulted in repetitions; a different interpretation of the results could have led to competition between colleagues. Lienhardt therefore only briefly discussed social structures and never discussed marriage rules at all; instead, he focused on the symbolic content of religion.

Lienhardt did not structure the Dinka religion according to certain principles of belief, but tried to capture religion as the outflow of everyday and social experiences: Spirits, gods or other forces that influence people are above all forces that arise from the idea of ​​"images" ( "Images") arise. There are images of passions ("passion") as an active source through which Dinka are grasped and come to religious experience. He found that the Dinka lack an “inner agency” (for example: “an inner instigator”) as a spirit / conscience / memory and as an active authority, but that they perceive the content of the images as the real force. This power is superhuman, but not supernatural, as it does not work from a world beyond. The forces are both outside (appearances of nature) and inside man (where they take possession) and establish the connection between outer and inner experience.

For this principle of religious experience, Lienhardt introduced the Latin term “passiones”, which has since been quoted often in anthropology, with Fritz Kramer as an example . Western man intentionally remembers something, Dinka are remembered by a power. It's an overwhelming memory.

Social anthropology

Lienhardt followed the principles of British social anthropology as formulated by Evans-Pritchard, which examines societies as moral systems, tries to find general patterns and interprets them.

Lienhardt found the Dinka, who are semi-nomads and cattle breeders and mainly look after their cattle, rather unsociable compared to the arable Anuak, in whose village communities people live close together and where there are fine psychological structures in the competition for power that shape the social fabric could investigate. He observed the balance of power among the Dinka as balanced between the two clan groups: the clan of the spearmen was responsible for the rituals within the society , the clan of the warriors was responsible for politics.

Lienhardt made a subtle distinction between the expressive and effective function of the Dinka rituals, i.e. between the symbolic act of the magician and the control function through human experience. Since the symbolic part was subtracted from the ritual, it could show the magical core as less. At this point there was a technical discussion about how magical “primitive” religions are in general. Mary Douglas compensated for the high proportion of magic that was observed elsewhere in close-knit and hierarchical farming societies, which the Dinka had little ritualized religion against a scattered and rather domesticated cattle-breeding society. From this she concluded that traditional societies need not necessarily be more religious than modern ones.

Works

• Divinity and Experience. The Religion of the Dinka. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961; Reprint Oxford University Press 1988, ISBN 0-19-823405-8 .
• Social Anthropology. Oxford University Press, London / New York 1964; Reprint 1972.

Individual articles

• Some Notions of Witchcraft among the Dinka. Africa 21.1. 1951, pp. 303-318.
• The Shilluk of the Upper Nile. In: Daryll Forde (Ed.): African Worlds : Studies in the Cosmological Ideas and Social Values ​​of African People. International African Institute , Oxford University Press 1954, pp. 138-163.
• Nilotic Kings and Their Mothers' Kin. In: Africa. Journal of the International African Institute 25. 1955, pp. 29-42.
• Anuak Village Headmen I. In: Africa. Journal of the International African Institute 27. 1957, pp. 397-400.
• Anuak Village Headmen. II: Village Structure and "Rebellion". In: Africa. Journal of the International African Institute 28, 1958, pp. 23-36.
• The Western Dinka. In: J.Middleton and D. Tait (Eds.): Tribes without Rulers. London 1958.
• The situation of death. An Aspect of Anuak Philosophy. Anthropological Quarterly, 35, 2. 1962, pp. 74-85. Later in: Mary Douglas: Witchcraft, Confessions and Accusations. 1970, new edition Routledge, London / New York 2004, pp. 279–291.
• Evans-Pritchard: A Personal View. In: Man. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, NS 9. 1974, pp. 299-304.
• Getting Your Own Back: Themes in Nilotic Myth. In: Godfrey Lienhardt and John Hugh Marshall Beattie (eds.): Studies in social anthropology. Essays in memory of Edward E. Evans-Pritchard by his former Oxford colleagues. Oxford 1975, pp. 212-237.
• Self Public Private. Some African Representations in the Category of the Person. In: Michael Carrithers u. a. (Ed.): The Category of the Person. Anthropology, Philosophy, History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1985, pp. 141-155.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Paul Heelas and Andrew Lock (Eds.): Indigenous Psychologies. The Anthropology of Self. Academic Press, London 1981.
2. ↑ Jeremy MacClancy and Chris McDonaugh: Popularizing Anthropology. Routledge, London / New York 1996 (dedicated to Lienhardt).
3. ↑ Klaus Neumann: Understanding the foreign. Basics of a cultural anthropological exegesis. Volume 2. Lit-Verlag, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2000, p. 763.
4. ^ Divinity and Experience, p. 148.
5. ^ Fritz Kramer: The red Fes. About obsession and art in Africa. Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt 1987.
6. ↑ Peter J. Bräunlein: picture files. Religious Studies in Dialogue with a New Visual Science. In: Brigitte Luchesi and Kocku von Stuckrad (ed.): Religion in cultural discourse. de Gruyter, Berlin 2004, p. 219.
7. ^ Edward E. Evans-Pritchard: Theories of Primitive Religions. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1981, p. 24.
8. ^ Mary Douglas: Ritual, Taboo and Body Symbolism. Social anthropological studies in industrial society and tribal culture. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 1986, p. 33f. Robin Horton criticized an underestimation of the magical elements: Divinity and Experience. Review in: Africa , 32 (1), p. 78.

Web links

• Works by Lienhardt in the catalog of the SUB Göttingen
• Southern Sudan, Pitt Rivers Museum: Ronald Godfrey Lienhardt (1921–1993) short biography.
• Southern Sudan, Pitt Rivers Museum: Lienhardt in Dinkaland. Photograph by Lienhardt in South Sudan around 1950.
• Southern Sudan, Pitt Rivers Museum: photos taken by Lienhardt in Sudan in the 1950s.