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30 April 2010
a fascinating yet easy read
1 of 1 found this helpful Knauft details his journey of trying to find a group of people in an unchartered area who turn out to not only not exist, but not be people at all. The mysterious “Bibo” people thought to live there actually were actually “one of their three-dozen varieties of plantains” (Knauft 17). Knauft’s trip with his wife through the deep forests of Papua New Guinea, lead him to find a group of people named the Gebusi instead. A group of people never known to anthropologists, not known to anyone in the world to exist, but only the Australian workers who counted them every once in a while. It was 1980, but there were no traces of the year in the village of Yibihilu where the Gebusi lived. In fact, everything about the village was uniquely traditional in a world run by capitalists. These people held ritual dances, séances and murdered sorcerers. Clothing consisted of loincloths and shelter meant “a house made mostly of leaves” (Knauft 25). This traditional village was exactly what Knauft and his wife were looking for. They “thought [they] had reached the local version of paradise” and were excited to unfold its secrets (Knauft 15).
Paradise turned out to be unbearably hot and mosquito ridden. Nevertheless, Knauft discovered a group of people who did not know what a dollar was or capitalism; they practiced their own traditional communal ways. Instead of capitalism, the Gebusi use an “egalitarian” system of “striving to maintain a balance between receiving and giving” (Knauft 36). However the Gebusi are not truly egalitarian for they have a very patriarchal system. The village was “controlled ad dominated by men,” who would gather together separately from the women for socializing. “Boys were nurtured to manhood” to the point where they believed an older man’s semen had to be transferred to them in order to become a man (Knauft 19). This was a startling situation from Knauft, for it was very different from what he was used to in the United States. When his wife, Eileen, became good friends with a woman named Sayu, “her husband became jealous, and ended the arrangement” (Knauft 21). Women held a less desirably position in Gebusi society.
The ethnography details Knauft’s visits in 1980, 1998 and 2008. During this twenty-eight year time period, Gebusi society changed beyond recognition (at least in 1998). Many abandoned the village in the heart of the forest and instead lived by the Nomad Station by an airstrip. Everything that was “distinctive to Gebusi religion, politics and social relations has vastly changed in the sixteen years Knauft was not present (Knauft 50). The Gebusi had “not just a new settlement but a new way of life” upon Knauft’s return (Knauft 97). Spiritual séances were replaced by Church and the give and take system had been replaced by a poorly attempted market. What once made the Gebusi so unique was now missing in the wake of capitalism.
24 April 2010
When Capitalism and Traditionalism Collide
From birth we are instilled with incorrect anthropological ideas about what is good and advanced. Growing up in the United States, there is a constant Tylorian twinge to any lesson about global politics and economics. We believe that democracy is the best form of government, really the only one that works. We also hold to the idea that capitalism is the best form of an economy. From a young age we are taught to pity those who do not grow up in democratic capitalist societies; they are from the third world and as a first world country we must nurture them for they are poor and weak.
“This dualistic way of categorizing the first and third worlds” comes directly from Tylor’s unilineal idea of advanced societies (Crawford 20). It is not only a terribly skewed form of ethnocentrism, but also fails to truly look at the society in question. Crawford attempts to educate his reader that although the villagers in the Agoundis Valley are much poorer than the people in the city of Merrakech, their culture is much richer than anything capitalism can produce. Crawford emphasizes it is impossible to hold the traditional position of a farmer in Tadrar without the help of your household, which within forms such strong bonds proving “nobody will ever be alone” in the village even after they can no longer work (Crawford 188).
Crawford spends awhile portraying the village of Tadrar to be sure it is clear why it is near impossible to be in a one person household, which is so common in our society. Before 1996, there was no direct way to hike up the steep hill that leads to Tadrar. The people who live in the village, which are referred to by anthropologists as Berber but call themselves Ishelhin, had to rely more on products of the land where they lived because the Marrakech was too difficult to get to. This kept the village from a constant interaction with capitalism and therefore, for quite some time the village appeared in “photographs to be from another time, frozen” in the old ways (Crawford 8). In Tadrar, a person could only survive from working within their household; there is a system of togetherness rather than the stressed individuality of capitalist societies. As Crawford so dutifully notes, “in rural Morocco the social unit that matters is the household, not the autonomous individual” (Crawford 14).
However, all of this would dynamically change when “a dirt road was built to Tadrar in 1996” (Crawford 4). Although “people in Tadrar have used resources from, and contributed to the history of, places beyond their village and valley,” the new relationship that would develop with Marrakech has had the most substantive effect on the traditional ways of the Berbers in Tadrar (Crawford 12). Villagers had an easier point of access to different supplies they might need such as tools and medical items; however, this also allowed for the usage of children for wage labor. The patriarachal system of households in the village allows “fathers [to] send children to work in the city” and collect the paychecks earned by their children (Crawford 14). This introduction of capitalism into a rural area of Morocco not only breaks the traditional bonds in the hierarchal system of Tadrar, but also causes a human dialogue for more technological wants. The villagers “dream of indoor plumbing,” and hope one day to replace their “leaky mud roof” with a more sturdy concrete structure that they noticed in the city (Crawford 15).
16 April 2010
Theory of Revolution Without Marx
In a little village referred to as Sedaka by James C. Scott, the peasants are trying to survive after their country of Malaysia has been swept up in the “Green Revolution.” Scott notes clearly from the beginning, “as in so many other ‘green revolutions’ the rich have gotten richer and the poor have remained poor or grown poorer” (Scott xvii). The detailed case of Razak, who cannot even afford to buy food for his family, and that of Haji Broom, who was only concerned with wealth to the point of “exploit[ing] his own family for his private gain,” illustrate this concept very clearly (Scott 17). Razak is a laborer who has had trouble finding work since double-cropping and irrigation systems became installments in the state of Kedah. Many of the other peasants in Sedaka have experienced the same difficulty to not only find jobs but receive aid especially on the national and federal levels.
These difficulties have contributed to the collective conscious of the village. During the three feasts in which Muslims must give out charity to those impoverished, the villagers generously support each other, while the extremely wealthy fail to even give out any alms. Peasants have found everyday ways to revolt against the oppression of the wealthy landowners. Although Marxian theory is the foremost authority on proletariat revolution, it is very rare for outright rebellion by the peasants, “for all their importance when they do occur, peasant rebellions, let alone peasant “revolutions,” are few and far between” (Scott 29). Therefore it is impossible to use Marx to explain these everyday forms of resistance to authority. Scott outright denounces Marxian theory in the case of Malaysian peasants and instead chooses to focus on the Durkheimian aspects of their society which keep the peasants united together.