This pilot project will support a fieldworker to spend six months in Zambia to update a census begun by an anthropologist (Dr. Colson) in 1957. The people studied are the Valley Tonga, who were relocated in order to make way for the construction of a gigantic dam in the 1950's. Since that time Professor Colson and her colleagues have made periodic visits to this community to assess the direction of change in the social organization of the affected peoples. This project will allow the census to be updated to include second and third generation families. The focus of the research is to assess the changes in traditional knowledge and practice which facilitate the Tonga people's adaptation to changing modern situations. This research is important because large scale population resettlements are going on all the time in the modern world of major development projects. This long-term study of one resettled people sheds light on the conditions and adaptations of resettled peoples everywhere these changes are going on.
