Nobbled Savages

I thought the point of Diamond’s book was to figure out why Europe’s racists came out on top, as opposed to those of China or some other locale.

I don’t see where Ozma is saying what you say she’s saying. I took her to mean, not that macro-level accounts are necessarily accomodationist (though anthropologists are usually quick to scorn them, too quick if you like), but that Diamond’s style of determinism inhibits an understanding of how power works in human society. She’s afraid that, after you get through Diamond, you’ll end up thinking “oh, so things are the way they are because of the goddamn plants and animals” rather than something like “oh, powerful people tend to naturalize power relations and so overlook important ways in which the powerful beat up on the powerless,” or maybe “oh, perhaps an attention to class differences on PNG will explain more about the current state of PNG’s political economy than a deterministic account of western expansion will.” I’m not taking the position, this is just what I thought she was saying.

But I do think Diamond is often silly in his determinism and his accounts of human social organization — he’s much better on domestication. He’s really schockingly banal on the conquest — and the silly clans/tribes etc. distinctions and the reliance on Hugh Thomas for expertise, rather than Delong’s mean-spirited motive attribution, are likely the sources of much of the resentment of Diamond’s fame and fortune by anthropologists (and historians.)

“I thought the point of Diamond’s book was to figure out why Europe’s racists came out on top, as opposed to those of China or some other locale.”

No, that is not the point. In fact, people attacking GG&S often point to this strawman to say “Europe and China have similar geographies but different historial outcomes, therefore Diamond’s wrong and it’s all about culture.” Diamond admits that geography only takes you to a certain point – probably about year 1500 or so (at which time China and Europe had comparable technological levels; China may have been a bit higher), and then the importance of culture (i.e., the Commercial/Industrial Revolutions) becomes so big that it overrides geography. He makes a lackluster attempt to explain why Europe and China had different cultures, but is aware that it’s merely a hypothesis.

Where Diamond’s thesis shines is in explaining why Eurasia conquered the Americas, Australia, and Africa and not the other way around. That is the point.

Ack, with the thugs and hacks, please. What has set you off? You may disagree with the point — I do too, probably not as much as you — but from someone who just argued that the pathetic little losers are just jealous, accusations of thuggishness don’t ring all that true.

Looking back at Henry’s post, I think the question is whether “really really large” means all macro-level arguments, or just the really really large argument that Diamond makes. Maybe Ozma will answer that question.

Hi. I don’t think Ozma is arguing completely against macro-level analysis. In the paragraph before the two cited in the post she applauds Durkheim’s Suicide as a work that makes good use of larger structural patterns. I think she is simply wary of Diamond’s environmental determinism, which raises a red flag for us anthropologists given our disciplinary history.

BTW, nice post title! Got to remember that one. ;)

I suggest, as a companion piece to Diamond’s work, you all read A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright. It is a very short read.

In many ways, this work is far more pertinent to your general economic discussions. And it would make the likes of Ozma feel very, very uncomfortable.

Jim Blaut wrote a book titled “8 Eurocentric Historians”. One of the chapters deals with “Guns, Germs and Steel”. You can read a version of this chapter that originally appeared in Antipode, I believe:

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/Blaut/diamond.htm

I wrote a critique of the first installment of the PBS show at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/ecology/pbs_diamond1.htm

Will follow up with my critique of parts 2 and 3.

Finally, I deal with Diamond’s “Collapse”, a much worse book than “Guns, Germs and Steel” at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/my_ecology.htm

I think you’re right on here Henry. Diamond is arguing for environmental determinism — a theory that simply states that enviromental differences provide different opportunities and threats that, in turn, benefit people in some places more than others.

Diamond, by the way, is not all that central to geographic thought from what I know. Even though he’s at UCLA (an important geography school), he’s not someone cited often in critical or cultural geography. The more important people in this respect would be David Harvey, Derek Gregory, Doreen Massey, and others.

A great site for an intro to critical geography is Heidleberg’s Hettner Lecture site.

Howdy, I am the great and terrible Ozma. … I do think that JDs billiyuns and billiyuns of years ago time frame obviates what I believe to be the far more necessary task of understanding, say, the past 500 years or so.

Shorter Ozma: “Any comparison of global societies must address colonialism or say nothing.”

Ozma, is that fair?

The following quotation is from your original post linked above:

I will admit I never finished reading GG&S, but I gather that Diamond claims it necessarily follows from the all of the above that given such overwhelming, built-in Eurasian advantages (which somehow condensed to the particular advantage of the Western European part of Eurasia) that it was inevitable that that part of the world would become the global cradle of innovation, invention, and subsequent armed exploratory excursions on the part of its disease-ridden, disease-resistant, bristling-with-lethal-technology inhabitants. We know the rest.

Do we really know the rest? Isn’t it a reasonable expectation that once the general television-watching populace learn that their standard of living is only a result of dumb luck and technical infrastructure, they will be moderately inclined *towards* supporting a more even-handed globalization?

Don’t you think there is an opportunity to build a popular understanding of recent political history, if you think such a thing is important, on top of the new information that JD’s audience has just assimilated with such evident interest?

I.e. “and then a subset of the beneficiaries of this technological luck went out and oppressed their neighbors, which made the differences even bigger …?” There is a tendency to grudgingly (or not grudgingly) admire the great bullies of history as culture-bearing bad-asses. Jared Diamond has created an opportunity to make them look somewhat foolish; it possibly turns out that their only real skill was to be born next door to pigs.

Isn’t it a reasonable expectation that once the general television-watching populace learn that their standard of living is only a result of dumb luck and technical infrastructure, they will be moderately inclined towards supporting a more even-handed globalization?

Considering that being born to rich or poor parents is already widely acknowledged as dumb luck, I’d say it’s a horribly unreasonable expectation.

…and while I wouldn’t go far to say that “Any comparison of global societies must address colonialism or say nothing.” If your question is wealth disparity between modern nations, colonialism is one hell of an intervening variable in Diamond’s formulation.

Albert said: “Considering that being born to rich or poor parents is already widely acknowledged as dumb luck, I’d say it’s a horribly unreasonable expectation.”

hee. :)

J Bradford “Crypo-Staliniste Filth” DeLong a thuggish hack? Say it isn’t so!

In addition to the two possible criticisms of Diamond that Henry lays out, there’s also a third possible claim that the rhetorical strategies of his book (or PBS’s portrayal of the book) might encourage a certain way of thinking about global inequities that reinforces an acceptance of imperialism as politically and socially acceptable. That is, that his particular macro-historical narrative might make thinking about meso-historical processes “improbable” rather than “impossible.” (This is the claim that noman is disputing, and it’s a claim that I think is getting tangled up in the other two.)

Henry,

Thanks for re-phrasing.

First, I do think I cover a lot of this ground over at SM and so would refer you there.

Okay, but, yes, you are right my problem with Diamond is far-reaching. And it has to be addressed at multiple levels.

a) There is the most important question: is he right? In one way, this is not answerable — his hypothesis is “this is why the world turned out the way it did” and there is no way to test such an enormous hypothesis experimentally. So then the question becomes, is his data good and is his use of it good? Now, there is a burgeoning body of specialist literature — some of which is noted over at SM — that says no. Diamond’s strongest champions are not in the fields of anthropology and geography; in fact it is in those fields that he comes in for the most criticism. But let’s bracket the question of whether he is correct; I think not, and you (maybe) think he is. But neither of us can definitively resolve that question in this space.

b) There is the levels of causality problem. This one comes under the rubric of (a). If JD is right, the historical perspective becomes sort of irrelevant. It might still be interesting, but it’s not very significant. Still, though, because we don’t know the answer to (a), we can’t resolve (b).

c) Comes the influence of Diamond’s thesis on modes of thought. I think this is a less strong claim, because if he is correct at level (a), his influence doesn’t matter at (b), and we should be glad for it here at (c). The thing is, we don’t know about (a) and (b) — and, as I have said several times, there certainly is not a scholarly consensus that Diamond is right.

So why are people so angrily insistent that we *must* think as Diamond suggests? Why do they get so upset at the suggestion that maybe it’s not a good idea to think as he does? Now this, I think, explains the seduction of his account. I don’t at all take it to be a conscious “agenda” on his part. I think, instead, he feels as warm and fuzzy about the implications of his argument as his fans do. He’s not trying to trick them for some ulterior purpose of his own.

anyway — the warm fuzzy implication of his argument is that it lets white society off the historical social responsibility hook (which, in the united states especially, includes the legacy of racism). It also confirms, in a “soft” rather than a “hard” mode, their amorphous sense that their society is superior to other societies. That is, it doesn’t make that claim in a chest-pounding way; it makes in a soft regret way. But it still makes it.

okay — so. If he is correct, all well and good. People probably should think that way. But if he is wrong, as — let’s not kid around — I am convinced he is, that mode of thought is very pernicious. It rewards a feeling that present inequality was inevitable, removing part of the motivation to change it; and it reinforces a naughty old lesson about the radical gulf between ‘civilized ‘ and ‘uncivilized’ societies. I do think if one accepts Diamond’s argument, it will affect one’s willingness and ability to think critically about the “middle part” between the environmental past and the immediate present. My ‘attack’, then, is — yes — far reaching. But I think your feeling that my stance is “unjustified” has less to do with my not articulating it effectively than it does with our seeing the world differently. Let me know your thoughts.

David, it’s so nice to hear that someone liked anything that I’ve said so far.
And I think you are right that when we are talking about humans, we can’t assume environmental factors are always “prior” in the chain of causality. My own research is with an indigenous group in Bolivia that carries out massive irrigation projects in an very arid climate. They have a strongly hierarchical social organization as well. Now, which came first? Did they successfully colonize an arid area cause they are so socially disciplined, or did the social discipline follow on being forced to reckon with an arid climate? Always assuming these things can be put in an easily arrived-at series is a mistake.

Caleb — right, part of the point is about the power of rhetoric. on that note, perhaps I should not have used the stronger term “impossible” but instead the more flexible “improbable”.

Henry — I’m overlapping with you, but of course I agree that materialist vs. idealist perspectives do not have a set right or left alignment. Marxism is “materialist”, right? but it’s a smarter sort of materialism, being dialectical and recognizing that one can’t always establish the most prior stratum. My problem with Diamond is he goes: stratum>outcome, zippity-zap.

and, just as mat/ideal left/right alignments depend on context, you have to think contextually to understand why this formulation is *so* persuasive to people when in fact, we just don’t know if what it says is true.

Finally, I think my suggestion that embracing Diamond’s anti-racism is to embrace a sham anti-racism is what has made so many people so angry. This is understandable, but the thing is, I still think what I said is true.

Having actually read Diamond’s book, while on my second honeymoon (hey, we had down time, my wife and I both read it, not much else to do on long airplane trips, etc.) I was struck that he makes the point that many of the “primatives” he dealt with are probably a good deal smarter than the Europeans he dealt with.

In terms of the usual “racist” type statements (as to whether a group is smarter, physically stronger, etc.) he doesn’t make any of those, and he seems to conclude that up until guns and steel enter into the picture that success had nothing to do with racial superiority.

That he doesn’t really get much past 1500 or so seems to be merely part of the fact he hasn’t written his next book yet.

I think you are on to something. Unless everything that fails to address the influence of concepts of race is wrong, the fact that he isn’t addressing racism (this isn’t “no nothing” racism, his book clearly condemns racism as the opposit of reality and based on false premises, but doesn’t discuss how far spread it is) Ozma’s post is silliness vis a vis the discussion at hand.

GG&S is, I would say, one of the first steps in combating racism. Anyone who has read it comes to the conclusion that Europe prospered without regard to the racial group there and continues to prosper in spite of not being the smartest group on the planet (to the extent the term race means much).

Once students understand that, they are much better prepared to understand how invidious racial issues are and how completely wrong they are as well (that is, those issues that cause people to engage in racist activity, lest anyone mistake what I meant).

How is the GG&S theory unfalsifiable? If you could actually show that South Americans didn’t domesticate large land animals because their relationship was one of co-equals, or if you could show that Diamond has his horticulture wildly wrong, or if you could show even a few examples of where one culture displaced or conquered another even though it labored under large ecological disadvantages of the sort that Diamond said doomed the Americans and Africans, you’d at the very least be most of the way there.

Instead we’ve got one side asking the question “why were Europeans able to dominate everyone else”, and the other side saying “not only is that question pointless, but asking it is pernicious in the extreme.” There’s a reason the two anthropology departments at Stanford are on opposite ends of the campus, and this discussion is about as clear of a demonstration as one could hope for.

It may be that Caleb is right – that Diamond is rhetorically making a larger case than his causal explanation would support (I’d like to see specific examples of where this happens, if it does).

By “rhetorical strategies” I didn’t just mean to refer to the presence or absence of qualifications, to the degree to which Diamond’s tone is over-reaching or tempered by the limitations of his evidence. I mean: what does he want his reader (or viewer, in the case of the PBS show) to come away thinking, and how does he go about framing questions and providing answers in order to compel that desired reaction in his audience?

I haven’t read the book; I watched the first two episodes of the show. So whatever I say about Diamond himself must be taken with a large grain of salt due to my limited exposure to his work, and to the fact that Diamond probably did not have unfettered control over the show’s scripting (although he must have had some).

Based on that limited exposure, I think that Kerim (the other Savage Mind commenter) is right to point out that the show encouraged viewers to leap from his macrohistorical explanations of how human societies began to become differentiated to conclusions about the present arrangement of power and wealth in the world.

For instance, Diamond says on the show (I’m using Kerim’s quotation):

The modern U.S. is the richest, most powerful state on earth. It’s crammed with more cargo than most New Guineans could ever imagine. But why? That’s what Yali wanted to know. How did our worlds ever come [to be] so different?

That question (variations of which were repeated in both of the episodes I saw) leap-frogs across many centuries of macro-, micro-, and meso-historical change, and it implicitly tells the viewer to think that the punchline to Diamond’s deep structural theory is an explanation for why “the modern U.S. is the richest, most powerful state on earth.”

The use of the shadowy Yali figure to authorize the asking of this question also “grated” on me, to use eb’s term. It allows Diamond to take for granted that the disadvantaged human societies he is studying define success and advantage according to wealth and power, which is itself a rhetorical move that leaves the material hegemony of powerful modern states unquestioned: it frames the problem as one of why the U.S. is the most powerful and richest nation-state without moving to the question of whether one nation-state should be so rich and powerful. (The implication that the U.S. is what New Guineans can only “dream” about also carries a value-laden valence.) To oversimplify, it could be argued that the rhetorical strategy of the show naturalizes the existing distribution of power among modern nation-states (which is not the same as excusing that distribution; it simply marks it off as beyond the scope of inquiry).

I take it from other posts I’ve read, though, that the book is much more subtle and qualified than that: this may just be a case where a TV show mangles a book. (I’m shocked!) And it could be that the rhetorical strategy of the third episode (which I didn’t see) managed to soften the impression that the series is meant as an explanation for why the U.S. as the richest, wealthiest state on earth.

I’m also not wedded to my particular interpretation of the show; I just wanted to point out that a critique of the show’s rhetorical strategy is more complicated than just saying Diamond reaches past his evidence: it’s also a question of narrative choices, pace, plotting, visual imagery (when the quote above is read, as I recall, we are flashed scenes of Times Square and then flashed scenes of people in grass skirts, and that sequence of images has “rhetorical” import in a broad sense), and so on.

[Ill-thought-out conclusion: Perhaps there’s another discussion going on here between the lines over the question of whether explanatory language can be so valueless and objective that we can discuss human power relationships and explain racism or global inequality in ways that are wholly dispassionate. And perhaps that leads to the larger question of whether words themselves–ideas, classifications, names–have to be part of the explanation or interpretation for how the world came to be what it is.]

The histories of the Fertile Crescent and China also hold a salutary lesson for the modern world: circumstances change, and past primacy is no guarantee of future primacy. One might even wonder whether the geographical reasoning employed throughout this book has at last become wholly irrelevant in the modern world, now that ideas diffuse everywhere instantly on the Internet and cargo is routinely airfreighted overnight between continents. It might seem that entirely new rules apply to competition between the world’s peoples, and that as a result new powers are emerging—such as Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, and especially Japan.

On reflection, though, we see that the supposedly new rules are just variations on the old ones. Yes, the transistor, invented at Bell Labs in the eastern United States in 1947, leapt 8,000 miles to launch an electronics industry in Japan—but it did not make the shorter leap to found new industries in Zaire or Paraguay. The nations rising to new power are still ones that were incorporated thousands of years ago into the old centers of dominance based on food production, or that have been repopulated by peoples from those centers. Unlike Zaire or Paraguay, Japan and the other new powers were able to exploit the transistor quickly because their populations already had a long history or literacy, metal machinery, and centralized government. The world’s two earliest centers of food production, the Fertile Crescent and China, still dominate the modern world, either through their immediate successor states (modern China), or through states situated in neighboring regions influenced early by those two centers (Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Europe), or through states situated in neighboring regions influenced early by those two centers (Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Europe), or through states repopulated or ruled by their overseas emigrants (the United States, Australia, Brazil). Prospects for world dominance of sub-Saharan Africans, Aboriginal Australians, and Native Americans remain dim. The hand of history’s course at 8000 B.C. lies heavily on us.

Guns, Germs, and Steel p. 417

FWIW, he then goes on to discuss cultural factors for a few pages.

Ozma’s logic seems to be exactly the same logic that argues evolutionary theory leads inevitably (and logically) to social darwinism. All this talk of geographical determinism is remarkably reminiscent of talk of genetic determinism. It should be noted that almost no geneticists, even Dawkins, actually are genetic determinists (as the term is used), and the people who brandish the term tend to have a weak grasp of genetics. Diamond doesn’t address why Eurasians were colonialists because it’s outside his scope. His point is that even if Australian aborigines had the desire to conquer the world, their lack of ocean going vessels and guns would have been a bit of a hindrance. Of course colonialism is a major reason why Europeans in particular did so much conquering, but it scarcely begins to explain why they were in a position to do the conquering in the first place.

I forgot to respond to something Henry said about the group I work with in Bolivia not “causing” an arid climate. Then he sort of caught himself and acknowledged desertification (elsewhere). (as it happens this is not relevant where I work)
but anyway, I think again this is a question of levels. At one level we are all materialists — there is no culture that could ideologically conjure up a continent made of grape jam.
righty-o.

but the point is that JD doesn’t make the general claim that “geography is pre-existent to humanity and broadly enables and constrains the development of human societies”. He instead claims to explain something *very specific* and *very recent* with this enormous broad anterior material cause. Yes, yes, I do question the validity of that form of argumentation. And yes, given the outcome he purports to explain, I think it is not just silly but suspect.

Hi Henry,

All I can do is refer you to my original post at SM, by which I still stand. Unfortunately I’m in the midst of a move and so will not be commenting as often after today, but it might not matter anyway — I feel like I’ve made the same point over and over.

As for Diamond saying hunter gatherers are “smarter” than other human beings; this is not a non-racist statement. It’s like the old saw about the most rabid anti-semites being convinced Jews are hyper-clever.

Sorry, but I think this is a very sloppy line of argument. I’ve heard it lots of times but it always strike me as received wisdom. Yes, if someone repeatedly refers to the physical superiority of black people, this could be a way of implying that they are mentally inferior. Equally, calling Jews “clever” could easily have negative implications, according to the old stereotypes: devious, untrustworthy, etc. But it seems to me sloppy and unfair to infer from Diamond’s claim that certain people seem “smarter” than contemporary Westerners that he is a covert racist. (“It’s not a non-racist statement” means “It’s a racist statement”, right?) You should only make these claims if you have a reasoned argument to back them up: invoking an extremely vague analogy with anti-semitism doesn’t do it.

Engels, we just disagree. Perhaps that does not seem like a racist statement to you; it quite definitely does to me. Are you prepared to explain how attributing a characteristic like superior or inferior intelligence to an entire social group is not racist? I think in this case the burden of reasoned argument is quite definitely on you.

Henry & Marc, I have in fact made a case for why I think GG&S replicates a quasi-racist (because it is not a traditionally racist book, this I will concede) framework in the guise of a non-racist one. You all don’t agree. I don’t have other points to adduce to my case; I think you either agree with me or you don’t. But again, I do think you are so insistent that I *must* be wrong because I’ve suggested finding GG&S persuasive indicates a problem with one’s worldview. If you find GG&S persuasive, then my asserting this is a kind of insult. I take full responsibility for it; I think finding GG&S persuasive *does* indicate a serious problem with one’s worldview.

The difference in our positions is that it’s okay with me that you all don’t agree with me. I think that the GG&S problem is such an overarching problem that learning there are another dozen people out there persuaded by it doesn’t really shake me to the core. But you all seem driven slightly bananas by the fact that I don’t agree with you. “but how can anyone not love this revelatory tome that speaks the truth?” cries the blogosphere. I just don’t. I don’t know how many ways I can say it. I just don’t.

“Are you prepared to explain how attributing a characteristic like superior or inferior intelligence to an entire social group is not racist?”

Well, not to nit-pick or anything but saying that a social group may be more intelligent (on some measure of intelligence) than average or than another social group is clearly NOT racist in any way, shape, or form.

If the social group, for example, was ‘Nobel Prize Winners of the World’, or whatever, then it’d be a pretty straightforwardly true claim to make. Social groups can be delimited in all kinds of ways and some social groups are, as a matter of contingent fact, delimited in ways that map on to differences in intellectual abilities of some kind or another.

Saying that one racial group is more or less intelligent than another for innate reasons to do with their racial origin, on the other hand would be racist.

If someone like Diamond was to allege, for example, that hunter-gathers tend, on the whole, to have better memories, be more observant of their environment, show greater ingenuity in solving certain classes of problems etc this would only be a racially suspect claim if he was alleging that this was because of some intrinsic difference between members of that racial group and others.

If on the other hand he was claiming that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle necessarily required the development of certain intellectual tools then I don’t see where the problem would be.

Also, there seems to be an inconsistency now in what you are saying. You said you were only accusing Diamond of “no-nothing” racism, not “genetic racism”. But if you are saying that Diamond’s claims about the apparent intelligence of the hunter gatherers he encountered are racist, surely this is a charge of “genetic” racism (and of a rather obscure “Non-White Supremacist” variety)?

Pat: thanks much. Your comments on theory struck a chord with me. It reminded me of an article, which I think was in Physics Today, about the problem of jargon in scientific writing. They had a nice example of a writing style that they described as designed to make the reader feel badly about themselves. In such a style there are a lot of technical words strung together with abandon. Individually they make sense. Collectively, however, they do not. And upon careful reading this is the fault of the author, not the reader.

Obscure words are sometimes required for precision, but there are some places where they can be used instead as a sort of code to keep the unwashed at a distance. I’m interested in understanding critical theory – the concept is an interesting one. But I have never been able to get past that initial hurdle, including the admixtures you describe so well. Would there be any lay-accessible readings that you could recommend?

I’m not the best person to ask, I’m the student I described who looks at Theory, sees all the warning signs he remembers from looking at pseudoscience and politicized nonsense, then runs away to law school.

Of course, once in law school, I spent the past 2 years studying textual interpretation. And the more down to earth “its just a job, don’t make it hard on yourself” atmosphere let me learn enough that I now have a much better grasp of Critical Theory, which, while different, is still about interpreting a text.

So, I haven’t got a good, accessible reading. Its also a very large topic, so I’m not sure that just one reading could cover it.

In its most simple form, deconstruction (which is not the entirety of critical theory) is just the idea that you can figure out hidden assumptions of an author by analyzing a text closely. So, you could argue that a particular war movie was really a crypto-fascist piece, because it designs a fictional universe in which acts of violence and savagery are always rewarded, pacifists are always weak and wrong, and the brave and unthinking are always noble and right. This type of deconstruction is, I have found, easy to do as a lay person. If you’ve ever watched an action tv show and thought, “great, the black guy died first AGAIN, I wonder what that says about the writers” you’ve done this. Step two is questioning those assumptions.

Theory usually gets weird when people start talking about what they’ve discovered by use of Theory, and what should be done about it. I think this is really a separate issue, and its the grouping together of the two that makes theory so obnoxious as practiced. Its the difference between advocating evolutionary biology, and social darwinism.

Really, people like Derrida put that all into one thing and called it “deconstruction.” But I think its clear that its separate. For example, I like doing the part of deconstruction I listed above, but if you read the wiki entry you’ll see a discussion of Derrida’s technique for the deconstruction of binary oppositions: I think his critique is ridiculous in its normative claim that one ought to overprivilege historically underprivileged concepts in order to change society. I think deconstruction exists more comfortably when it merely describes, and then lets people reach their own conclusions about morality, rather than trying to create a belief system.

Ach, I’m writing too much in the wrong forum. Read the wiki, its useful, and hopefully someone else will come along with a good article.

If someone sees your post and suggests a good text to you, let me know.

I’m not sure if anyone else has said this since I lost patience and skipped the last third of the comments, but the problem seems to me to be that the anthropologists at ‘Savage Minds’ as part of their jobs are obliged to sit and talk for long periods of time with grown men and women- not teenagers- with rings through their noses and planks in their lips; and that quite logically, almost necessarily, they become quite fond of these people. DeLong is a condescending ass and the anthro-types don’t like their friends being treated with such disrespect.

Details of specific arguments may be wrong – I’m speaking of Kerim and Ozma The Terrible– but in the larger arena the anthros are correct to see a problem: Why the arrogance? What are the implications? What is DeLong taking for granted?
(much too much).
DeLong like most economists is an intellectual primative.
The folks at Savage Minds are not.
I’m drunk
good night

Brad has a penchant for eviscerating folks who are stupid and/or blinded by dogma. Ozma’s just the latest recipient of a well-deserved intellectual gutting.

anthropologists at ‘Savage Minds’ as part of their jobs are obliged to sit and talk for long periods of time with grown men and women- not teenagers- with rings through their noses and planks in their lips

Am I right in saying that the implication of this is that the point is more one of ‘professional ethics’ than objective fact?

If a good lawyer always considers their client to be innocent, a good anthropologist always considers the kind of things that can be found out by anthropological techniques to be interesting and important.

soru

Re: “DeLong is an economist and uses one measure of behavior. That form is not money itself nor even number but a form of reasoning based on desire. As I’ve mentioned before, somewhere or other he admits that Scandenavia is a puzzle to economists. I suppose he means it is a puzzle in the way tribes in the Highlands of PNG are a puzzle: “Why do they do such strange things?” But we do not speak of Swedes as we speak of aboriginals.”

But Highland New Guinea is not a puzzle: the people there have a comprehensible culture and act in comprehensible ways. Scandinavia is different: what we think we know about the limits of reciprocal altruism and how it doesn’t scale indefinitely… Scandinavia appears to provide a counterexample.

Re: “You seem to think the Scandinavian model is one of freely chosen reciprocal altruism.”

No I don’t.

Steve, I’m asking a question to those on either side of the argument. There seems to be a bit of a disconnect, and that’s all I’m trying to resolve. I’m in no position to answer that question myself, and won’t pretend otherwise.

Your’re a scientist, therefore, you’re not interrested in values…

game over

You’re talking about numbers and I’m talking about language. You’re talking about physics and I’m talking policy. Again, there’s a disconnect. I’m aware of it, are you?

I’m not arguing with the book, I’m arguing with you as to whether such questions are important. Kerim et al. are discussing the framing of the issues.
It’s not a question about whether cars run on gasoline or prayers, but the implications of the preference for cars over mass transit. I don’t read Car and Driver or Scientific American for discussions of social policy.

And to really appreciate Wagner is to have a taste for a sort of overblown, drunken rhetoric of power, to want to see meaning rather than meaninglessness in absurdity. it’s all very problematic, but even fascism is good for you in moderation: it keeps you on your toes. I drink for the same reason, but I don’t drink and drive and I sing Wagner in the shower not the voting booth.

I just want to clarify re: eb’s quote from GGS above: this quote appears in the epilogue of the book, and is not central at all to Diamond’s main argument.

…

Diamond may have committed the authorial sin of engaging in some grandiose and ill-founded speculation in the epilogue of his book, but we should be wary of condemning the book’s central premises based on the epilogue’s relatively tangential musings.

Agreed, although I’d susbtitute “did” for “may have.” Arguments against the points in the epilogue for the most part do not damage the central arguments of the rest of the book. But that doesn’t mean that they should not be engaged with either, simply because of where they appear.

Now, I’m not at all convinced by the critiques at Savage Minds, and like Henry I don’t quite understand why there’s so much focus on examining Diamond’s supposed racism. My point in reproducing that excerpt was to give an example of the kind of language people seem to be responding to. Because like everyone else, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.

You might also want to take a look at comment #8 on the new “Cultivating Ignorance” thread, which says more or less what I was trying to convey, only much better.