Social Theory: Continuity and

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 Reading 2.1.3: “Estranged Labour” from The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
(written 1844, published 1932)
Marx on Capitalism, Commodity Fetishism, and Machinery and Technology: Capital
(1867)
Reading 2.1.4: “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof” and “The Factory”
from Capital (1867)
2.2 The Legacy of Marx and Engels
Stanley Aronowitz (1933–) and William DiFazio (1947–)
Aronowitz and DiFazio’s The Jobless Future (1994)
Reading 2.2.1: Excerpts from The Jobless Future (1994)
David Harvey (1935–)
David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005)
Reading 2.2.2: “Why the Neoliberal Turn?” from A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER 3: The Social Theory of Émile Durkheim

3.1 Émile Durkheim (1858–1917)
Durkheim’s Sociology: General Orientation, Early Works, and a Reflection on Crime—The
Rules of Sociological Method (1895)
Reading 3.1.1: The Rules of Sociological Method (1895)
Durkheim’s Suicide (1897) and the Concept of Anomie
Reading 3.1.2: Excerpts from Suicide (1897)
Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) and the Social Production of
Concepts
Reading 3.1.3: Selection from the Conclusion of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
(1912)
3.2 The Legacy of Durkheim
Robert K. Merton (1910–2003)
Merton’s “Social Structure and Anomie” (1938)
Reading 3.2: Merton’s “Social Structure and Anomie” (1938)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER 4: The Social Theory of Max Weber

4.1 Max Weber (1864–1920)
Weber’s Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (1921–1922)
Reading 4.1.1: Excerpts from Weber’s Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive
Sociology (1921–1922)
Reading 4.1.2: Excerpt from “Science as a Vocation” (1919)
4.2 The Legacy of Weber: George Ritzer and Theda Skocpol
George Ritzer (1940–)
Ritzer’s The McDonaldization of Society (1993)
Reading 4.2.1: Excerpts from George Ritzer’s The McDonaldization of Society (1993)
Theda Skocpol (1947–)

8
 Skocpol, Contemporary Political Life, and the Weberian Legacy
Reading 4.2.2: Skocpol’s “The Narrowing of Civic Life” (2004)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER 5: The Individual in Society: Simmel and Freud

5.1 Georg Simmel (1858–1918)
Simmel’s Social Theory: The Philosophy of Money (1907) and “The Metropolis and Mental
Life” (1903)
Reading 5.1.1: “The Miser and the Spendthrift” from Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money
(1900)
Reading 5.1.2: “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903)
5.2 The Legacy of Simmel: David Riesman (1909–2002)
Riesman’s Analysis of an Emerging Character Type: The Lonely Crowd (1950)
Reading 5.2: Excerpts from Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd (1950)
5.3 Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
Freud on the Individual and Society: Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1915)
Reading 5.3: Excerpts from Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1915)
5.4 The Legacy of Freud: Juliet Mitchell and Others
Freud’s Legacy: Juliet Mitchell and Others
Reading 5.4: Excerpts from Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE
PART II: Questions and Exercises

PART III: THE MIDDLE YEARS

Introduction
Suggested Readings: Part III
CHAPTER 6: The American Emergence 175
Introduction
6.1 Charles Cooley (1864–1929) and George Herbert Mead (1863–1931)
Cooley, Mead, and the Microsociological Tradition: Mead’s Mind, Self, and Society (1934)
Reading 6.1: Mead’s Mind, Self, and Society (1934)
6.2 The Legacy of Cooley and Mead: Patricia Adler (1951–) and Peter Adler (1951–)
The Adlers and the Self in Society
Reading 6.2: Patricia and Peter Adler’s “The Gloried Self” (1989)
6.3 W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1983)
The Social Theory of Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
Reading 6.3.1: Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
Reading 6.3.2: Du Bois’s “The Souls of White Folk,” Darkwater (1920)
6.4 The Chicago School: St. Clair Drake (1911–1990) and Horace Cayton (1903–1970)
The Chicago School and Drake and Cayton’s The Black Metropolis (1945)
Reading 6.4: Drake and Cayton’s The Black Metropolis (1945)
6.5 The Legacy of American Sociology: William Julius Wilson (1935–)

9
 Wilson’s Analysis of Institutional Segregation and Joblessness: When Work Disappears
(1996)
Reading 6.5: Wilson’s When Work Disappears (1996)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER 7: Reconstructed Marxism

Introduction
7.1 Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
Benjamin on Art and the Media: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
(1936)
Reading 7.1: This material omitted from the web edition
7.2 Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse: Exiles in Paradise
Adorno and Horkheimer’s Critique of Culture: The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)
Reading 7.2: Adorno and Horkheimer’s “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception” from The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)
7.3 Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937)
Gramsci’s Analysis of Hegemony and the Formation of Intellectuals: The Prison Notebooks
(written 1929–1935)
Reading 7.3: Excerpts from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (1929–1935)
7.4 The Legacy of Gramsci: Jean Anyon (1941–2013)
Gramsci’s “Organizers of Society” and Anyon’s “Executive Elite” Schools
Reading 7.4: Anyon’s “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” (1980)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER 8: American Hegemony and Its Critics

Introduction
Structural Functionalism
Conflict Theory
Symbolic Interactionism
8.1 Structural Functionalism: Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)
Parsons and Structural-Functional Sociology
Reading 8.1.1: Parsons’s “An Outline of the Social System,” from Theories of Society (1961)
Parsons and the Sociology of Illness and Medicine
Reading 8.1.2: Parsons’s “Illness and the Role of the Physician” (1951)
8.2 Conflict Theory: Critic of Hegemony C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
Mills and Conflict Theory: The Power Elite (1956)
Reading 8.2: Mills’s The Power Elite (1956)
8.3 Symbolic Interactionism: An Alternative to Structural Functionalism—Howard S.
Becker (1928–)
Symbolic Interactionism: The Social Theory of Howard S. Becker
Reading 8.3: Excerpt from Becker’s Outsiders (1963)
8.4 Consumerism and “False Needs”: The Critique of Modern Capitalist Culture—
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)

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 Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man (1964)
Reading 8.4: Excerpts from Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man (1964)
8.5 Structural Marxist Theory: Louis Althusser (1918–1990)
Althusser and Structural Marxist Theory
Reading 8.5: Excerpts from Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (1970)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

PART IV: TRANSITIONS AND CHANGES

Introduction
The Marxist Heritage
Other Classical Legacies: Weber (and Nietzsche) and Durkheim
Towards Conflict Constructionism
Suggested Readings: Part IV
CHAPTER 9: The Social Theory of Erving Goffman
9.1 Erving Goffman (1922–1982)
Goffman’s Dramaturgical Model of the Self
Reading 9.1.1: Excerpts from Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)
Conceptualization of Everyday Experience: Goffman’s Frame Analysis (1974)
Reading 9.1.2: Excerpts from Goffman’s Frame Analysis (1974)
Interaction as the Matrix of Social Regulation
Reading 9.1.3: Goffman’s “The Interaction Order” (1982)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER 10: Power, Bodies, and Subjects: The Social Theory of Michel Foucault
10.1 Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
Foucault’s Analysis of Surveillance and Punishment
Reading 10.1.1: Foucault’s “The Body of the Condemned,” from Discipline and Punish
(1975)
Reading 10.1.2: Foucault’s “Panopticon,” from Discipline and Punish (1975)
Foucault’s Analysis of Power
Reading 10.1.3: Foucault’s “The Subject and Power” (1982)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER 11: The Social Theory of Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002)
Bourdieu’s Social Theory
Reading 11.1: Excerpts from Bourdieu’s Sociology in Question (1993)
Habitus and Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice (1990)
Reading 11.2: Excerpts from Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice (1990)
Classifications and Categories as Tools of Power: Bourdieu’s Distinction (1979)
Reading 11.3: Excerpts from Bourdieu’s Distinction (1979)
SUGGESTED READINGS

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STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER 12: The Social Theory of Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall (1932–)
Stuart Hall and Ideology, the Production of Culture, and the Politics of Representation
Media Encoding and Decoding: The Uncertainty of Hegemonic Outcomes
Reading 12.1: Excerpts from Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding” (1980)
Hall on Race and Ethnicity: Floating Signifiers
Reading 12.2: Excerpts from Hall’s “Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities”
(1991)
Hall on Hegemony and the Legacy of Gramsci
Reading 12.3: Excerpts from “Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity”
(1986)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

PART V: DISPERSION AND DIFFERENCE

Introduction
CHAPTER 13: Issues of Race and Ethnicity in a Post-Colonial World
Introduction
13.1 Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)
Fanon and the Racial and Colonial Divides
Reading 13.1: Excerpts from Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
13.2 Edward Saïd (1935–2003)
Edward Saïd: Orientalism and the Other
Reading 13.2: Excerpts from Saïd’s Orientalism (1978)
13.3 Michael Omi and Howard Winant
New Ways of Theorizing Race: Omi and Winant’s Racial Formation in the United States
(1986)
Reading 13.3: Excerpts from Omi and Winant’s Racial Formation in the United States
(1986)
13.4 David Roediger (1952–)
David Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness (1991)
Reading 13.4: Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness (1991)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE
Key Terms
Questions and Exercises
CHAPTER 14: Highlighting Gender and Sexuality
Introduction
14.1 Dorothy E. Smith (1926–)
Smith’s Analysis of Gender, Power, and Perspectives on Society
Reading 14.1: Excerpts from Smith’s The Conceptual Practices of Power (1990)
14.2 Judith Butler (1956–)

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 Butler and the Structural Conditions of the Performance of Gender: Bodies that Matter
(1993)
Reading 14.2: Excerpts from Butler’s Bodies that Matter (1993)
14.3 Angela Y. Davis (1944–)
Angela Y. Davis: Theory and Praxis
Reading 14.3: Excerpts from Lisa Lowe’s Interview of Angela Y. Davis (July 1, 1995)
14.4 Raewyn (R.W.) Connell (1944–)
R.W. Connell on the Construction of Masculinities
Reading 14.4: Excerpts from Connell’s Masculinities (1995)
14.5 Society and Sexualities: John D’Emilio (1948–)
Sexuality and Capitalism: D’Emilio’s “Capitalism and Gay Identity” (1983)
Reading 14.5: D’Emilio’s “Capitalism and Gay Identity” (1983)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER 15: Conceptions of Culture

Introduction
15.1 Raymond Williams (1921–1988)
Raymond Williams: The Complexity of Culture and the Structure of Feeling
Reading 15.1: Excerpts from Williams’s Marxism and Literature (1977)
15.2 Dick Hebdige (1951–)
Hebdige and the Creation of Culture
Reading 15.2: Excerpts from Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style
15.3 Jürgen Habermas (1929–)
Democracy and the Public
Reading 15.3.1: Excerpt from Legitimation Crisis (1973)
Reading 15.3.2: Excerpt from Habermas’s The Theory of Communicative Action (1981)
15.4 Fredric Jameson (1934–)
Jameson: Analyzing Postmodern Culture from a Marxist Perspective
Reading 15.4: Excerpts from Jameson’s “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism” (1984)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER 16: Media and Culture in the Information Age

Introduction
16.1 Guy Debord (1931–1994)
Debord and The Society of the Spectacle (1967)
Reading 16.1: Excerpt from Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle (1967)
16.2 Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007)
Baudrillard’s Media, Simulacra, and Implosion
Reading 16.2.1: Excerpts from Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulations (1981)
Reading 16.2.2: Baudrillard’s “The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media”
(1985)
16.3 Postmodern Marxism: Paul Willis (1945–)

13
 What Do (Postmodern) Marxist Ethnographers Do?
Reading 16.3: Excerpts from Willis’s The Ethnographic Imagination (2000)
16.4 Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
Barthes, Myths and Critical Social Theory
Reading 16.4: This material omitted from the web edition
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

CHAPTER 17: Global Views

Introduction
17.1 Immanuel Wallerstein (1920–)
Wallerstein and World Systems Theory
Reading 17.1: Excerpts from Wallerstein’s The Modern World-System (1974)
17.2 Arjun Appadurai (1949–)
Appadurai and Globalization
Reading 17.2: Appadurai’s “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”
(1990)
17.3 Saskia Sassen (1949–)
Sassen and the Global City
Reading 17.3: Excerpts from Sassen’s “The Global City: Strategic Site/New Frontier”
(2000)
17.4 Néstor Garcia Canclini (1939–)
Garcia Canclini: Hybridity, Globalization, and New Forms of Participation
Reading 17.4: Excerpts from Garcia Canclini’s Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering
and Leaving Modernity (1995)
SUGGESTED READINGS
STUDY GUIDE

SOURCES

14
 Preface

The third edition marks a major departure from the previous editions: there are now two
editors and substantially more theorists.
Here are the changes we have made:
We have added a chapter on race-ethnicity and post-colonial theory and substantially
revised the chapter on gender and sexualities, which now includes a selection by Judith
Butler, Angela Davis’s reflections on intersectionality and praxis, and R.W. Connell’s work
on masculinities.
Philosophical traditions are discussed in order to show how the ideas affected social
theory and the discipline of sociology; the selections by Kant and Nietzsche and the
accompanying introductions as well as the discussion of the work of Hegel, Comte, and
Adam Smith provide context and background to the contending perspectives in sociological
theory.
The selection from Machiavelli was newly translated for this volume and will give readers
a fresh look at this masterpiece.
Because of the powerful impact of Sigmund Freud’s theories on the analysis of gender,
the Frankfurt School, and contemporary cultural studies, we feature in the context of classical
theory a selection from his lectures that delves into dreams, pathways to neurosis, the
unconscious, and primary process thought.
We have included two pieces by Frankfurt School theorists beyond our original Walter
Benjamin selection (one by Adorno and Horkheimer on the culture industry and one by
Marcuse).
We have reorganized the “postwar perspectives” material as an overview of American
hegemony and its critics, giving a stronger edge of contention to this chapter. It now includes
selections from C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite and from Marcuse’s One-Dimensional
Man.
We sharpened the focus on the transition from postwar to contemporary theory with
needed attention to four major theorists (Goffman, Foucault, Bourdieu, and Hall) who had
appeared in earlier editions but were not strongly enough foregrounded there.
We added a number of theorists to the discussion of culture and media, including
Raymond Williams, Dick Hebdige, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, and Néstor Garcia
Canclini.
We enhanced the selection of work by classical theorists, including Marx’s writing on
alienation from the early manuscripts, Durkheim on anomie and the social forces involved in
categorical thought, and Weber on “inconvenient facts” as part of the vocation of science.
A number of new legacy pieces were added, such as George Ritzer’s popular piece on
McDonaldization and Theda Skocpol’s timely, critical essay on the narrowing of civic life.
We added pedagogical materials for both students and instructors: These include study

15
guides that provide key terms for each chapter and a number of questions to stimulate review,
class discussion, and observation. The suggested readings were expanded and updated, and
biographies of theorists were added to the introductions to each theorist’s work.

16
 Acknowledgments

The third edition would not have been possible without Anne Brackenbury at the University
of Toronto Press and Karen Taylor. Anne continued to champion our project even as it
expanded to gigantic dimensions. Karen was really a third editor—her role in the book was
essential and the many tasks she accomplished are astounding, including improving our prose,
checking our facts, adding pertinent information, and turning a huge unwieldy object in
cyberspace into an actual book. Beate Schwirtlich supervised the entire complicated
production process, and Ashley Rayner and Jessie Coffey handled the permissions admirably.
We want to thank our chair, Julie Artis, and our colleagues who make scholarship at
DePaul fun and rewarding as well as our students who enabled us to sharpen our
formulations and test our pedagogical strategies. Valerie Paulson was—as always—a key
person in making our dreams come true, and Joshua Covell deserves a heartfelt thanks for his
willingness to help at all times—and especially during our Christmas 2012 crunch.
We appreciate the support of the contemporary authors who contributed their current
biographies.

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 Reading Theory: A General Introduction

In the following pages, we will read the words and ideas of social theorists. We will find
continuity: a number of themes appear repeatedly, and certain questions continue to be asked.
The answers may change with time and circumstances, but the questions persist. Social
theorists also confront and challenge each other’s ideas. Theory grows and develops as a result
of this controversy. Disagreements force theorists to sharpen their thinking, to look for new
empirical evidence, and to discard ideas that don’t work.
This reader is organized around continuity and confrontation among ideas. “Continuity”
involves the revisiting and rethinking of theories and theoretical questions. “Confrontation”
means the growth of theories through disagreement and controversies among theorists.
We will reflect on the relationship between theories and empirical reality, the world of
experience and everyday life. Theories are claims that there are patterns in the empirical
world; theorists invent concepts that help us to see these patterns. The concepts point to key
features of the empirical world. Theorists not only chart the real world, they also try to
explain the patterns they see. As social reality changes, theories have to be revised or
discarded.
Although theorists challenge each other, it is usually difficult to confirm or disprove a
theory. Theories are interpretations of reality; they are not research hypotheses that can be
tested with empirical data.
Theorists not only chart and explain social reality; often, they also question it. Many
theorists take a “negative-critical” view of social institutions. They do not believe that this is
the best of all possible worlds: they point to injustices and inequalities among human beings
and hope that their ideas can contribute to ending this state of affairs. Controversies among
theorists are not only about ways of interpreting reality but also about prospects for changing
it.
Several metaphors are often used to talk about theories. They are said to be constructed or
built: theorists make theoretical frameworks, constructions of concepts that are connected to
each other. A second commonly used metaphor is visual: theories are perspectives or points of
view that focus on some aspect of social reality.
A third metaphor portrays theory as a flowing, changing river, with a mainstream and
more controversial countercurrents. The mainstream is formed by ideas that are widely
accepted among intellectuals at major universities and publishing houses; the countercurrents
are formed by critical and dissenting scholars. Historically, the mainstream has usually been
non-Marxist and the major countercurrent Marxist. There are times when the currents are
sharply separated, as in the 1950s, and other times—such as the end of the twentieth century
—when they swirl together. Even when they were separate, they were fluid currents, not
watertight pipelines. It is a good idea not to think of sociological traditions as completely
rigid, distinct systems of ideas; theories have always influenced each other.
Overall, the entire enterprise of theory results in a complex and ever-changing set of

18
overlapping as well as contested ideas. Theorists borrow from each other, recontextualize
other theorists’ concepts in new frameworks, adapt theory to new empirical and political
issues, and challenge each other. A number of questions appear in many theories and form
points of connection.

1. What is the nature of modern society, and to what extent is capitalism its key
characteristic?
2. How are different types of institutions connected to each other in societies? More
specifically, what is the impact of technology, the economy, and culture on each other
and on other institutions?
3. How can we best picture the interplay of micro and macro levels of action? By “micro”
we mean individual actions and small-scale interactions, and by “macro” we mean
institutions at the level of societies, nations, and the global system.
4. What is the mix of agency (purposeful human action) and structure (constraining
limits) in outcomes? To what extent do human beings “make their own history”
individually and collectively, and to what extent is it “made for them” by
circumstances inherited from the past?
5. What is the mix of class (economic position) and status (other bases of identity such as
racial or ethnic group, gender, and religion) in individual and collective outcomes?
How are identities formed? How do identities become the basis of collective action?
6. How do human beings construct social reality?

The works selected here illustrate different ways of thinking about these questions. Some
are down to earth and address everyday life while others are very abstract. They come from
both the mainstream of academic sociology and the countercurrents. The reader is divided
into five parts. Each corresponds to a distinct period in the history of social thought. These
differ from each other in terms of the themes and problems addressed by social theory, the
styles of doing theory, the methods of research, and the countries where social theorists
worked. The placement of the selections allows the reader to see how theories confront each
other and how they change historically.
The introductions to each period, type of theory, and individual theorist point out these
connections. Biographies of the individual theorists are touched on briefly; longer accounts
can be found in many other places (see the suggested readings at the end of each chapter). In
any case, a reading of ideas should never be reduced to the reported facts of an individual’s
life. Knowing facts (but which facts?) about a person may help us to understand why certain
intellectual puzzles appeared in her or his imagination, but ideas take on a life of their own
and outlive the individual. Religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, social class, and
psychological states may be factors in the development of these ideas, but they do not explain
them. Yet marginality of one kind or another gives a critical edge to a theorist’s work,
shattering the comfortable taken-for-grantedness in which majorities live their lives; all
theorizing is an attack on taken-for-grantedness, and, in that respect, it comes easier to
minorities.
It is important to keep in mind that individuals change in the course of their lives, so the
writings of a theorist’s youth are often different from those of old age. As the maturing and

19
aging process and the historical circumstances change, so do the ideas. Sometimes, hope is
replaced by pessimism, especially when old age coincides with historical disasters, as with
several of our theorists and World War I. Even in the happiest historical conditions, old age
may bring about a sense of limited possibilities, replacing the boundless optimism and
freedom of youth, so it may tilt a theorist’s work more toward structural determination and
away from a focus on autonomy and meaningful action.
Not just writers but readers change, as does what is going on outside the texts being
written and read—the context. The historical conditions change, so the texts and what we
make of them do not remain the same. To read Marx after the collapse of the Berlin Wall is
to encounter a different Marx than when the same passages were read in the 1960s. When we
reread these theorists in the future, we will encounter new perspectives from which to look at
our world.

BIOGRAPHIES

We wanted our biographies of theorists to spark reflection on how individuals start

“theorizing”—an unnatural activity for most people. In many cases, experiences as an outsider
of one kind or another motivate a questioning stance toward society. At the same time, we
wanted to avoid any reductionist explanations in which a single factor (such as ethnicity or
sexuality) is identified as impelling an individual to become a theorist or as shaping the kind
of theory the individual produced.
Our longer interpretive bios in which we explore these questions and reveal personal
information are necessarily confined to individuals about whom we feel free to write and for
whom sources such as a published biography, memoirs, or autobiography are available. They
would be inappropriate for living theorists whose privacy has to be respected. In these longer
interpretive biographies, we discuss the social and historical contexts of the theoretical
achievements—the institutions and practices that shaped the lives of the theorists—because
these are different from the milieu in which contemporary theory is formed.
For theorists whose major work was accomplished in the years after World War II, we
prepared shorter biographies focused on their ideas, intellectual formation, and professional
careers. Many of these theorists were academics whose lives were not altogether different
from those of contemporary theorists; details of schooling and cultural institutions need to be
explained, especially for theorists working outside of North America, but the general context
was similar to university and intellectual life today.
When contact information was readily available for the living theorists, we contacted
them and asked for a brief biography, encouraging them to touch on their intellectual
formation and current interests, and a large number of them responded. For individuals who
did not send us their own statements, we compiled a brief summary of their education,
current employment, and major works.
The reader may note several patterns and trends in these biographies. Most of the
contemporary theorists and many of the twentieth-century theorists held academic
appointments. Many theorists born before the middle of the twentieth century enjoyed
affluent and privileged circumstances in their childhoods and youth. Working-class
backgrounds, such as those of Immanuel Kant, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Antonio Gramsci, are

20
rare in the earlier period, but they become more common as doors opened to talent after
World War II. Especially in the earlier period, theorists’ fathers (and sometimes their
mothers) were professionals: lawyers, more rarely doctors, and quite frequently clergy. These
backgrounds not only provided them with the money, leisure, and university educations that
enabled them to become intellectuals in an era when few individuals enjoyed these
opportunities but also set the foundation for their reflections on the human condition and—
in the case of the law and the clergy—for the way they saw human beings constructing a
universe of meaning.
Many theorists experienced themselves as outsiders, and ethnicity, sexuality, and region of
identification are among the reasons for this outsider feeling. It was sometimes the tension
between their comfortable, privileged backgrounds and their “outsider” status that enabled
them to question conventional, taken-for-granted views of social arrangements. With few
exceptions (for example, the two men who died under fascism and Nazism—Antonio
Gramsci and Walter Benjamin), theorists usually led tranquil lives and lived into old age.

LEARNING AIDS

Each chapter concludes with a list of key terms, which serves as a quick review guide. This
list is followed by a number of questions and exercises that encourage review, discussion,
reflection, and observation. These learning aids include a large range of different types of
questions and exercises.
Two key skills are emphasized:

1. Summarizing theories and theoretical arguments, which means being able to boil them
down into a few key terms and bullet points. This operation means “cutting away the
fat” and making the theoretical ideas easy to remember—making them portable so
that you do not have to rely on a text to look at but can carry them around in your
own mind.
2. Visualizing examples from history and from contemporary everyday life to illustrate the
theories—turning these often very abstract thoughts into a series of vivid pictures like
illustrations in a book or a video played in the movie theatre of your own head. For
example, when Marx and Engels use the word “proletariat,” you can call up images of
nineteenth-century English factories, with looms or spinning machines tended by
hundreds of workers, many of them children; or you can call up similar images of
apparel factories in Bangladesh today. These pictures help to make a very broad and
abstract term more concrete and enable us to see what the term means about human
experiences. This skill involves being able to “conjure up” concrete everyday life
experiences. Often looking at history books with pictures as well as at photo and video
images of today’s news helps to develop this skill.

Study questions ask you to summarize the material, to express a theoretical argument in a
concise summary of the main ideas using key terms as needed but stating the ideas in your
own original words and sentences. There is a narrow window here between plagiarism (just
copying the theorist’s words) and veering too far away from the theorist’s thoughts in your
own restatement.

21
 Discussion questions ask you to compare and contrast theorists or to come up with your
own contemporary examples to illustrate theories and concepts.
Reflection questions ask you to think about your own experiences and values, to apply the
theories and concepts to your own ideas and actions.
Exercises ask you to do something to produce empirical examples, such as interview
friends, look at behaviours in various settings, or analyze media products. They ask for a
systematic recording of what you observe.

Readings
Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Doubleday, 1966.
Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner. Postmodern Theory. New York: Guilford Press, 1991.
Collins, Randall. Four Sociological Traditions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Farganis, James. Readings in Social Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996.
Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. London: New Left Books, 1975.
Hancock, Black Hawk, and Roberta Garner. Changing Theories: New Directions in Sociology. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2009.
Jameson, Fredric. Valences of the Dialectic. London and New York: Verso, 2009.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
Ritzer, George, and Douglas Goodman. Sociological Theory. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
Wallace, Ruth, and Alison Wolf. Contemporary Sociological Theory. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1999.
Zeitlin, Irving. Ideology and the Development of Social Theory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

22
Part I
Beginnings

23
Introduction

In Part I, we will discover how social theory emerged as a coherent, continuous enterprise in
modern Europe. Prior to this period, there had been many astute observers of human
societies, such as the Greek historian Herodotus and the North African writer Ibn Khaldun.
These writers not only observed cultures and societies but tried to explain the differences they
saw; for example, they tried to relate customs to religious beliefs and culture to political
systems, and they made use of explanatory factors such as climate and the history of
institutions. These accounts and reflections were not, as yet, part of an ongoing enterprise of
social theory in which scholars systematically addressed each other’s ideas. Before modern
times in Europe, continuity and confrontation were missing from social observation; the
observations remained unconnected to each other, and writers about human societies did not
yet have the sense of participating in an ongoing tradition. By the nineteenth century, this
tradition had taken shape, and social theory had become increasingly an enterprise carried out
by a self-conscious community of scholars and theorists.
From the beginning, social theory was closely connected to ideology; the analysis of
society was always connected to different points of view about the nature of the good society
and the causes of social problems. Sociology was born as a modern intellectual enterprise at
the same time that ideologies such as conservatism, liberalism, socialism, and nationalism
emerged, more or less at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the
nineteenth; the ideas of sociology as the pursuit of knowledge are often close to the ideas of
these contending political forces.

24
1
Inventing the Lens

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, we look at the origins of social theory as a systematic pursuit of knowledge
about society.
The story begins in Renaissance Italy, when Niccolò Machiavelli wrote about the exercise
of power as it really was, not as it should be. The writers of the European Enlightenment
continued to look at society as it was, but with a critical eye, in hopes of understanding how
human beings could be liberated from cruelty, irrationality, and superstition. They called for
freeing thought and speech from the tutelage of authorities, a central theme in the selection
from Immanuel Kant. Their critical approach brought forth an opposition, a new breed of
conservative prepared to defend existing institutions with the same tools of observation and
analysis that the Enlightenment used to attack them. Confrontation was born as a mode of
discourse in social theory; the process of debate forced each side to clarify concepts, make its
thinking coherent and systematic, and assemble empirical evidence.
The chapter includes a provocative selection from Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher who
challenged Western values and offered a perspective on the human condition that influenced
not only Sigmund Freud and the generation of classical social theorists at the end of the
nineteenth century but today’s postmodernists as well.
The inclusion of Kant and Nietzsche in this chapter draws attention to the concepts of
reason and science, both as guiding principles of social thought and as values in society.
Kant’s philosophical project is focused on the sovereignty of reason, the human ability to
conceive ideas, make judgments, formulate inferences, propose arguments, and follow
through from premises to conclusions. The central claim in Kant’s philosophy is that reason
must be the supreme authority, and his project is to establish reason as the goal of human
thought and insist on commitment to it. Reason must be superior to all other contenders for
authority, such as political, social, traditional, and religious claimants, and it must be the
governing structure over our lives. All people share the capacity for reason, and, therefore, we
must seek to work out our understandings and arguments by justifying them in this ultimate
court of appeal. We do so through systems of thought and the systematic organization of
knowledge, always guided by the fundamental principle of reason.
For Nietzsche, when reason is extended to all areas of society, it becomes another form of
ideology. Reason is critical and will tear everything down, demolishing all meaning and
understanding. The critical character of reason, so celebrated by the Enlightenment, is a
baleful force for Nietzsche. He sees reason, in the form of science, as destroying the myths
that sustain us and emptying the world of purpose and will. For Nietzsche, reason provides
no answer to the question of meaning and the question “why?” Reason leads to the constant
interrogation of social life and ends in disappointment. The supremacy of reason leads to

25
nihilism—to the view that all values, and all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions
are baseless—leaving us with only this question: How do we live in a world of nihilism?
The chapter closes with a discussion of Auguste Comte’s early attempt at synthesis, one
based on the claim that it is possible to preserve social order and hasten progress, both at the
same time. He insisted that the structure of society, above and beyond the action of the
individual, is a level of reality that requires its own form of inquiry. This idea marks the birth
of sociology as a systematic pursuit of knowledge.

26
1.1 NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI (1469–1527)

Niccolò Machiavelli was born in 1469, a decisive period in European and world history.1 In
1453, the Turks had conquered the Christian Byzantine city of Constantinople, sealing their
rule over the eastern end of the Mediterranean and thereby forcing Europeans at the western
end to turn their attention to the world beyond the straits of Gibraltar. At mid-century,
Johann Gutenberg used movable type to print a Bible, beginning the long march to mass
literacy and modern media. Intellectuals and artists returned to pagan ancient Greek and
Roman literature, philosophy, art, and scholarship in the movement called the Renaissance
(“rebirth”). They did not reject Christianity, but expanded their understanding of nature and
human beings beyond the confines of the worldview of the medieval church. In their cosmo-
vision, science and superstitions such as astrology were not yet clearly separated, and they
frequently wondered what acts of boldness might enable them to master “fickle Fortune”—or,
as we would say today, how to impose our agency on we what now call “contingency,”
“circumstance,” and “random events.”
Machiavelli was born in Florence, in the heart of Tuscany in central Italy. Florentines
were supremely self-confident, lively, contentious, creative, sharp-witted, and no strangers to
violence. “Italy” did not exist as a modern nation-state; it was a collection of warring city-
states, and many regions had been or were being conquered by larger powers such as France
and Spain. Like many Florentines, Machiavelli hoped to see a strong, unified state emerge on
the peninsula—ruled from Florence, of course—that would be similar to the absolutist
monarchies that were successfully consolidating large states elsewhere in Europe.
Machiavelli’s father was a lawyer (a not uncommon pattern for many of our theorists) and
a citizen of Florence. Niccolò spent his early years during the brilliant reign of Lorenzo de
Medici, a patron of the arts and a philosopher in his own right. After the Medici rulers were
supplanted by a republic, Machiavelli was appointed as a secretary and second chancellor, a
civil service position with diplomatic responsibilities. He held this post until 1512—though
he frequently grumbled about the poor pay. He went on diplomatic missions that exposed
him to many different types of states, styles of ruling, and ways of maintaining power.
Experience in diplomacy and the observation of other states confirmed Machiavelli’s belief
that it was important for Florence to have its own militia, rather than relying on mercenaries
or “supportive” foreign powers. Along with historical examples, these experiences and
observations contributed a number of the case studies that formed the bulk of his evidence for
his conclusions about how a ruler establishes and maintains power.
In 1501, he married Marietta Corsini, a woman with whom he had six children. By his
account, he was something of a womanizer, but this claim has not been substantiated. His
attitude towards women is perhaps captured by this remark from The Prince:

…fortune is a woman and if she is to be submissive it is necessary to beat and

coerce her. Experience shows that she is more often subdued by men who do this
than by those who act coldly. Always, being a woman, she favours young men,
because they are less circumspect and more ardent, and because they command
her with greater audacity.2

27
Of course, this statement is only a metaphor playing on the image inherited from Greek and
Roman times that “Fortune” is a woman.
By 1512, Florence had reverted to Medici rule. Machiavelli not only fell out of favour and
lost his appointment but also was accused of conspiring against the Medici, arrested, and
tortured by being strung up with a rope to dislocate the shoulders. After his exoneration and
release, he retired to the family estate near Florence (at San Casciano) and devoted himself to
writing of all kinds—poetry, songs, and plays as well as political writing. In 1513, he
completed The Prince, his most famous book, and initially dedicated it to Giuliano de Medici,
perhaps in the futile hope of being reappointed to a major office. He continued to present his
ideas to literary gatherings and was even asked to develop plans to fortify the walls of
Florence.
His portrait shows a man with a strong, alert face, eyes sceptically turned away from the
viewer and a slight smile on his lips. Indeed, his biographer Villari remarks “he could not rid
himself of the sarcastic expression continually playing around his mouth and flashing from his
eyes.”3
In addition to his sarcasm, cynicism, and irony (widely shared dispositions in Tuscan
culture), he possessed a marvellous imagination, which was the driving force of his political
writing. In 1513, he describes his daily routine in a letter. He rises at sunset, supervises
woodcutters on the estate, muses on his romantic affairs, reads classic works of literature,
squabbles with tradesmen, eats the midday meal with the kids, plays cards and dice in the
local inn, and then finally returns home to put on splendid clothes, and in his imagination
talks with the great individuals of the past about history and politics. Documenting his
feelings about these passionate conversations, he writes, “for four hours I am conscious of no
boredom, I forget all my troubles, I cease to fear poverty, I have no terror of death. I give
myself up entirely to them.”4
Machiavelli died in 1527, after suffering from severe stomach pains, and left little
property to his children.

Notes
1. Information about the renaissance is taken from Jacob Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 2 vols. (New
York: Harper, 1958). Return to text.
2. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Anthony Bull (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 81. Return to text.
3. Quoted in George Bull, “Introduction,” in The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961),
17. Return to text.
4. Quoted in Federico Chabod, Machiavelli and the Renaissance (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958), 127. Return to text.

28
Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532)

The story of sociology begins with Niccolò Machiavelli and The Prince, a book he completed
in 1513, at the height of the Italian Renaissance, although it was not published until after his
death in 1532. Europe was caught up in a period of dramatic change. In one lifetime—say
from 1450 to 1525—a rush of events set the course of modern history for the next 500 years.

• In 1453, the Turks captured Constantinople (now Istanbul) from the Greeks and
demonstrated the effective use of cannons and gunpowder; the eastern Mediterranean
became part of the Islamic world; and European rulers, merchants, and adventurers
felt pressure to expand their sphere westward and southward beyond the Straits of
Gibraltar.
• In 1458, Johann Gutenberg printed a version of the Bible with movable type; the
modern book and the mass dissemination of the printed word were born.
• In 1492, the sovereigns of Christian Spain completed their reconquest of the Iberian
Peninsula from Islamic rule and expelled the remaining Moors and Jews. In 1492,
Columbus “discovered” the “New” World, the key event of Europe’s explosive
movement into the rest of the globe.
• In the years from 1497 to 1503, Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama led the first
European expedition to reach India by sea and established Portuguese power along
the coasts of Africa; the African slave trade began to expand.
• In 1517, Martin Luther posted his challenge to Roman Catholicism, and the
Reformation split the unity of Western Christendom.
• In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet set sail to circumnavigate the globe, returning in
1522.
• In 1521, Hernán Cortés and a handful of men brought down Montezuma’s kingdom,
beginning a swift and terrible destruction of the indigenous civilizations of the
Western Hemisphere.

The cultural background of all these momentous and generally violent events was the
Renaissance, the glorious rediscovery—more accurately, reimagining—of the world of the
pagan Greeks and Romans: its art, philosophy, and joyous affirmation of human creativity
and the human spirit.
In Western intellectual history, The Prince was as explosive as gunpowder. For the first
time in centuries, someone dared to put in writing a realistic view of human actions. Of
course, cynical and brutal advice circulated by word of mouth throughout European society in
the Middle Ages: the practical knowledge of how to rule and control people was shared by
kings and queens, knights and sheriffs, slave owners and overseers. However, books were
filled with morality and pious platitudes; they dwelled on the exemplary Christian life and the
noble character of Christian rulers. (In other literate cultures, the written word fulfilled the
same prescriptive function, for example, in the Confucian analects.) In short, until the
Renaissance, most books were tiresomely normative, not empirical; they prescribed good
behaviour rather than observing, describing, and analyzing what human beings really did. The
Prince broke with the normative tradition of writing: Machiavelli put into his book all the

29
cruel, violent, cunning, coercive, and occasionally even compassionate acts that the ruler must
carry out to stay in power. The Prince was based on reality, on observations of real people, and
not on moral precepts. For this reason, it shocked its readers and was widely censored and
banned. Its publication marks the beginning of modern social science—to write about society
as it really is, not only as we would like it be; to write about the “is,” and not only the “ought
to be.”
As you will see in the selection, on the surface, The Prince appears to be a collection of
cynical tips on how to take and hold onto power. Machiavelli used the term “prince” not only
for hereditary monarchs but also for soldiers of fortune who came to rule territories, elected
politicians, and any person who was intent on establishing and maintaining power. Indeed,
executives today still read and learn from the tips.
Machiavelli’s goals in writing The Prince went beyond currying favour by offering useful
tips to the Medici princes of Florence (to whom it is dedicated). He was writing as an Italian
patriot dismayed at Italian rulers’ inability to form the large, powerful, centralized states that
were beginning to appear in France, England, and Spain. He hoped that his advice to rulers
would be taken up by an Italian prince intent on creating a stronger state; he was concerned
that a weak, disunited Italy would be invaded and divided by stronger, more cohesive states—
and indeed it was.
We can even engage in a leftist reading of The Prince, seeing its author as the prototype of
a radical democrat revealing the secrets of power to the masses. After all, princes have known
the tricks of rule since time immemorial; the lore of power has circulated by word of mouth
through royal families and among counsellors and generals since the Bronze Age. To put this
lore in writing was a radical leap, a secular parallel to the dissemination of God’s word in the
form of the printed Bible. Just as people could now freely and directly read God’s word,
without the intercession of priests, they could now read and understand the workings of
earthly powers. The secret oral lore of those in power was made available and transparent to
the masses through the medium of writing. Thus, The Prince is one of the first steps toward
the emergence of the democratic and revolutionary ideals that characterize modern times.
This left or radical reading of The Prince is a bit controversial, but intriguing.
As you read this selection, note its method as well as its key ideas. Machiavelli often first
states his observations as general rules and then supports them with examples from classical
antiquity or from contemporary Italy. This evidence may strike the modern reader as
scattershot or anecdotal, but it represents the beginning of a case-study method, still popular
in our day as a way of educating public administrators, policy planners, lawyers, and
executives.
These examples of how to apply general rules in specific contexts allowed Machiavelli to
develop his paired concepts of fortuna and virtù. Fortuna refers to the external circumstances
in which one must act, the situation that fortune (or fate) doles out to each individual. Virtù
refers to the qualities of the individual that allow him or her to act effectively within those
circumstances. To some extent, virtù is inborn in the individual, in boldness, strength of will,
courage, and intelligence; but it can be enhanced, and that enhancement is the purpose of The
Prince.
In this selection, Machiavelli develops another important contrast, the one between the

30
lion who rules through coercion and the fox who rules through cunning.
Keep both of these paired concepts (fortuna/virtù and lion/fox) in mind, as we will
encounter them in other writers in updated forms. The juxtaposition of virtù and fortuna will
reappear in Karl Marx’s view that “human beings make history but not in circumstances of
their own choosing” and in the contemporary distinction between agency (meaningful action)
and structure (external social circumstances). The lion and fox will reappear in theories that
address the central question of how power is exercised in different types of societies, whether
by coercion or consent.

31
Reading 1.1: Excerpts from The Prince (1532)

[Source: Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, translated for this text by Larry Garner.]

Chapter XVII

ON CRUELTY AND COMPASSION: WHETHER IT IS BETTER TO BE LOVED

THAN FEARED, OR FEARED THAN LOVED …Every ruler should seek to be
regarded as compassionate and not cruel—nonetheless he should be careful not to make a
poor use of his compassion. Cesare Borgia1 was regarded as a cruel person; nonetheless his
cruelty re-established order in Romagna, bringing peace and obedience to the law. Indeed, if
one reflects on the matter, it is clear that he was much more compassionate than the people
of Florence who chose not to intervene in neighbouring Pistoia when it was afflicted by
internecine massacres because they wanted to avoid the taint of cruelty. A ruler should not,
therefore, be overly concerned if he finds himself in disrepute on account of the cruelty he
deploys to bring peace and order to his subjects. And the reason is that, by meting out a very
small number of exemplary punishments, he will be more compassionate than those who for
compassion’s sake allow order to break down, resulting in a rise in murders and robberies.
Murder and robbery undermine the life of the entire community, whereas the punitive
measures taken by the ruler bring hardship and resentment only to those who are punished.
And in the case of new rulers, it is almost unavoidable that they will be accused of cruelty,
because new regimes are fraught with dangers to their stability. As Virgil says, through the
mouth of Queen Dido, “The newness of the kingdom and harsh necessity forced me to take
such measures and to keep our borders securely guarded on all sides.”2
Thus, rulers must give due consideration to their every thought and move. On the one
hand, they should not be afraid to take forceful action; but, on the other hand, they should
know how to act with moderation, proceeding cautiously and humanely. In short, they should
neither overestimate their capabilities—which leads to rash actions; nor should they be weak-
willed—which leads their subjects to disdain them.
And so the question arises: Is it better to be loved or feared? Many will reply that it is best
to be both. But since it is difficult to combine both qualities, it is much safer to be feared than
loved, if one has to make a choice. And this is because human beings in general are
ungrateful, fickle, false, and deceitful, loath to take risks but eager to reap profits. When you
treat them well and times are good, they are all yours. They offer you their blood, their
property, their life, the lives of their children…provided the need never arises. But as soon as
times become difficult, they turn against you. And any ruler who relies on the pledges people
give him and fails to take other measures will meet with disaster; for loyalty which is gained
through gifts, rather than with the compelling and lofty qualities of one’s character, is a
loyalty which is bought but not securely held—and with time it fritters away. And men feel
less compunction about taking action against someone who attempts to make himself loved
than against someone who makes himself feared. For love is a bond which human beings—
ignoble creatures that they are—will break whenever they find it to their advantage; whereas
fear holds people in check because they will always dread the prospect of punishment.

32
Nonetheless, a ruler should make himself feared in such a way that, even though he is not
loved, he is not hated; for it is perfectly possible to be feared but not hated. And he will
always succeed in doing so if he lays no hand on the property of his citizens and subjects and
stays away from their women. But if he must shed blood, then he should do so when there is
sufficient justification and clear culpability—and, above all, he must refrain from taking the
property of others; for men will erase from their memory more readily the death of a father
than the loss of their estate. Furthermore, pretexts for seizing the property of others are never
in short supply—and a ruler who begins by plundering some of his subjects, soon enough
moves on to others. But reasons for shedding blood are few, and they are quickly dispensed
with.
But when a ruler is at the head of an army and has to give commands to masses of
soldiers, he should not be concerned at all about having a reputation for cruelty; for without
this reputation he will never be able to hold his army together nor get his men to go into
combat. Among the extraordinary deeds of Hannibal (247–182 BCE) was that, even though
he had an exceedingly large army made up of all kinds of men from different races who
fought in distant lands, there was never any breakdown in discipline—neither amongst
themselves nor directed against the leader, neither when circumstances (fortuna) were
favourable nor when they were unfavourable. And this was a consequence of his inhuman
cruelty, which, together with his countless other qualities (virtù), made him revered and
feared by his soldiers; without that cruelty, all of his other qualities would have been
insufficient to produce that effect.
There are those rather thoughtless writers who, on the one hand, admire Hannibal’s
achievements, but, on the other hand, condemn the very means which made the
achievements possible. And for evidence that Hannibal could not have relied solely on his
other qualities to achieve success, we need look no further than the case of Scipio (236–183
BCE). The latter was a man of exceptional virtues, not only in his own time but also in the
memory of all time. And yet his armies revolted against him in Spain—his excessive leniency
had given rise to a laxness in their ranks incompatible with military discipline. Fabius
Maximus upbraided him for this leniency in the Senate, calling it a corrupting force among
Roman troops. Indeed, when one of Scipio′s officers massacred and pillaged the Locrians,
Scipio failed to redress the outrage and to punish the misdeeds of his officer—once again a
consequence of his forgiving character. Indeed, when someone in the Senate sought to justify
Scipio’s conduct, he said that Scipio was one of those many men who found it easier to avoid
making mistakes himself than to take measures to correct them in others. Over the course of
time, Scipio’s leniency would have lost him his claim to fame and glory had he continued as a
military commander. But since he lived in the shadow of the Senate, this shortcoming of his
not only remained hidden but even brought him glory.
Returning, then, to the question of being feared or loved: Since men love at their own
choosing but live in fear at the choosing of the ruler, a wise ruler will count on what he
controls and not on what others control. He must only guard against being hated….

Ch. XVIII

33
WHETHER A RULER SHOULD KEEP HIS WORD Everyone knows that it would be
altogether well and good if a ruler always kept his word, living his life in an upright fashion
and avoiding duplicity. Nonetheless, experience shows that, in our times, rulers who have
achieved great things have paid little attention to keeping their word; rather, they have
excelled in their use of cunning to manipulate the minds of others—and, in the end, they
have eclipsed those who relied on being faithful to their word.
You should bear in mind that there are two ways of having one’s way in this world: the
first is by enforcing laws and codes of right conduct and the other is by means of violence.
The former is peculiar to human beings; the latter is the way of beasts. But because codes of
right conduct are often inadequate to the task at hand, recourse to violence may be called for.
Thus, a ruler has to know when it is necessary to act like a human being and when like a
beast. In ancient times, writers taught this lesson to rulers through mythology. They wrote,
for example, how Achilles and many other princes from ancient times were nurtured by
Chiron, the centaur, and that they were brought up under a discipline imposed by the
centaur. The meaning of the myth is clear: the ruler has as a mentor a creature that is half
man and half beast because he must learn to use both sides of the centaur′s nature—if the
ruler possesses one side but not the other, his power will not last.
But if a ruler must know how to use the beast within himself, he must also know how to
play both the lion and the fox—for the lion is not very good at defending himself from traps,
while the fox does poorly against wolves. Consequently, a ruler must learn to be a fox
whenever traps are to be avoided, and to be a lion whenever wolves have to be frightened
away. Those who would play only the part of the lion will fail the test. Thus, a prudent ruler
cannot and should not keep his word if, by so doing, he undermines his own position and
when the original reasons to keep his word no longer abide. If human beings were all good,
then this axiom would not be true. But since they are a wretched lot who do not keep their
word to you, you likewise have no obligation to keep yours to them. Furthermore, a ruler will
never lack legitimate reasons for his breach of good faith. One could give endless examples of
this in modern times; countless peace treaties and agreements have been broken and annulled
by rulers—and those who have known how to use the tricks of the fox have fared the best.
Still, one must know how to disguise effectively this disposition by mastering the art of
deception and prevarication. And human beings are such simpletons and so preoccupied with
just their immediate needs that rulers who undertake to deceive will always find those who let
themselves be deceived.
There is one example from our own times which should not be overlooked. Pope
Alexander VI (1492–1503) never did or ever considered doing anything that did not involve
deceiving others—and he could always find occasions to deploy his deception. And there
never was a man who was more adept at swearing an oath to observe his word and then
disregarding that same oath. And yet he always managed to carry out his acts of deceptions
with success because he knew very well how that part of the world worked.
Thus, one can say that it is not necessary for a ruler to possess all of the above-mentioned
qualities, but it is essential he be able to appear to possess them. I would even go so far as to
say that virtuous qualities are harmful to a ruler if he possesses them and always acts in
accordance with them; on the other hand, those qualities are most useful insofar as the ruler

34
simply appears to possess them. It is a good thing to appear to be compassionate, faithful to
one’s word, humane, upright, and religious—and even to be such in reality. But a ruler must
be adroit enough to know how to act in just the opposite way if circumstances require it. So
the lesson above all is this: A ruler, and especially a new ruler, cannot live by all of those good
qualities by virtue of which humans are regarded to be good human beings—and this is
because a ruler, in order to maintain order and hold on to his power, is often forced to act
against the principle of being faithful to his word, against charity, against his humane
feelings, and against religion. In short, he must possess a personality which enables him to
shift from one modus operandi to another according to the direction of the winds and the
prevailing circumstances (fortuna)—doing what is right and good when he can, but capable of
doing evil if he is forced to do so.
Consequently, a ruler must always be on guard against ever letting slip out of his mouth
any words which might suggest that he does not fully possess the five qualities mentioned
above. To others who see or hear him, he must always appear to be the very embodiment of
compassion, trustworthiness, integrity, kindness, and piety. And it is necessary, above all, for
the ruler to possess this last quality: i.e., to appear to be a man of religion. For humans
everywhere judge others more with their eyes than with their hands—since we can readily see
things but not so readily touch them. And this means that everyone sees what you appear to
be, but few have close enough contact to know who you really are—and those few are little
inclined to stand up against the opinion of the many, which is backed up by the magisterial
aura of the State. For in appraising the actions of all men, and especially in the actions taken
by rulers—for which there is no court of appeal—the eye focuses on the end result to be
achieved. If, then, a ruler is able to win victories and maintain law and order within his State,
the means employed will always be deemed honourable and praised by all. Average people are
taken in by appearances and impressed by final results—and the world is made up of average
people. And the few will be able to hold sway over the many as long as the many feel secure.
A present-day ruler, who best goes unnamed,3 never ceases to preach the virtues of peace and
mutual trust, and yet he is the worst possible enemy of both; and if he had ever really lived by
those virtues, he would have lost his reputation and his State many times over.

Notes
1. Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) an Italian nobleman and cardinal, was recognized by Pope Alexander VI as his son and
personally known to Machiavelli who hailed his boldness. Return to text.
2. Queen Dido, the first queen of the North African city of Carthage, is a character in Roman mythology and in Virgil’s epic
poem, the Aeneid. Return to text.
3. Ferdinand II of Aragon, 1452–1516. Return to text.

35
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 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN