Pygmées d'Afrique centrale. Par STEFAN SEITZ. (Langues et cultures africaines 17. Etudes pygmées IX). Paris: Peeters, 1993. Pp. 367. No price given (ISBN 2-87723-048-1).

Abstract

This is the translation by L. Bouquiaux and Gloria Lex of Die zentralafrikanischen Wildbeuterkulturen (Studien zur Kulturkunde, 45: Wiesbaden, 1977). It deals successively with older theories about pygmies, the enumeration and classification of different groups of central African foragers, their ecology and economy, their transition from gathering to food production, their confrontation with farmers and their relations to sacred kingship. A critical evaluation of theories of culture change is also provided. This enumeration alone reveals how much the author is beholden to the points of view of Central European ethnology, even though he rejects the German Kulturkreislehre of P. W. Schmidt in which pygmy culture was treated as an, or as the, primordial human culture. This is despite the fact that Seitz stresses culture change, albeit of an orderly sort. But that does not detract from the fact, underlined in the preface to the translation (p. 12) that this is a very carefully documented reference work, an excellent entry into the forest of books about ‘pygmies’.