All's Well with the Pitt Rivers Collection Author(s): J. B. Source: RAIN, No. 60 (Feb., 1984), p.

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and on behalf of social work clients, or advocacy to prevent some of the activities of multinational companies in developing countries. Penny van Esterik of Cornell University, who had acted as advocate in the infant formula controversy (debating in opposition to Nestle) and who had also studied infant feeding practices in Thailand, Indonesia, Kenya and Colombia, was a vehement advocate for anthropologists' special skills and, therefore, special obligations in relation to the people they studied - advocacy as a way of giving back something more than the occasional reference in a thesis or article. The most constructive sessions were undoubtedly those in which anthropologists described the practicalities of their involvement as anthropologist-advocates and the measure of, and reasons for, their success or failure. One of the highlights of seeing what was involved was the drama enacted by Gordon Inglis and Basil Sampson, of the anthropologists crossquestioned in court about Australian Aboriginal culture. In Canada, the United States and Australia, anthropologists have been involved much more frequently in disputes over, for instance, land rights, than in Britain. When the debate had moved from the level of 'What is anthropology?' to 'How can I be effective?' the workshop had become distinctly worthwhile. Paine asked Triloki Pandey what the Zuni thought of anthropologists and what they would think of this workshop. Pandey contains within himself a resolution of some of the conflicts that beset anthropology: coming from a postcolonial society he can more than hold his own in the academic centres of the West, but he can also talk to the people of the 'Fourth World', the minorities within industrialized societies, and has talked successfully for them in the Zuni dispute with the American government over land rights. He acknowledged what we feared, that the Zuni had little time for anthropologists, who had - as they saw it plundered their secrets and written funny stories. He felt, nevertheless, that they would think well of anthropologists who, through advocacy, were trying to deal with real problems. The workshop was thus absolved of some of the guilt which weighs heavily in the anthropological breast; we, at least, were not cats-cradling with concepts or resented by the people we studied; we were useful. Some of us were, all the same, jobless, or not looking forward with any certainty to long-term security. The promotion of applied anthropology as a means of finding employment for anthropology graduates has tended to emphasize the idea of the anthropologist working for those in power, but this is not the only way in which we can apply ourselves to people's real problems. Advocacy means listening to the other, less powerful voice when it despairs of being heard; taking it, explaining it and defending it in the centre and processes of power: it is not a safe and popular role and it does not make one a very saleable product. What can one say? -Beware or be brave! Jacqueline Sarsby

ALL'S WELL WITH THE PITT RIVERS COLLECTION

In the early seventies there was considerable disquiet about the possibility that the archaeological collection amassed by General A.L.F. Pitt Rivers (1827-1900) at Farnham in Dorset might be dispersed on the orders of the owner Mrs. Stella Pitt Rivers. What might have been a museological tragedy has had a happy ending which was enacted at the Salisbury Museum on 21 November with an impressive gathering of nobles and notables, who heard an elegant speech by Pitt Rivers's great grandson, Julian, the social anthropologist (no relation of the last owner), which might have concluded in rhymed couplets as in a high Elizabethan comedy that reaffirms a threatened familial and cosmic order. What is now the Salisbury collection was put together by the General after the mainly ethnographic collection which is to be found in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford; and it consists largely but not exclusively of British archaeological material. His contribution to the founding of modern scientific archaeology is generally regarded as very great. The collection was passed to the Salisbury Museum by H.M. Treasury in lieu of death duties, and is now housed in a new gallery designed for the purpose by Robin Wade Design Associates in conjunction with the Museum's own staff. Professor Julian Pitt-Rivers regretted in his speech that the Benin bronze collection and the treasures from other parts of the world had not passed passed from Farnham to Salisbury, but rejoiced that the true gems of the collection had escaped dispersal. These are the fifty-seven scale models, depicting the General's excavated sites, which are of the highest importance to historians of archaeology and museum display. The worthy conservation of this collection will be greatly appreciated by generations to come in Wiltshire and in Britain as a whole. Congratulations are due to the

11*41~~~~~~~~~~

Professor Julian Pitt-Rivers opening the new gallery in an adjoining room. Photo courtesy Salisbury Times & Journal. curator Mr. P.R. Saunders (who has set out the story in Museums Journal 75.4, March 1976), the Dowager Lady Radnor, Lord Congleton and all the other individuals and groups whose unsparing efforts have made it possible for Salisbury to do justice to H.M. Treasury's imaginative gesture. Your correspondent did not notice any of the North American and Oceanian skulls which Mrs Stella Pitt Rivers had up for sale at Sotheby's in 1979 until the auction was cancelled after protests from
Canadian Indian groups (see RAIN 35,

December 1979, p.16). J.B.

THE EXPERIENCE OF SHAME IN MELANESIA AN ESSAY IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF AFFECT by A.L.Epstein Royal Anthropological Institute Occasional Paper no. 40 ?4 post paid from the RAI Distribution Centre, Blackhorse Road, Letchworth, Herts SG6 IHN, U.K. Fellows of the Institute are entitled to a reduction of 25%. North American customers other than Fellows should order from: Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J. 07716. An emphasis on shame has frequently been remarked as characteristic of many cultures of the kind that anthropologists have conventionally studied. How far in fact does the experience of this complex and sometimes powerful emotion vary as between different human groups? How far indeed is one justified in applying the English term cross-culturally? Making detailed use of ethnographic data from a small number of Melanesian societies, this paper serves, on the one hand, to ask what lies at the heart of shame and, on the other, to observe and explore its variabilityeven within a region of such relative cultural homogeneity as Papua New Guinea. The discussion serves in this way to rehearse some of the issues raised in seeking to bring affect within the scope of anthropological analysis. It will be of interest to social anthropologists, social and cross-cultural psychologists. A.L. Epstein is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex, and is well-known for his work on Africa and Papua New Guinea. iv. 58 pp. ISSN 0080-4150.
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