aperey (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} aperey) wrote,@ 2005-04-27 15:12:00 |
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Anthropological Anecdotes, IV
Fourth Anecdote.
When Margaret Mead told her classes what she was aiming at in her now-controversial book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, she explained that nobody knew the degree to which temperament is biologically determined by sex. So she hoped to see whether there were cultural or social factors that affected temperament. Were men inevitably aggressive? Were women inevitably "homebodies"? It turned out that the three cultures she lived with in New Guinea were almost a perfect laboratory--for each had the variables that we associate with masculine and feminine in an arrangement different from ours. She said this surprised her, and wasn't what she was trying to find. It was just there.
Among the Arapesh, both men and women were peaceful in temperament and neither men nor women made war.
Among the Mundugumor, the opposite was true: both men and women were warlike in temperament.
And the Tchambuli were different from both. The men "primped" and spent their time decorating themselves while the women worked and were the practical ones--the opposite of how it seemed in early 20th century America.
I refrain from commenting at any length here on the accuracy of her conclusions. However, later investigators, who had a broader historical context (thanks in part to her own work in opening the area and evoking interest in it), have amended her specific conclusions to some degree.
As to the Tchambuli: I read one account which explained that they lived in a region that had just been pacified. This means that the job of men, which was to wage war with men of other tribes, had been taken from them. Meanwhile they continued to keep themselves ready to fight by maintaining their war costumes, including face paint, and did little else. They were at loose ends. It was at that point that Mead lived among them and described their way of life, not knowing for sure what the historical context was.
As to the Arapesh: I have read lately that Arapesh men, revisited, have said Mead was wrong: they did fight with their neighbors. I imagine this was so. It is not hard to miss something when one is in the field and undergoing difficult circumstances. Meanwhile, the accent in Arapesh culture, which ran through it in many respects, was against conflict and for gentleness.
Especially, Mead points out, this culture was against open anger between relatives. So when a person was very angry at a relative, that relative jumped out of the category "relative" and into the category "stranger"--toward whom the most violent acts are acceptable. There was no middle ground, she pointed out. (So the Arapesh, like ourselves, as Aesthetic Realism has taught me to recognize, do not very well relate their angry feelings to their warm feelings--their feeling against to their feeling for.) This division in a society as a whole, between peace and war, is in keeping with the practice of sometimes making war with neighbors one can't get along with. But the Arapesh, if Mead is right, were not the sort of people who based social glory in a big way with fighting; it was a last resort. And this, I believe, was true.
As to the Mundugumor, I have not seen any "revisiting" information.
Fourth Anecdote.
When Margaret Mead told her classes what she was aiming at in her now-controversial book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, she explained that nobody knew the degree to which temperament is biologically determined by sex. So she hoped to see whether there were cultural or social factors that affected temperament. Were men inevitably aggressive? Were women inevitably "homebodies"? It turned out that the three cultures she lived with in New Guinea were almost a perfect laboratory--for each had the variables that we associate with masculine and feminine in an arrangement different from ours. She said this surprised her, and wasn't what she was trying to find. It was just there.
Among the Arapesh, both men and women were peaceful in temperament and neither men nor women made war.
Among the Mundugumor, the opposite was true: both men and women were warlike in temperament.
And the Tchambuli were different from both. The men "primped" and spent their time decorating themselves while the women worked and were the practical ones--the opposite of how it seemed in early 20th century America.
I refrain from commenting at any length here on the accuracy of her conclusions. However, later investigators, who had a broader historical context (thanks in part to her own work in opening the area and evoking interest in it), have amended her specific conclusions to some degree.
As to the Tchambuli: I read one account which explained that they lived in a region that had just been pacified. This means that the job of men, which was to wage war with men of other tribes, had been taken from them. Meanwhile they continued to keep themselves ready to fight by maintaining their war costumes, including face paint, and did little else. They were at loose ends. It was at that point that Mead lived among them and described their way of life, not knowing for sure what the historical context was.
As to the Arapesh: I have read lately that Arapesh men, revisited, have said Mead was wrong: they did fight with their neighbors. I imagine this was so. It is not hard to miss something when one is in the field and undergoing difficult circumstances. Meanwhile, the accent in Arapesh culture, which ran through it in many respects, was against conflict and for gentleness.
Especially, Mead points out, this culture was against open anger between relatives. So when a person was very angry at a relative, that relative jumped out of the category "relative" and into the category "stranger"--toward whom the most violent acts are acceptable. There was no middle ground, she pointed out. (So the Arapesh, like ourselves, as Aesthetic Realism has taught me to recognize, do not very well relate their angry feelings to their warm feelings--their feeling against to their feeling for.) This division in a society as a whole, between peace and war, is in keeping with the practice of sometimes making war with neighbors one can't get along with. But the Arapesh, if Mead is right, were not the sort of people who based social glory in a big way with fighting; it was a last resort. And this, I believe, was true.
As to the Mundugumor, I have not seen any "revisiting" information.
