The New York Times January 10, 2013 Tribal Lessons By DAVID BROOKS THE WORLD UNTIL YESTERDAY What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies? By Jared Diamond Illustrated. 499 pp. Viking. $36.
Diamond describes a 1961 war between two tribal alliances in New Guinea. The individual battles don’t seem ferocious. Groups of 400 or 500 warriors faced off at a distance of 65 feet. They threw spears and shot arrows at each other in uncoordinated fashion. Frequently there would be an ambush and, sometimes, a massacre of women and children. The problem is that the warfare was constant, and over time the casualties added up. Between April and September 1961, 0.14 percent of the alliances’ total populations was killed in this war. As a share of total population, that’s a higher casualty rate than Europe, Japan, China or America suffered during the world wars. (clip) http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/jared-diamond-on-tribal-warfare-in-new-guinea/ In an article titled “Ol I Skulim Mipela: Contemporary Warfare in the Papua New Guinea Eastern Highlands” that appeared in the Oct. 1984 issue of “Anthropological Quarterly”, George D. Westermark pointed to the introduction of capitalist farming in the region as a prime aggravator of tensions between native peoples forced to compete for fewer and fewer resources. Coffee plantations and cattle ranching promoted by Australians led to less land available for subsistence farming. In other words, the same kinds of pressures that made Rwanda a living hell have also increased in-fighting in the highlands of Papua. Furthermore, if Jared Diamond was truly interested in reducing the level of violence in New Guinea, he should start with the imperialist companies that have put these kinds of pressures on the indigenous peoples. As somebody with the kinds of connections he has with Chevron, which has seen its profits fattened through drilling in New Guinea, Diamond might persuade the owners of Freeport Copper to take their operations elsewhere given the impact they have had had on the lives of Papuans. (clip) _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
