This paper analyzes the relationship between Ghana’s cocoa sector and the Nkrumah regime. It reveals that post-independence Ghana relied heavily on the cocoa sector in both the economic and the political spheres. In contrast to his public anti-colonial campaign, Nkrumah in reality strengthened the economic and political systems associated with the cocoa sector that had been inherited from the colonial era. Through an extensive examination of the political and economic functions of the Cocoa Marketing Board under the Nkrumah regime, this paper argues that the major dilemma of newly independent Ghana was the discrepancy between Nkrumah’s anti-colonial ideology and his politico-economic strategies, which relied heavily on colonial legacies.

Key Words: Ghana, cocoa, independence, history, economic policy

This article presents my observations of American anthropology, based on my 11 years of stay in the United States as a foreign student and later as a professor. It provides descriptive accounts of the ways anthropology is actually practiced in America. As such, it may be considered an attempt at an ‘ethnography of anthropology.’
The opening chapter explains my background, both academic and personal, and the reasons why I returned to Japan even after becoming a permanent resident of the United States. The second chapter emphasizes the importance of putting America in a relative perspective, thereby regarding it as representing only one tradition out of many possibilities, despite the country’s superpower status. This viewpoint is applied in the third chapter, which analyzes the development of American anthropology by comparing it with that of Great Britain. The fourth chapter presents my impressions of some of the most influential American anthropologists by way of anecdotes. These illustrate the personal, rather than academic, aspects of American scholarship. The fifth chapter explores social factors in the academic culture of the United States, particularly the oscillation between obedience to authority and defiance thereof. The sixth chapter compares Japanese and American traditions of scholarship, and points out that Japan’s strength lies in its versatility, which compensates for its lack of depth. In the seventh chapter are discussed some of the problems with which non-Western students are faced when studying their own culture with American or British professors. The last chapter defines Japan as peripheral to the ‘academic world system.’ I conclude with a plea to the next generation of Japanese anthropologists that they should improve Japan’s international standing by conducting world-class research.

Key Words: American cultural anthropology, British social anthropology, academic traditions in Japan and the United States, world system of anthropology

The aim of this paper is to give an overview of French anthropological research and education system. The paper has three focal points: to trace a history of French anthropology from 1900 to 1960; to specify the characteristics of French anthropological institutions; and to discuss the problems and possibilities of current French anthropology.
1. The development of French anthropology before World War II was realized through the Ethnological Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1925 by M. Mauss. It trained a number of anthropologists, including Lévi- Strauss, Leiris, Métraux, and Dumont. After World War II, these scholars were divided into several schools of French anthropology; the Ethnological School of Griaule; the structural school of anthropology of LLévi-Strauss, who became professor at the Collège de France; and the social and political anthropology of Balandier, who was professor at the University of Paris and founded the African Research Center (CEA) in 1959.
2. After World War II, France, began to create some centers of research such as the CEA, and those at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France. Since 1975, EHESS, a new institute for social sciences, has offered possibilities for graduate students to acquire advanced knowledge in all branches of social sciences. With about fifty anthropologists, it provides a solid educational base to students coming from around France and abroad. Each year, it receives over a hundred doctoral students and approves about fifty Ph. D. theses. It operates also as a national center for anthropology in France, which has no national society of anthropologists.
3. French anthropology has been divided, since 1960, between the structural anthropology of Lévi-Strauss and the social anthropology of Balandier. The former has tried to refine methods of analysis, but neglects social and cultural problems. The latter has been oriented to political and historical problems, but its analytical tools remain less sophisticated. Some scholars such as Godelier and Augé have tried to put together these currents in vain, and have no followers among the younger generation of anthropologists. French anthropology seems to be divided into many small compartments between which communication is barred. As long as this compartmentalization remains, France will not be able to breathe new life into world anthropology.

Key Words: : French Anthropology, Anthropological Education, Lévi-Strauss, Balandier

This article provides an informal and tentative status report on British ‘social’ anthropology today, largely based on my very casual ‘participant observation’ of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge from 2002 to 2003 as a visiting scholar. After brief introductory remarks on the history of British social anthropology (as against American cultural anthropology) and the department, I point out two conspicuous traits of the department I observed. First, it is polycentric in that each of the three professors seems to indicate a different direction concerning the future of the department and social anthropology in general: recording, documentation and ancestor worship; transdisciplinary theoretical sophistication based on the British ‘social’ anthropological tradition; and a regionally oriented advanced study unit composed of anthropologists and scholars of related disciplines. Second, the recent systematisation of the curriculum (possibly due to the ‘audit culture’) and the internationalisation of the department seem to have lessened its particularity as a centre of ‘British’ ‘social’ anthropology. Even the long-established tradition of ‘Senior Seminars’ seems to have been almost imperceptibly eroding. If the British tradition of social anthropology is destined to melt into the larger field of anthropology (the World, European, Anglophone, or otherwise), it might be ancestor worship on the world wide web which serves most to uphold the venerable tradition of Cambridge social anthropology qua ‘social’ anthropology.

Key Words: social anthropology, theories, education, seminar, tradition

Like sociology, ethnology, and folklore studies, anthropology in mainland China was nothing but an importation from western countries and westernized Japanese scholars during the final years of the Qing dynasty and the first years of the Republic of China. In the middle of the formation of the Republic of China and even while facing Japanese invasions, many anthropologists like Fei Xiaotong and Lin Yaohua were very active in their academic efforts. Much fieldwork was done and their ethnographies were published in English and Chinese.
Yet, after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the Soviet academic leadership suppressed and negated sociological and anthropological studies in China. Only the ethnology of minorities in remote areas was encouraged. As the result of Chinese-Soviet confrontation, ethnological studies of China were utterly negated by Mao Zedong. The stage of anthropological fieldwork had moved from mainland China to Taiwan and Hong Kong. But, due to the Chinese government’s policy changes in 1978, all of those studies have been revived. Now academic exchanges with associations in western countries are very active. However, anthropology in China as an academic discipline has not yet been established and systematized as a fullfledged science. Now is the time for Chinese anthropologists to realize ‘real Chinese anthropology.’
Though a number of academic papers have been written and introduced in European countries about Chinese anthropological works, some of them, unfortunately, lack an impartial outlook. I would like to look back at the outlook of those Chinese scholars in the past, and to review the problems of anthropology in China.

Key Words: Chinese anthropology, Soviet model, sinicization, originality, potential