Meyer Fortes hos stammen Tallensi: en undersökning om en förändrad samhällsstruktur som följd av den västerländska kolonialismen

Sammanfattning: The aim of this paper is to analyse the fieldwork that the British anthropologist Meyer Fortes conducted in the mid-thirties among the Tallensi-tribe in northern Ghana, then called British Gold Coast, a country that had been a European colony for several hundred years. It was not however until the early years of the 20th century that the British Empire, which had had control over the Gold Coast for almost half a century now, turned his attention to the tribal societies in the northern territories of the country. Thanks to his research in a region that had not until now begun to come in contact with the southern part of the country where the British presence was strong and the western culture widespread, Fortes has ever since been considered as one of the greatest pioneers in African anthropological studies. This study is about the cultural clash between the northern and the southern, between the most rural and the most urbanized part of Ghana, such as Meyer Fortes witnessed it, and particular focus will be put on how the British anthropologist experienced the foreign indirect rule as a factor of disequilibrium for a system of values that was threatened to undergo.