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Title: Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony
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Manufacturer: Free Press
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| Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony by Free Press Debunking the myth of the Noble Savage | This book succeeds in its goal of demolishing myths of primitive societies.
Myth #1: Primitive societies are egalitarian
Primitive societies may not have as much "stuff" as modern societies, but there are still goods that are scarce and valued, such as food, tools, and women (since primitive societies treat women as property - see myth #2). Desire for those goods leads to oppression in the most primitive of societies. Even in the most egalitarian of primitive societies, men eat better than women, including more meat. This includes the Inuit, Aka, Mbuti and many others (page 75, 82). In fact, men of the Fore tribe of the highlands of Papua New Guinea so thoroughly monopolized animal flesh that women were forced to resort to cannibalism of dead relatives. This caused women to get Kuru, a neurological disease (page 82).
Primitive societies also have class lines and members of the upper classes eat better. Pygmy leaders have better health than other pygmies. Some anthropologists, most notably Marvin Harris, the author of many popular books, have argued that ceremonies like potlatch act as food redistribution. But potlatch is not equal, the chiefs consume more than they give back (page 77, 90-91). In fact, the Kwakiutl chiefs owned slaves who made up about 15% of the population. They "redistributed" food from their slaves to other members of society in exchange for debt and obligation (90-92).
Even the smallest societies often have an aggressive kin group or a clan that dominates the rest of society. For example, the Braba chief bragged about the savage mutilations imposed on rivals (page 90). The leaders came from the Crocodile clan, named because they tore commoners to bits like crocodiles.
Myth #2: Women are respected equals in primitive societies
Female infanticide is quite common among primitive societies - it is not considered worthwhile to waste resources on raising girls. Female infant mortality among is 43% among the Yanomano Indians and New Guinea is not much better (page 107 to 113). As mentioned above, men eat better and have better nutrition in all primitive societies.
Common folklore has it that war between primitive tribes is rare and highly ritualized so as to prevent deaths. But in reality war is common and violent among primitive societies.
The most common cause of war is women. That includes !Kung, San, Inuit, Yanomamo, Kaiadlt and others (page 56, 71). 25% of male deaths among New Guinnea tribes are due to war (page 71 ... and in War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage Keeley estimates that primitive societies result in about 20 times as many war deaths as during the 20th century, the most bloody century in modern history).
War over women also covers myth #3, which is that primitive societies are not warlike.
This book is packed with research and the data I've cited are just a very small sampling. Overall the author succeeds in making an overpowering case. What I found lacking was a discussion of why he thinks societies might be sick. In one case the author discusses warfare for women among the tribes in New Guinea. He points out this is an adaptive behavior for the individual tribes at war (assuming they win), but it is a poor strategy for the region overall. This could lead to a good discussion of the dynamics between individual and tribe, and tribe versus other tribes.
Other books of interest are War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage and Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage. | | Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony by Free Press Valuable but... | I genuinely enjoyed this book, sympathize with the author's thoughts, and believe them to be important. However, it is a largely reactive work, and, as one can see from the reviews, it fills a need for "payback" on the part of a lot of thinking people justifiably fed up with the hypocritical politicization of the social sciences.
I say hypocritical because no Western advocate of these inane ideas has ever been caught applying them to their own culture. To exempt the West from all this open-mindedness and cultural tolerance is a vile and malignant form of Euro-Centrism; the same intellectual who "defends" cannibalism will just as readily launch into a hateful diatribe about Evangelical Christians or anti-gay Conservatives. Aren't these cultures as worthy of respect as any others?
No, they're not. But if you pass judgement on them, you have to be able to pass judgement on other cultures too. You can't have it both ways, and you can't escape the contradiction, as many intellectuals attempt to do, by extending special dispensation to the West by defining it as the Great Oppressor in a world endlessly broken down into oppressor/victim dualities. Historians and social scientists of this stripe bend history all out of shape, or ignore vast chunks of it, to keep those Oppressor and Victim labels in place, especially to make certain the big Oppressor label stays attached to the West. I just watched a DVD documentary that attempted to trace the Victim-status of the Middle East back to the First World War while completely ignoring the previous Oppressor status of the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks, mercilessly brutalized by Ottoman rule until their liberation in the 19th Century were (had to be) depicted as Imperialists for attacking post-Ottoman Turkey. No mention was made of what had happened to the Greeks. This sort of nonsense is too common.
The problem is that this new way of thinking, this perverse non-judgemental social science mind-set, needs to account for itself. It has not eliminated value-judgement, it has simply directed it all at a mutually agreed upon demonized culture--it's own--in order to spare itself the ordeal and the responsibility of critiquing other cultures. There is nothing logical or scientific about this and that should be no surprise since the roots of cultural relativism and ideas about adaptive-ness can be found in anti-Western Leftist politics, not responsible academic thinking.
This is a swell book--more fuel for the flames--but what we really need are new, fresh, responsible and REALISTIC ideas about how we approach other cultures. The old patronizing ways are dead (and they were never as bad as many critics say they were--it's stunning how respectful older anthropologists and sociologists were to other cultures, but nobody reads those older works any longer) but this new way of thinking stinks far worse, and it's only been able to stay in force by threats, mob pressure, and diktats, another sign that something was wrong with it from the get-go. | | Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony by Free Press Makes some excellent points | There's a tendency to criticize behavior that's different from ours. But when we're trying to be impartial, we often overcompensate and apply less criticism than warranted. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that we'd prefer to be fair, in the hope of being judged fairly ourselves. That makes us lean towards leniency in judging others. Another is that when we deal with other societies, we can argue that what we think of as strange behavior has probably helped them last long enough to be criticized.
This has resulted in some misunderstandings about actual problems with other societies. Symptoms of this, as the author explains, are beliefs by many modern Western scholars in "cultural relativism," and claims that "primitive" societies were far more harmonious than modern ones.
Edgerton points out that while selective forces have sometimes forced societies to adapt, get absorbed by others, or become extinct, "more often there has not been enough competition among societies to bring about major social or cultural change." That is, once one's society can survive and maintain itself, it can keep a number of counterproductive customs and beliefs. He asserts that some of what we can rightfully judge as maladaptive may be inherent in human nature: desires for variety can lead to taking unnecessary risks, while desires to cooperate can lead to accomodating dangerous group beliefs and superstitions. On top of that, he claims that many societies have indeed perished at least in part due to maladaptive behavior. This puts him at odds with those who feel that to first order, societies are forced by selection to act adaptively.
The author does admit that some kinds of behavior that appear maladaptive, such as preferring death to slavery (or defeat) may in fact be adaptive (making sacrifices to save the rest of one's society could indeed be adaptive behavior for the society). One example he gave (of the Jewish Zealots at Masada) seemed unconvincing to me. But I do think that examples of sacrifice in successful wars of defense, or simply by police and firemen in times of need could be cited here.
Anyway, this is the book to read if you think there is something wrong with certain kinds of superstitions, xenophobia, racism, male chauvinism, and a large number of other kinds of behavior that drag down the quality of life in a society. We can and should judge ourselves. And I don't see how we can do that if we're afraid to judge others. | | Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony by Free Press One of my favorite books | I first read this book while sitting in a library at Eastern Montana College in 1993. I could not put it down. A few years later I checked it out from a library on the east coast and read it again. Same story. Then this past year I once again checked it out from a library in Las Vegas and read it from cover to cover for the third time.
Highly releveant to a lot of socal and historical discussions. Well written. The author is to be commended for a fascinating book. | | Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony by Free Press Anthropology Redeemed | Anthropologists don't get any academic accolades for identifying a behavior or custom as maladaptive; Rather they feel compelled to demonstrate they have shed their own ethnocentrism by going through empirical and interpretive contortions to define virtually all primitive conduct, regardless of how perverse it is, as adaptive. UCLA Professor of Anthropology and Psychology, Robert Edgerton understands this, and courageously takes his colleagues to task in an erudite, readable and gracious manner.
The anthropologically inclined will find his global survey of primitive cultures fascinating. Those not so inclined may find the repetition of the theme somewhat morbid. Nevertheless, Edgerton's case would be less compelling without the multitude of ethnographic evidence he presents.
Although the author doesn't say so, moral relativism leads to cultural relativism, which leads to a bogus multiculturalism, which, in turn, results in a slandering and denigration of Western civilization. Anything that breaks this chain is a much needed contribution, and Edgerton does a masterful job of demolishing the link of cultural relativism. The discipline of Anthropology is much in his debt. |
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