| Zusammenfassung: | A monograph by Frederick G. Bailey, written in the Manchester tradition, is compared with a book by Hermann Niggemeyer, a member of the Frankfurt school of cultural morphology, in order to select what is theoretically or ethnographically valuable from these two very different approaches and their time-bound fashions and limitations. Both works deal with the tribal Kond of eastern India, and both result from fieldwork conducted in 1955/56. Bailey offers an intricate theoretical scheme, though he confines his attention to the study of the political sub-structure and mostly avoids subjects like myth, ritual and kinship, whereas Niggemeyer tries to avoid any kind of theory whatsoever. He excels in the description of myths and technology, though his 'culture historical' speculations have little value to today's anthropology. Bailey's treatment of Kond society conceives it as a social whole, rather than presenting miscellaneous traits in the manner of his German colleague, who, as his unique contribution, is nonetheless able to offer invaluable data. The aim of the comparison is to point out the anthropological weight of these two mutually exclusive approaches in the light of later research efforts.
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