AFRICAN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES
OF THE 20TH CENTURY
Volume 65
THE KONKOMBA OF
NORTHERN GHANA
THE KONKOMBA OF
NORTHERN GHANA
Edited From His Published and
Unpublished Writings
by Jack Goody
DAVID TAIT
First published in 1961 by Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.
This edition first published in 2018
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1961 International African Institute
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David Tait with two Konkomba elders
THE KONKOMBA
OF NORTHERN GHANA
DAVID TAIT
EDITED FROM HIS PUBLISHED AND
UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS
BY JACK GOODY
FOREWORD BY DARYLL LORDE
Published for the
INTERNATIONAL AFRICAN INSTITUTE
and the
UNIVERSITY OF GHANA
by the
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON IBADAN ACCRA
CONTENTS
Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4
GLASGOW NEW YORE TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA
CAPE TOWN SALISBURY NAIROBI IBADAN ACCRA
KUALA LUMPUR HONGKONG
International African Institute, 1961
First printed 1961
Reprinted 1964
SET IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
W. & J. MACKAY & CO. LTD., CHATHAM
AND REPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY BY
EBENEZER BAYLIS & SON LTD.
WORCESTER
I FIRST met David Tait when he came to University College, London, in 1946, at the age of thirty-four, to read Anthropology in the department we had just established there. He was one of a group of exceptionally able students, several of whom have, like himself, since made signal contributions to the work of the younger generation of anthropologists. Most of them had also had overseas experience during the war years and were correspondingly mature in their intellectual and social outlook. Among them Tait was frequently accorded a moral leadership in student affairs. For he combined great seriousness of purpose and intellectual curiosity with a deep but unsentimental affection for his fellow men, which was shown not only to his fellow students and teachers, but extended also to the lives of the peoples who were the object of their studies in Social Anthropology. His seniority in years and his unhurried deliberation in discussion matched his large frame and gentle, if sometimes quizzical, expression.
His earlier life had afforded an unusual and in many ways advantageous preparation for the intensive study of strange societies. He left school earlywithout enthusiasm for further academic study at the timeto train as a textile designer in the north of England. Then, as his wife has since told me, his interest in art, philosophy and history developed and, in connection with one of the extra-mural courses he was pursuing, he was awarded a Gladstone Memorial Prize for an essay on the history of education. He had been planning to prepare himself for a career in social work, probably as a probation officer, when war broke out and he joined the Friends Ambulance Unit with which he worked in the East End of London during the early years of evacuation and air raids. Later he went with one of the units to Palestine where, despite a severe handicap of ill health, for which he was later invalided home, he organized labour and works projects in a camp of 7,000 refugees near Gaza.
Back in England he assisted Miss Eleanor Rathbone, M.P., in her work for refugees, and after her death served himself for a time as Secretary to the Parliamentary Committee on Refugees. It was the experience of these years that directed his interest to Anthropology and the opportunities it offered for deeper understanding of other cultures and social values and also for the systematic studies that he felt were needed for effective work in social rehabilitation.
The deep humanitarian sympathy that lent both pertinacity and warmth to his later field studies is recalled by Mrs. Tait when she wrote in a letter to me: When I saw David among the old women and children of a Konkomba hamlet, I was strongly reminded of his time among the evacuees, mostly old and very young. He had a special gentleness, fun and imaginative understanding in such circumstances.
When, after taking his degree in 1949, he was offered a Lectureship in African Studies in the Department of Sociology, newly established under the direction of Professor Busia in the University College of the Gold Coast, David Tait accepted with alacrity, more especially as it offered opportunities for a field study. Most of his research was among a people in the Northern Territories who were materially poor and had so far shared little in the economic developments of the country. The Konkomba were also a people among whom the small scale and uncentralized character of the social organization offered opportunities for the study of unspecialized forms of social control and adjustment in which he was particularly interested. Tait remained in the Gold Coast over several of his leave periods in order to push ahead with his field research, and in 1952 he obtained his Doctorate in the University of London for a thesis on the political organization of the Konkomba. This first substantial contribution, and the papers he published subsequently in elaboration of some aspects of the study, established his reputation for field research and theoretical analysis in Social Anthropology.
He had in the meantime begun research on the political organization of the Dagomba chiefdom whose raiders had, in the period before the Pax Britannica, harried the Konkomba. He had long-term plans for a full study of all aspects of Dagomba culture and social organization and of the historical development of relations between centralized and segmentary societies in that part of the Western Sudan. These were cut short by the motor accident in which he was killed in April 1956.
