Global Journal of Human Social Science, D: History, Archaeology and Anthroplogy, Volume 23 Issue 3

1890, the administrator of Britis New Guinea, Sir William Macgregor, had otorgado a la London Missionary Society a vast sphere of influence, from Milne Bay to the Torres Strait, the only exception was the island Yule, to the North of Port Moresby, where the Congregation of the Sacred Heart had established a Catholic mission in 1885. The London Missionary Society maintained their presence in the Torres Strait until their churches were transferred to the Anglican Church in 1914, but in Eastern Papua the London Missionary Society remained active until the 1930´s” (ibídem). In his personal case, “Gunnar Landtman had gone to Papua with a letter of introduction signed by the Reverend Wardlaw Thompson, secretary of foreign relations of the London Missionary Society, addressed to the Reverend Ben Butcher amnd the Reverend Edward Baxter Riley” (Lawrence, 2010: ¿12). The strategic link between the colonial powers, especially England, and the missionary organizations was the anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon. In his position in the University of Cambridge, he was perfectly situated for a privileged communication with thje British government, and he had permanent contact with all the missionary organizations, Anglicans and congregationalist as well as Catholic. Many of his conferences were directed toward the missionaries as part of their preparation, and it is important to keep in mind that the universities were still eclesiastic institutions. At a moment in the 1930´s observed Max Gluckman that “of every ten students of anthropology in Oxford, niene were priets or future priests” (Gordon, 2018). V. G unnar L andtman and the S tudy of L anguage In the creation of a new anthropological and ethnographic canon, the language and the use of language played a very special role: “In the years from 1850 to 1920 very few British anthropologists considered that language required an autonomous study within the confines of their discipline, the only exception being the philologist Max Müller, who was by the way German, even though he worked in England” (Korsbaek, 2003: 161, quoting Henson, 1971: 3), and a very important element in this struggle to create a new canon were the efforts to do away with the interpreter and allow the fieldworkers to make use of the language of the so called “informants”. In the beginning of this change from a speculative evolutionist anthropology to a modern anthropology based on fieldwork, the three professors Haddon, Rivers and Seligman, made use of interpreters, Rivers more than anyone else. But one of the main points in this new canon was exactly to allow the researcher to enter in direct contact with the informant in the native language of the latter. Hocart, in his study of myth, as well as Layard, in his search for archetypes, learned the native language and Wheeler, more than anyone else, managed to dominate the language of the people he studied, as did Malinowski. The only two exceptions were Radcliffe-Brown and Diamond Jenness. Radcliffe-Brown´s only comment on the native language in his Andaman islands was that “the natives´ language is very difficult to learn” (), and he left it at that. Diamond Jenness cheated: he carried out his research in the islands (Jenness & Ballantyne, 1920) together with his brother in law, a missionary who had already spent years among the natives and knew their language well. All this was a struggle to escape from the straightjacket of the English, the language of the fieldworker and reach a level of research we can call “emic” (Harris, 1968), and in this struggle Landtman occupies a unique place, carrying out his research in what has become known as “pidgin”, a simplified English that is used as lingua franca not only in Melanesia, but in large parts of the non Occidental world: “during my ethnological studies among the Papuans of Kiwai I found that the Pidgin English used among these tribes was of considerable interest, what motivated me to include this language in my research in a more general way” (Landtman, 1918: 62). As a matter of fact, Landtman carried out a complete linguistic and historical study of the Pidgin, which he liked very much, in spite of the spirit of his time, and the last chapter of his monograph, chapter XXXIII, is dedicated to a study of the “Pidgin English” the natives of Kiwai spoke. It appears to me that Landtman´s linguistic experiment is very interesting, but a detail is let out: as the native´s mother tongue is Kiwai, the Pidgin is really their second language, so we are facing another problem: it is a problem of bilinguism, about which we now have an abundant bibliography in socio-lingustics. Anyway, Malinowski´s complaints, that are quoted in the conclusions are ridiculous, if we keep in mind his efforts to dominate English, tutored by his South African mistress, when he studied in Leipzig. VI. G unnar L andtman and T otemism Lévi-Strauss stated forcefully (1965) that the idea of totemism represents an illusion, and not a reality; what he does not mention is that we are dealing with an optic illusion created as a cultural necessity, to explain what the Westerners, above all the English, had created an image of “the savage” or “the primitive” as the imagined “other” of the civilized Englishman, which has been elaborated by Adam Kuper (2017) and Henricka Kuklick (….), among others. Another thing that Lévi- Strauss metions is that the British monopoly on this illusion began to explode with two strategic texts by American anthropologists (Goldenweiser, 1910, Boas, 1915). Volume XXIII Issue III Version I 64 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 D © 2023 Global Journals Gunnar Landtman (1878-1940)