interpreting the world – and changing it thescarcity...

The scarcitymythThe scarcitymythWhat hunter-gathererscan teach usabout sharing

What hunter-gathererscan teach usabout sharing

Jerome Lewis on abundanceInterview with Noam Chomsky

Lionel Sims decodes StonehengeKeith Hart: a philosophy for life

Marek Kohn: can we learn to trust?

Issue 2: 2008/9 IISSSSNN 11775566--00889966 ((PPrriinntt))//IISSSSNN 11775566--009900XX ((OOnnlliinnee))

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Interpreting the world – and changing it www.radicalanthropologygroup.orgInterpreting the world – and changing it www.radicalanthropologygroup.org

Radical Anthropology is the journal ofthe Radical Anthropology Group.

Radical: about the inherent,fundamental roots of an issue.Anthropology: the scientific study of theorigin, behaviour, and physical, social,and cultural development of humans.

Anthropology asks one big question:what does it mean to be human? Toanswer this, we cannot rely on commonsense or on philosophical arguments. Wemust study how humans actually live –and the many different ways in whichthey have lived. This means learning, forexample, how people in non-capitalistsocieties live, how they organisethemselves and resolve conflict in theabsence of a state, the different ways inwhich a ‘family’ can be run, and so on.

Additionally, it means studying otherspecies and other times. What might itmean to be almost – but not quite –human? How socially self-aware, forexample, is a chimpanzee? Do non-human primates have a sense ofmorality? Do they have language? Andwhat about distant times? Who were theAustralopithecines and why had theybegun walking upright? Where did theNeanderthals come from and why didthey become extinct? How, when andwhy did human art, religion, languageand culture first evolve?

The Radical Anthropology Groupstarted in 1984 when Chris Knight’spopular ‘Introduction to Anthropology’

course at Morley College, London, wasclosed down, supposedly for budgetaryreasons. Within a few weeks, thestudents got organised, electing atreasurer, secretary and other officers.They booked a library in Camden – andinvited Chris to continue teaching nextyear. In this way, the RadicalAnthropology Group was born.

Later, Lionel Sims, who since the 1960shad been lecturing in sociology at theUniversity of East London, came acrossChris’s PhD on human origins and –excited by the backing it provided forthe anthropology of Karl Marx andFriedrich Engels, particularly on thesubject of ‘primitive communism’ –invited Chris to help set upAnthropology at UEL. Since itsestablishment in 1990, Anthropology atUEL has retained close ties with theRadical Anthropology Group.

RAG has never defined itself as apolitical organisation. But theimplications of some forms of scienceare intrinsically radical, and this appliesin particular to the theory that humanitywas born in a social revolution. ManyRAG members choose to be active inSurvival International and/or otherindigenous rights movements to defendthe land rights and cultural survival ofhunter-gatherers. Additionally, someRAG members combine academicresearch with activist involvement inenvironmentalist, anti-capitalist andother campaigns. For more, seewww.radicalanthropologygroup.org.

Who we are and what we do

SubscriptionsRadical Anthropology is an annual journal and appearsevery October.One issue £3Two issues £5Five issues £10

Send a cheque made payable to ‘Radical Anthropology Group’ to:Radical Anthropology, c/o StuartWatkins, 2 SpaView,Leamington Spa,CV31 2HA.Email: [email protected].

The journal is also available free via our website:www.radicalanthropologygroup.org.

Anti-copyright: all material may be freely reproduced for non-commercialpurposes, but please mention Radical Anthropology.

Radical Anthropology2

Editor:Stuart WatkinsEmail: [email protected]

Editorial Board:Kevin Brown, political activist.Elena Fejdiova, socialanthropologist.Dave Flynn, trade unionist andpolitical activist.Chris Knight, professor ofanthropology at the Universityof East London.Eleanor Leone, MA SocialAnthropology studentat Goldsmiths College,University of London.Jerome Lewis, anthropologistat University College London.Amanda MacLean, researcherin behavioural ecology, natureconservation worker.Brian Morris, emeritusprofessor of anthropologyat Goldsmiths College,University of London.Camilla Power, senior lecturerin anthropology at theUniversity of East London.Lionel Sims, principal lecturerin anthropology at theUniversity of East London,and member of the Societyof EuropeanArchaeoastronomy and theSocialist Workers Party.

On the cover:The journal’s logo representsthe emergence of culture(dragons feature in myths andlegends from around theworld) from nature (the DNAdouble-helix, or selfish gene).The dragon is a symbol ofsolidarity, especially theblood solidarity that was anecessary precondition for thesocial revolution that made ushuman. For more on this, seeour website at www.radicalanthropologygroup.org.

The cover picture featuresBaka Pygmies using softwareto precisely map a valuablemoabi tree so that it cancontinue to provide themwith fruit, oil and medicinesfor generations to come.See Jerome Lewis’s article onpage 11 for details.

In the editorial for our first issue, wesaid we were proud to featurerepresentatives of the most exciting

and important trends in anthropology.Which left us with a difficulty. Howwere we to top our initial achieve-ment? There was an obvious answer, ifone that seemed doomed to disap-pointment: just contact all the very bestand most important names in the field,and ask them to contribute too. That’swhat we did. Amazingly, unbelievably,they all said yes. Even better, they alldelivered on their promise, and youcan read what they have to say in thesepages. If we may be so immodest tosay so, that makes the first two issuesof our journal an essential – if not, ofcourse, definitive – guide for anyoneinterested in creating a future fit forour species and the planet.

For the present, however, what weseem to need as much as anything isinspiration and the confidence thatthings could be changed and improved.Because if the prospects for radicalchange are as gloomy as most peopleinsist, there would seem to be littlepoint doing anything but consoleourselves as the economy tanks and theplanet burns. Where better to find suchinspiration than Jerome Lewis’s workwith African hunter-gatherers on page11? Lewis pursues a classic anthropo-logical strategy – to learn somethingabout ourselves by paying close andsympathetic attention to how others seeus. In his article for RadicalAnthropology, Lewis considers whatthe Yaka hunter-gatherers of Congo-Brazzaville make of Western‘conservation’ efforts. The clue to thetruth of what ‘conservation’ is all aboutis to be found in a simple but puzzlingfact: the Yaka do not discriminatebetween the activities of the loggerscutting down their forest for privategain – supposedly the main villains ofthe piece – and conservationists.

This is not because the Yaka havemade a stupid mistake. It’s becauseboth loggers and well-meaningconservationists do in fact work handin hand. They both come from aculture that has already destroyed its

forests and put a safety fence aroundthe charred ruins that remain. Conser-vationists pursue a strategy that makessense if what you want is to acceptdefeat and preserve the ruins. If, on theother hand, we truly want a future forthe forests, maybe we should turn foradvice to those who have been itscustodians for millennia. From theirpoint of view, the forest is not a scarceresource to be protected, but anabundant resource to be shared.As Lewis puts it, the onus is on us tochange our point of view from “onethat endlessly chases and protectsscarce natural resources to one thatsees natural resources as adequate,even abundant. Seeing that there isenough for everybody, but it justneeds to be shared properly, is thelesson that we can learn from theYaka”. How the Yaka achieve thissharing way of life is also touchedupon in Lewis’s brilliant article.

That they have achieved it is not inany serious doubt, which may comeas a surprise to those who insist thathuman nature must militate againstsuch communist arrangements. Thisconfidence about what human natureis and must be is another dominantfeature of Western thought – if youlike, our inherited common sense.Common sense can be a reliable guidein our lives – how could we accountfor its existence otherwise? But some-times it is so disastrously wrong thatwe need a way to think beyond it.We need to know the truth behindappearances because better knowledgeof our human nature will allow us tomake living arrangements that are inaccord with that nature. We also needto know the truth if our moral codesare to be anything more than hot air –what kind of behaviour can we expectfrom human animals? And if thatleaves something to be desired,what social arrangements can wemake so that the darker sides ofour inherited behavioural strategiescan be better managed in the interestsof all? The first question, though,must be, how are we to acquire thetruth about human nature if commonsense is no guide?

It is scarcely possible to consider whata science of human nature could tell uswithout engaging with the work ofNoam Chomsky. More than anyoneelse, he has changed the way we thinkabout what it means to be human,gaining a position in the history ofideas arguably comparable with that ofDarwin or Descartes. As if that wasn’tenough for one lifetime, he is alsoessential reading for anyone critical ofUS militarism and imperialism, andglobal capitalism. Here, we limitourselves to an area of his thought notso often discussed, the evolution oflanguage. See our interview on page 19.(We in the Radical AnthropologyGroup have our differences withChomsky, which we hope come out inthe interview. In the next issue, we’ll betalking to anthropologist Chris Knight,where an alternative view on theevolution of language will be spelledout. In the meantime, seewww.radicalanthropologygroup.org/class_text_070.pdf.) We continue thehuman nature theme later in thejournal by considering under whatconditions we can expect humans totrust each other. See our interview withMarek Kohn on page 29.

We are delighted to have sucheminent names onboard.But our journal must ulti-

mately be judged a failure if all we endup creating is yet one more forum forthat small minority of people luckyenough to make their living from theproduction of new knowledge. Suchknowledge is useful – as Lionel Simsputs it on page 24, it strengthens ourresolve by arming us intellectually. Butit can be more than that: it can help usdecide what we can and should makeof our lives – it is “the practical arm ofmoral philosophy”, as Keith Hart saysin a guest editorial starting on page 4,and must be popular, not academic.That means anthropology is foreveryone. With the appointment ofactivists to our new editorial board(see left), as well as the development ofa Radical Anthropology Network (seepage 31), we hope we have taken asmall step towards making theseworthy aspirations a reality. �

Radical Anthropology 3

Editorial

Anthropology is for everyone

Magellan’s crew completed thefirst circumnavigation of theplanet some 30 years after

Columbus crossed the Atlantic. Atmuch the same time, Bartolomé de lasCasas opposed the racial inequality ofSpain’s American empire in the name ofhuman unity. We are living throughanother ‘Magellan moment’. In thesecond half of the 20th century,humanity formed a world society – asingle interactive social network – forthe first time. This was symbolised byseveral moments, such as when thespace race in the 1960s allowed us tosee the earth from the outside or whenthe internet went public in the 90s,announcing the convergence oftelephones, television and computers ina digital revolution of communications.

Our world too is massively unequaland the voices for human unityare often drowned. Emergentworld society is the new humanuniversal – not an idea, but the fact ofour shared occupation of the planetcrying out for new principles ofassociation. In this editorial, I willexplore the possible contribution ofanthropology to such a project. If theacademic discipline as presentlyconstituted would find it hard toaddress this task, perhaps we need tolook elsewhere for a suitableintellectual strategy.

Kant’s AnthropologyImmanuel Kant published Anthro-pology from a pragmatic point ofview in 1798. The book was based onlectures he had given at the universitysince 1772-3. Kant’s aim was toattract the general public to anthro-pology – and it was Kant more thananyone who gave ‘anthropology’ asan independent discipline its name.Remarkably, histories of anthropologyhave rarely mentioned this work,perhaps because the discipline hasevolved so far away from Kant’soriginal premises. But it wouldpay us to take his Anthropologyseriously, if only for its resonancewith our own times.

Shortly before, Kant wrote Perpetualpeace: a philosophical sketch. The lastquarter of the 18th century saw itsown share of ‘globalisation’ – theAmerican and French revolutions, therise of British industry and theinternational movement to abolishslavery. Kant knew that coalitions ofstates were gearing up for war, yet heresponded to this sense of the worldcoming closer together by proposinghow humanity might form society asworld citizens beyond the boundariesof states. He held that ‘cosmopolitanright’, the basic right of all worldcitizens, should rest on conditions ofuniversal hospitality, that is, on theright of a stranger not to be treatedwith hostility when he arrives onsomeone else’s territory. In otherwords, we should be free to gowherever we like in the world, since itbelongs to all of us equally. He goeson to say:

The peoples of the earth have enteredin varying degree into a universalcommunity, and it has developed tothe point where a violation of rights

in one part of the world is felteverywhere. The idea of acosmopolitan right is not fantasticand overstrained; it is a necessarycomplement to the unwritten code ofpolitical and international right,transforming it into a universal rightof humanity.

This confident sense of an emergentworld order, written over 200 yearsago, can now be seen as the highpoint of the liberal revolution, beforeit was overwhelmed by its twinoffspring, industrial capitalism andthe nation-state.

Earlier Kant wrote an essay, ‘Idea for auniversal history with a cosmopolitanpurpose’ which included the followingpropositions:

1. In man (as the only rational creatureon earth) those natural faculties whichaim at the use of reason shall be fullydeveloped in the species, not in theindividual.

2. The means that nature employs toaccomplish the development of allfaculties is the antagonism of men insociety, since this antagonism becomes,in the end, the cause of a lawful orderof this society.

3. The latest problem for mankind, thesolution of which nature forces us toseek, is the achievement of a civilsociety which is capable ofadministering law universally.

4. This problem is both the mostdifficult and the last to be solved bymankind.

5. A philosophical attempt to write auniversal world history according to aplan of nature which aims at perfect

Towards a new human universal:rethinking anthropology for our times

Radical Anthropology

Keith Hart is honorary researchprofessor in the School ofDevelopment Studies, Universityof Kwazulu-Natal, and professoremeritus at Goldsmiths,University of London. Email:[email protected]. Seewww.thememorybank.co.uk.

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Guest editorial

We should take Kant as our inspiration and reclaim anthropology as apractical guide for living, argues Keith Hart

civic association of mankind must beconsidered to be possible and even ascapable of furthering nature’s purpose.

Our world is much more sociallyintegrated than two centuries ago andits economy is palpably unequal.Histories of the universe we inhabit doseem to be indispensable to theconstruction of institutions capable ofadministering justice worldwide. Thetask of building a global civil societyfor the 21st century, even a worldstate, is an urgent one andanthropological visions should playtheir part in that.

This then was the context for thepublication of Kant’s Anthropology.He elsewhere summarised ‘philosophyin the cosmopolitan sense of the word’as four questions:

What can I know?What should I do?What may I hope for?What is a human being?

The first question is answered inmetaphysics, the second in morals,the third in religion and the fourth inanthropology.

But the first three questions ‘relate toanthropology’, he said, and might besubsumed under it. Kant conceived ofanthropology as an empiricaldiscipline, but also as a means of moraland cultural improvement. It was thusboth an investigation into humannature and, more especially, into howto modify it, as a way of providing hisstudents with practical guidance andknowledge of the world. He intendedhis lectures to be ‘popular’ and of valuein later life. Above all, theAnthropology was to contribute to theprogressive political task of unitingworld citizens by identifying the sourceof their ‘cosmopolitan bonds’. Thebook thus moves between mundaneillustrations and Kant’s most sublimevision, using anecdotes close to homeas a bridge to horizon thinking.

If for Kant the two divisions ofanthropology were physiological andpragmatic, he preferred to concentrateon the latter – ‘what the human beingas a free actor can and should make ofhimself’. This is based primarily onobservation, but it also involves theconstruction of moral rules. The book

has two parts, the first and longerbeing on empirical psychology anddivided into sections on cognition,aesthetics and ethics. Part 2 isconcerned with the character of humanbeings at every level from theindividual to the species, seen fromboth the inside and the outside.Anthropology is the practical arm ofmoral philosophy. It does not explainthe metaphysics of morals which arecategorical and transcendent; but it isindispensable to any interactioninvolving human agents. It is thus‘pragmatic’ in a number of senses: it is‘everything that pertains to thepractical’, popular (as opposed toacademic) and moral in that it isconcerned with what people should do,with their motives for action.

In his Preface, Kant acknowledgesthat anthropological science has someway to go methodologically. Peopleact self-consciously when they arebeing observed and it is often hard todistinguish between self-consciousaction and habit. For this reason, herecommends as aids ‘world history,biographies and even plays andnovels’. The latter, while beingadmittedly inventions, are often basedon close observation of real behaviourand add to our knowledge of humanbeings. He thought that the mainvalue of his book lay in its systematicorganisation, so that readers couldincorporate their experience into itand develop new themes appropriateto their own lives. Historians andphilosophers are divided betweenthose who find the book marginal toKant’s thought and those for whom itis just muddled and banal. And theanthropologists have ignored itentirely. I hope to show that this wasa mistake.

The anthropology ofunequal societyFollowing Locke’s example, the 18th-century Enlightenment was animatedby a revolutionary desire to founddemocratic societies to replace the classsystem typical of agrarian civilisation.How could the arbitrary socialinequality of the Old Regime beabolished and a more equal societyfounded on the basis of what all peoplehave in common, their human nature?The great Victorian synthesisers, suchas Morgan, Engels, Tylor and Frazer,were standing on the shoulders of

Enlightenment predecessors motivatedby a pressing democratic project tomake world society less unequal. Seenin this light, the first work of modernanthropology is not Kant’s, but Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on theOrigins and Foundations of Inequalityamong Men (1754).

Here Rousseau was concerned notwith individual variations in naturalendowments which we can do littleabout, but with the artificialinequalities of wealth, honour and thecapacity to command obediencederived from social convention whichcan be changed. In order to constructa model of human equality, heimagined a pre-social state of nature,a sort of hominid phase of humanevolution in which men were solitary,but healthy, happy and above all free.This freedom was metaphysical,anarchic and personal: originalhuman beings had free will, they werenot subject to rules of any kind andthey had no superiors. At some pointhumanity made the transition to whatRousseau calls ‘nascent society’, aprolonged period whose economicbase can best be summarised ashunter-gathering with huts. Thissecond phase represents his ideal oflife in society close to nature. The rotset in with the invention of agricultureor, as Rousseau puts it, of wheat andiron. Cultivation of the land led toincipient property institutions whoseculmination awaited the developmentof political society.

The first man who, having enclosed apiece of land, thought of saying ‘Thisis mine’ and found people simpleenough to believe him, was the truefounder of civil society.

The formation of a civil order (thestate) was preceded by a Hobbesiancondition, a war of all against allmarked by the absence of law, whichRousseau insisted was the result ofsocial development, not an originalstate of nature. He believed that thisnew social contract was probablyarrived at by consensus, but it was afraudulent one in that the rich therebygained legal sanction for transmittingunequal property rights in perpetuity.From this inauspicious beginning,political society then usually moved,via a series of revolutions, throughthree stages:


The establishment of law and theright of property was the first stage,the institution of magistrates thesecond, and the transformation oflegitimate into arbitrary power thethird and last stage. Thus the statusof rich and poor was authorized bythe first epoch, that of strong andweak by the second and by the thirdthat of master and slave, which is thelast degree of inequality and the stageto which all the others finally lead,until new revolutions dissolve thegovernment altogether and bring itback to legitimacy.

One-man-rule closes the circle.

It is here that all individuals becomeequal again because they are nothing,here where subjects have no longerany law but the will of the master…

For Rousseau, the growth of inequalitywas just one aspect of humanalienation in civil society. We need toreturn from division of labour anddependence on the opinion of others tosubjective self-sufficiency, Kant’sprincipal concern and mine. Thissubversive parable ends with a ringingindictment of economic inequalitywhich could well serve as a warning toour world.

It is manifestly contrary to the law ofnature, however defined… that ahandful of people should gorgethemselves with superfluities whilethe hungry multitude goes in want ofnecessities.

Lewis H. Morgan drew onRousseau’s model for his ownfiercely democratic synthesis of

human history, Ancient Society. IfRousseau laid out the first systematicanthropological theory and Kant thenproposed anthropology as an academicdiscipline, what made Morgan’s workthe launch proper of modernanthropology was his ability to enrollcontemporary ethnographicobservations made among the Iroquoisinto analysis of the historical structuresunderlying western civilisation’s originsin Greece and Rome. Marx and Engelsenthusiastically took up Morgan’swork as confirmation of their owncritique of the state and capitalism; andthe latter, drawing on Marx’s extensiveannotations of Ancient Society, madethe argument more accessible as The

Origin of the Family, Private Propertyand the State. Engels’s greater emphasison gender inequality made this strandof ‘the anthropology of unequalsociety’ a fertile source for the feministmovement in the 1960s and after.

The traditional home of inequality issupposed to be India and AndreBeteille (eg, Inequality among men) hasmade the subject his special domain oflate, merging social anthropology withcomparative sociology. In the UnitedStates, Leslie White at Michigan andJulian Steward at Columbia led teams,including Wolf, Sahlins, Service, Harrisand Mintz, who took the evolution ofthe state and class society as their chieffocus. Probably the single mostimpressive work coming out of thisAmerican school was Eric Wolf’sEurope and the People withoutHistory. But one man tried to redoMorgan in a single book and that wasClaude Lévi-Strauss in The ElementaryStructures of Kinship. We should recallthat, in Tristes Tropiques, Lévi-Straussacknowledged Rousseau as his master.The aim of Elementary Structures wasto revisit Morgan’s three-stage theoryof social evolution, drawing on a newand impressive canvas, ‘the Siberia-Assam axis’ and all points southeast asfar as the Australian desert.

Lévi-Strauss took as his motor ofdevelopment the forms of marriageexchange and the logic of exogamy.The ‘restricted reciprocity’ ofegalitarian bands gave way to theunstable hierarchies of ‘generalisedreciprocity’ typical of the HighlandBurma tribes. The stratified states ofthe region turned inwards toendogamy, to the reproduction of classdifferences and the negation of socialreciprocity. Evidently, the author wasnot encouraged to universalise themodel, since he subsequentlyabandoned it, preferring to analyse thestructures of the human mind asrevealed in myths.

My teacher, Jack Goody has tried tolift our profession out of a myopicethnography into a concern with themovement of world history that wentout of fashion with the passing of theVictorian founders. Starting withProduction and Reproduction, he hasproduced a score of books over the lastthree decades investigating why Sub-Saharan Africa differs so strikingly

from the pre-industrial societies ofEurope and Asia; and latterly refutingthe West’s claim to being exceptional,especially when compared with Asia.Goody found that kin groups in themajor societies of Eurasia frequentlypass on property through both sexes, aprocess of ‘diverging devolution’ that isvirtually unknown in Sub-SaharanAfrica, where inheritance follows theline of one sex only. Particularly whenwomen’s property includes the meansof production – land in agriculturalsocieties – attempts will be made tocontrol these heiresses, banningpremarital sex and making arrangedmarriages for them, often within thesame group and with a strongpreference for monogamy. Directinheritance by women is alsoassociated with the isolation of thenuclear family in kinship terminology,where a distinction is drawn betweenone’s own parents and siblings andother relatives of the same generation,unlike in lineage systems. All of thisreflects a class basis for society thatwas broadly absent in Africa.

The major Eurasian civilizations wereorganized through large states run byliterate elites whose lifestyle embracedboth the city and the countryside. Inother words, what we have here isGordon Childe’s ‘urban revolution’ inMesopotamia 5,000 years ago, where

…an elaborate bureaucracy, acomplex division of labour, astratified society based onecclesiastical landlordism…[were]made possible by intensive agriculturewhere title to landed property was ofsupreme importance.

The analytical focus that lends unityto Goody’s compendious work isconsistent with an intellectualgenealogy linking him through Childeto Morgan-Engels and ultimatelyRousseau. The key to understandingsocial forms lies in production, whichfor us means machine production.Civilization or human culture islargely shaped by the means ofcommunication – once writing, nowan array of mechanized forms. Thesite of social struggles is property,now principally conflicts overintellectual property. And his centralissue of reproduction has never beenmore salient than at a time when theaging citizens of rich countries depend


on the proliferating mass of youngpeople out there. Kinship needs tobe reinvented too.

A new human universal: theunity of self and societyA lot hinges on where in the longprocess of human evolution we imaginethe world is today. The Victoriansbelieved that they stood at the pinnacleof civilisation. I think of us as being likethe first digging-stick operators,primitives stumbling into the inventionof agriculture. In the late 1990s, I askedwhat it is about us that future gener-ations will be interested in. I settled onthe rapid advances then being made informing a single interactive networklinking all humanity. This has twostriking features: first, the network is ahighly unequal market of buyers andsellers fuelled by a money circuit thathas become progressively detachedfrom production and politics; andsecond, it is driven by a digitalrevolution in communications whosesymbol is the internet, the network ofnetworks. So my research over the lastdecade has been concerned with howthe forms of money and exchange arechanging in the context of thiscommunications revolution.

My case for global integration rests onthree developments of the last twodecades:

1. The collapse of the Soviet Union,opening up the world to trans-national capitalism and neo-liberaleconomic policies.

2. The entry of China’s and India’s twobillion people, a third of humanity,into the world market as powers intheir own right and the globalisation ofcapital accumulation, for the first timeloosening the grip of America andEurope on the global economy.

3. The shortening of time and distancebrought about by the communicationsrevolution, linked to a restlessly mobilepopulation.

The corollary of this revolution is acounter-revolution, the reassertion ofstate power since 9/11 and theimperialist war for oil in the MiddleEast. As Kant said, conflict is thecatalyst for seeking a lawful basis ofworld society. Certainly humanity hasregressed significantly from the hopes

for equality released by the SecondWorld War and the anti-colonialrevolution that followed it. On theother hand, growing awareness of theconsequences of our collective actionsfor life on this planet might be anotherstimulus to take world societyseriously. Society is caught precariouslybetween national and global forms atpresent; and that is why new ways ofthinking are so vital.

What this adds up to is the possibleformation of a new human universal.By this I mean making a world whereall people can live together, not theimposition of principles that suit somepowerful interests at the expense of therest. The next universal will be unlikeits predecessors, the Christian andbourgeois versions through which theWest has sought to dominate orreplace the cultural particulars thatorganise people’s lives everywhere. Themain precedent for such an approachto discovering our common humanityis great literature which achievesuniversality through going deeply intoparticular personalities, relations andplaces. The new universal will not justtolerate cultural particulars, but will befounded on knowing that true humancommunity can only be realisedthrough them.

There are two prerequisites for beinghuman: we must each learn to be self-reliant to a high degree and to belongto others, merging our identities in abewildering variety of socialrelationships. Much of modernideology emphasises how problematicit is to be both self-interested andmutual, to be economic as well associal, we might say. When culture isset up to expect a conflict between thetwo, it is hard to be both. Yet the twosides are often inseparable in practiceand some societies, by encouragingprivate and public interests to coincide,have managed to integrate them moreeffectively than ours. One premise ofthe new human universal will thus bethe unity of self and society.

Marcel Mauss held that theattempt to create a freemarket for private contracts

is utopian and just as unrealisable asits antithesis, a collective based solelyon altruism. Human institutionseverywhere are founded on the unityof individual and society, freedom and

obligation, self-interest and concernfor others. Modern capitalism thusrests on an unsustainable attachmentto one of these poles. The pure typesof selfish and generous economicaction obscure the complex interplaybetween our individuality andbelonging in subtle ways to others. Iflearning to be two-sided is the meansof becoming human, then the lesson isapparently hard to learn. Each of usembarks on a journey outward intothe world and inward into the self.Society is mysterious to us because wehave lived in it and it now dwellsinside us at a level that is notordinarily visible from the perspectiveof everyday life. All the places we havelived in are sources of introspectionconcerning our relationship to society;and one method for understanding theworld is to make an ongoing practiceof trying to synthesise these variedexperiences. If a person would have anidentity – would be one thing, one self– this requires trying to make out offragmented social experience a morecoherent whole, a world in otherwords as singular as the self.

Kant is the source for the notion thatsociety may be as much an expressionof individual subjectivity as a collectiveforce out there. Copernicus solved theproblem of the movement of theheavenly bodies by having thespectator revolve while they were atrest, instead of them revolve aroundthe spectator. Kant extended thisachievement for physics intometaphysics. In his Preface to TheCritique of Pure Reason, he writes,

Hitherto it has been assumed that allour knowledge must conform toobjects... but what if we suppose thatobjects must conform to ourknowledge?

In order to understand the world, wemust begin not with the empiricalexistence of objects, but with thereasoning embedded in our experienceitself and in all the judgments we havemade. This is to say that the world isinside each of us as much as it is outthere. Our task is to unite the twopoles as subjective individuals whoshare the object world with the rest ofhumanity. Knowledge of society mustbe personal and moral before it isdefined by the laws imposed on each ofus from above.


Kant’s achievement was soonoverthrown by a counter-revolutionthat identified society with the state.This was launched by Hegel in ThePhilosophy of Right and it was onlytruly consummated after the FirstWorld War. As a result, the personalwas separated from the impersonal, thesubject from the object, humanismfrom science. Twentieth-century societywas conceived of as an impersonalmechanism defined by internationaldivision of labour, nationalbureaucracy and scientific lawsunderstood only by experts. Notsurprisingly, most people felt ignorantand impotent in the face of such asociety. Yet, we have never been moreconscious of ourselves as uniquepersonalities who make a difference.That is why questions of identity are socentral to politics today.

Money in capitalist societiesstands for alienation,detachment, impersonal

society, the outside; its origins liebeyond our control (the market).Relations marked by the absence ofmoney are the model of personalintegration and free association, ofwhat we take to be familiar, the inside(home). This institutional dualism,forcing individuals to dividethemselves, asks too much of us.People want to integrate division, tomake some meaningful connectionbetween themselves as subjects andsociety as an object. It helps thatmoney, as well as being the means ofseparating public and domestic life,was always the main bridge betweenthe two. That is why money must becentral to any attempt to humanisesociety. Today it is both the principalsource of our vulnerability in societyand the main practical symbolallowing each of us to make animpersonal world meaningful.

How else can we repair this rupturebetween self and society? Mohandas K.Gandhi’s critique of the modernidentification of society with the statewas devastating. He believed that itdisabled citizens, subjecting mind andbody to the control of professionalexperts when the purpose of acivilisation should be to enhance itsmembers’ sense of their own self-reliance. He proposed instead thatevery human being is a uniquepersonality and participates with the

rest of humanity in an encompassingwhole. Between these extremes lieproliferating associations of greatvariety. He settled on the village as thevehicle for Indians’ aspirations for self-organisation; and this made him inmany respects a typical 20th-centurynationalist. But what is most relevantto us is his existentialist project. If theworld of society and nature is devoidof meaning, each of us is left feelingsmall, isolated and vulnerable. How dowe bridge the gap between a puny selfand a vast, unknowable world? Theanswer is to scale down the world, toscale up the self or a combination ofboth, so that a meaningful relationshipmight be established between the two.Gandhi devoted a large part of hisphilosophy to building up the personalresources of individuals. Our task is tobring this project up to date.

Novels and movies allow us to spanactual and possible worlds. They bringhistory down in scale to a familiarframe (the paperback, the screen) andaudiences enter into that history subjec-tively on any terms their imaginationpermits. The sources of our alienationare commonplace. What interests me isresistance to alienation, whatever formit takes, religious or otherwise. Howcan we feel at home out there, in therestless turbulence of the modernworld? The digital revolution is in parta response to this need. We feel athome in intimate, face-to-face relations;but we must engage in remote, oftenimpersonal exchanges at distance.Improvements in telecommunicationscannot stop until we replicate atdistance the experience of face-to-faceinteraction. For the drive to overcomealienation is even more powerful thanalienation itself. Social evolution hasreached the point of establishing near-universal communications; now wemust make world society in the imageof our own humanity.

Crisis of the intellectualsThe universities have been around fora long time, but they came into theirown in the last half-century, as thetraining grounds for bureaucracy thatHegel envisaged. Most contemporaryintellectuals have taken refuge in themby now and human personality hasbeen in retreat there for some time. InEnemies of Promise: publishing,perishing and the eclipse ofscholarship, Lindsay Waters,

humanities editor for HarvardUniversity Press, claims that thecurrent explosion of academicpublishing is a bubble as certain toburst as the dotcom boom. Publishing,he says, has become more concernedwith quantity than quality andmechanization ‘has proved lethal’. Hewarns academics, in the face of thecorporate takeover of the university,‘…to preserve and protect theindependence of their activities, beforethe market becomes our prison. (…)Many universities are, in significantpart, financial holding operations (…)The commercialization of highereducation has caused innovation in thehumanities to come to a standstill.’

Because Waters blames the humanities’decline on money and machines, hiscall for resistance has no practical basisin contemporary conditions. AnnaGrimshaw and I, in the pamphlet thatlaunched our imprint, Prickly PearPress, once tried to locate anthro-pology’s compromised relationship toacademic bureaucracy in the crisisfacing modern intellectuals, asidentified by the Caribbean writer, CLRJames in American Civilization. Weheld that intellectual practice should beintegrated more closely with social life,given their increasing separation byacademic bureaucracy. The need toescape from the ivory tower to join thepeople where they live was theinspiration for modern anthropology.But this had been negated by theexpansion of the universities after 1945and by the political pressures exertedon academics since the 1980s.

Edward Said, in Representations of theIntellectual, without ever mentioninganthropology, made claims forintellectuals that could be taken as ametaphor for the discipline. Heemphasised the creative possibilities inmigration and marginality, of being anawkward outsider who crossesboundaries, questions certainties, afigure at once involved and detached.Narrow professionalism poses animmense threat to academic life.Specialisation, concern withdisciplinary boundaries and expertknowledge lead to a suspension ofcritical enquiry and ultimately a drifttowards legitimating power. The exileand the amateur might combine toinject new radicalism into a jadedprofessionalism. Said credited James


with being an intellectual of this kind,but James placed intellectuals within ahistorical process that had alignedthem with power and made themincreasingly at odds with the people.Said did not identify how and whyintellectual life had been transformedfrom free individual creativity intoserving the needs of bureaucracy.

For James there was a growing conflictbetween the concentration of power atthe top of society and the aspirationsof people everywhere for democracy tobe extended into all areas of their lives.This conflict was most advanced inAmerica. The struggle was forcivilisation or barbarism, for individualfreedom within new and expandedconceptions of social life (democracy)or a fragmented and repressedsubjectivity stifled by coercivebureaucracies (totalitarianism). Theintellectuals were caught between theexpansion of bureaucracy and thegrowing power and presence of peopleas a force in world society. Unable torecognise that people’s lives matteredmore than their own ideas, theyoscillated between an introspectiveindividualism (psychoanalysis) andservice to the ruling powers, whetherof the right (fascism) or left (Stalinism).As a result, the traditional role of theintellectual as an independent witnessand critic standing unequivocally fortruth had been seriously compromised.Their absorption as wage slaves andpensioners of bureaucracy not onlyremoved intellectuals’ independence,but also separated their specialisedactivities from social life.

One anthropologist who addressedthese questions of intellectuals and thepublic, of ideas and life, knowledgeand power, was Edmund Leach in hisprescient BBC lectures, A RunawayWorld? There he identified a world inmovement, marked by theinterconnectedness of people andthings. This provoked the mood ofoptimism and fear that characterizedthe 60s, when established structuresseemed to be breaking down. Thereality of change could not beunderstood through conventionalcultural categories predicated on stableorder. Moral categories based onhabits of separation and division couldonly make the world’s movement seemalien and frightening. An ethos ofscientific detachment reinforced by

binary ideas (right/wrong) lay at thecore of society’s malaise. Leach calledfor an intellectual practice based onmovement and engagement,connection and dialectic. In short hewas calling for the reinsertion of ideasinto social life.

The solution to anthropology’sproblems cannot be found inincreased specialisation, in the

discovery of new areas of social life tocolonise with the aid of oldprofessional paradigms or in a returnto literary scholarship disguised as anew dialogical form. It requires newpatterns of social engagementextending beyond the universities tothe widest reaches of world society. Wemust acknowledge how peopleeverywhere are pushing back theboundaries of the old society andremain open to universality, which hasbeen driven underground by nationalcapitalism and would be buried foreverif the present corporate privatisation ofintellectual life is allowed to succeed.

The expansion of academic bureau-cracy has accentuated theobjectification of thought as a markerof status and reward. Ideas havebecome commodities to be possessed,traded and stolen. An intensified focuson the formal abstraction ofperformance has led to the academiclabour market being driven by theempty measures of print productionthat Waters rightly denigrates.Subjective contributions, like thequalities of a good teacher, inevitablycarry less weight. And so the academicintellectuals, who might have offered acritique of the corporate takeover ofthe universities, find themselvesinstead drawn passively into a viciousvariant of the privatisation of ideas.Something must be done to reinstatehuman personality in our commonunderstanding of how the worldworks. But this should be through themedium of money and machines, notdespite them. Kant’s cosmopolitanmoral politics offer one vision of thecourse such a renewal might take.

Anthropology now and to comeAnthropology can no longer besummarised as what a few luminariesin the centres of imperial power thinkand do. Americans dominate a muchlarger profession, for sure, while Britishand French anthropology are in decline

and the European Association grows instature. The annual AAA (AmericanAnthropological Association) meetingshave become a global gathering pointwhere anthropologists are more likelyto meet national colleagues than athome, rather like the African politiciansof the interwar period who got to meeteach other in Paris or London. Thesecond largest annual meetings are inBrazil, where anthropologists haveexpanded from their Amazonian baseto offer informed commentary on allaspects of national society and culture.Scandinavian anthropologists draw ontheir social-democratic tradition toexhibit a high level of publicengagement. Countries like Nigeria andIndia sustain large numbers ofanthropologists in the study of ‘tribal’areas. The discipline appears to beflourishing in the lands of newsettlement, such as Australia, Canadaand South Africa. New varieties ofnational anthropology are springing upall over Eastern Europe. I could go on,but the point is made. ‘Anthropology’has slipped its colonial bonds and isnow many things all over the world.

The same cannot be said of itsinstitutional setting. Like most otherintellectual activities, the discipline hasbecome largely locked up in theuniversities. Anthropology’s modernistmoment – the commitment to join thepeople where they live in order to findout what they do and think – becameossified as the professional mantra thatwe do ‘fieldwork-based ethnography’.The universities themselves, in mostcountries outside the US, are centrallyorganised by the state; and theethnographic model of society –indigenous, culturally homogeneous,bounded territorial units – uncom-fortably mimics the nationalism that itwas originally designed to promoteand, worse, dissolves world societyinto a plethora of local fragments, eachaspiring to self-sufficiency. If culturalrelativism was once a legitimatereaction to racist imperialism, thelegacy of the ethnographic turn hasbeen to make it impossible for mostacademic anthropologists to respondeffectively to our own ‘Magellanmoment’. We generate fine-grainedaccounts of human experience, butwithout the aspiration to universalitythat still animated the discipline upuntil the 50s. We now address onlyourselves and our students.


This is not to say thatanthropology sits well with theuniversity. We retain the will to

range across disciplinary boundaries;the humanism and democracy entailedin our methods contradict bureaucraticimperatives at every turn.Anthropology has always been an anti-discipline, a holding company foridiosyncratic individuals to do whatthey like and call it ‘anthropology’.This is coming under pressure today.Increasingly, academic anthropologiststurn inwards for defence against all-comers and this often leaves themexposed and without allies in thestruggle for survival in the universities.We can’t assume that the identificationof anthropology with the academy inthe previous century will continue inthe next. It is now harder for self-designated guilds to control access toprofessional knowledge. People haveother ways of finding out for them-selves, rather than submit to academichierarchy. And there are many agenciesout there competing to give them whatthey want, whether through journalism,tourism or the self-learning possibilitiesafforded by the internet. Popularresistance to the power of disembeddedexperts is essentially moral, in thatpeople insist on restoring a personaldimension to human knowledge.

So the issue of anthropology’s futureneeds to be couched in broader termsthan those defined by the professionitself. I have been building a case that‘anthropology’ is indispensable to themaking of world society in the comingcentury. It may be that some elementsof the current academic disciplinecould play a part in that; but theprospects are not good, given thenarrow localism and anti-universalismthat is prevalent there. Rather I havesought inspiration in Kant’s philosophyand in the critique of unequal societythat originates with Rousseau.‘Anthropology’ would then meanwhatever we need to know abouthumanity as a whole if we want tobuild a more equal world fit foreveryone. I hope that this usage couldbe embraced by students of history,sociology, political economy,philosophy and literature, as well as bymembers of my own profession. Manydisciplines might contribute withoutbeing exclusively devoted to it. Theidea of ‘development’ has played asimilar role in the last half-century.

Disciplines thrive when their object,theory and method are coherent. In the18th century, anthropology’s object washuman nature, its theory ‘reason’, itsmethod humanist philosophy. In the19th century, anthropology’s object wasto explain racial hierarchy, its theorywas evolution, its method worldhistory. The object of British socialanthropology in the 20th century wasprimitive societies, its theory wasfunctionalism and the methodfieldwork. We need a new synthesis ofobject, theory and method suitable toconditions now. The ethnographicparadigm has been moving for half acentury in response to the anti-colonialrevolution and other seismic changes inworld history. But anthropologists haveretained the method of face-to-faceencounters while dumping the originalobject and theory. Paradoxically, whilethe anthropologists have rejectedphilosophy, history and anything elsethat could give meaning to the purposeof their discipline, the idea ofethnography has been adopted ineverything from geography to nursingstudies. Of course the anthropologistsclaim that the others don’t understandwhat ethnography is really about orhow it is done. But they have forgottenwhat it is about ‘anthropology’ thatmakes their version of ‘ethnography’special. They no longer ask the basicquestions that launched anthropology –what makes inequality intolerable orhow people can live together peaceably.So they can’t explain what is missingwhen others take up ‘ethnography’.

I have made much of Kant’s examplehere because he attempted to addressthe emergence of world society directly.He conceived of anthropologyprimarily as a form of humanisteducation; and this contrasts starklywith the emphasis on scientific researchoutputs in today’s universities. Wecould also emulate his ‘pragmatic’anthropology, a personal programme oflifetime learning with the aim ofdeveloping practical knowledge of theworld. He sought a method forintegrating individual subjectivity withthe moral construction of world society.World history, as practised by the likesof Jack Goody and Eric Wolf, isindispensable to any anthropologyworthy of the name today. The methodof biography is particularly well-suitedto the study of self and society and Iwould predict that its use will be more

commonplace in future. No one, in myview, better exemplifies the vision andmethods needed for anthropology’srenewal than Sidney Mintz. Apart fromhis record as a Caribbean ethnographer,he has produced an outstandingbiography inWorker in the Cane, andin Sweetness and Power world historyof the first rank. The ‘literary turn’ inanthropology, symbolised by thepublication ofWriting Culture twodecades ago, has also opened upanthropology to fiction – novels, playsand movies. This is surely for the good.

The rapid development of globalcommunications today contains withinits movement a far-reachingtransformation of world society.‘Anthropology’ in some form is one ofthe intellectual traditions best suited tomake sense of it. The academicseclusion of the discipline, its passiveacquiescence to bureaucracy, is thechief obstacle preventing us fromgrasping this historical opportunity. Wecling to our revolutionary commitmentto joining the people, but haveforgotten what it was for or what elseis needed, if we are to succeed inhelping to build a universal society. Igrew up in an education systemdesigned to prepare graduates for theIndian civil service, so I have had toretool late in life with the help ofyounger and more skilled companions.The internet is a wonderful chance toopen up the flow of knowledge andinformation. Rather than obsessingover how we can control access towhat we write, which means cuttingoff the mass of humanity almostcompletely from our efforts, we needto figure out new interactive forms ofengagement that span the globe and tomake the results of our work availableto everyone. Ever since the internetwent public, I have made online self-publishing the core of myanthropological practice. It matters lessthat an academic guild should retain itsmonopoly of access to knowledge thanthat ‘anthropology’ should be taken upby a broad intellectual coalition forwhom the realisation of a new humanuniversal – a world society fit forhumanity as a whole – is a matter ofurgent personal concern. �

This is an edited version of a lecture given inthe series ‘Disciplinary dialogs’, Center for21st century studies, University ofWisconsin-Milwaukee, 7 September 2007.



In Congo–Brazzaville in the 1990s itwas striking that local people, andparticularly the Mbendjele Yaka

Pygmy hunter-gatherers with whom Ilived1, did not distinguish between theactivities of conservationists and thoseof logging companies. But they diddistinguish between the Euro-Americans currently present in theforest and their colonial predecessors.

Whereas the colonial administratorsand traders of the past are called‘elephants of our fathers’ (banjoku nabatata) in ordinary speech, today’s‘white people’ (mindele) are referred toas ‘red river hogs’ (bangwia). Duringcolonial times Europeans involved inthis area mostly lived alone andtravelled in the forest accompanied byChadian or Senegalese soldiers.Today, whether loggers orconservationists, Euro-Americans livegrouped together in substantialpurpose-built settlements and travelaround the forest in teams, locatingand counting forest species usingYaka guidance and expertise.

The impressive wealth of Euro-Americans is picked out by thesemetaphors. Whereas large elephantshad a high trade value in the past,today, with the development of thebush-meat trade, red river hogs havebecome more commercially valuable.The hogs’ habit of living in groupsmeans that three or four may be killedat a time. Everyone lives in the sameforest, yet all white Mindele appear tobe incredibly wealthy, just as all redriver hogs somehow grow surprisinglyfat. There is a certain mystery in howpigs become so fat from the forest thatall creatures share, which is alsoattributed to the way Euro-Americansgenerate huge wealth from Yaka forestusing baffling technology.

The implications of this groupingtogether of loggers and conservationistsled me to think harder about the wayEuro-Americans engage with the forestand its resources in comparison to theYaka. This article explores the culturalconceptions and observations thatunderpin their conflation of what seemto us opposed activities. The Yaka’sanalysis challenges basic assumptionsunderpinning dominant westernapproaches to environmentalconservation, particularly currentattempts to assure the future of theflora and fauna of the Congo Basinby establishing protected areas.Somewhat surprisingly, however, theYaka’s analysis accords with theprinciples behind the latest attempts toimprove forest management throughforestry certification schemes whichallow for sustainable humanexploitation of the forest.

Broadly speaking, people use twocontradictory models to conceive andunderstand forest resources inNorthern Congo-Brazzaville. Ingeneral, people coming fromindustrialised countries value forestresources because of their scarcitywhereas those people living in or nearthe forest value them because of theirabundance. Here it is argued thatYaka understanding of how peoplecan maintain an abundant natureoffers conservation organisations anew paradigm for conceptualisingtheir role in the management ofCentral African forests, andestablishes the basis for a meaningfuldialogue with local people. Localconceptions of forest resources asabundant provide a more appropriatemodel for resource management inCentral Africa than the continuingimposition of Euro-American derivedmodels based on scarcity.

The MbendjeleYakaThe Yaka (Mbendjele) Pygmies2 livingin northern Congo are forest livinghunter-gatherers who are consideredthe first inhabitants of the region bythemselves and their farmingneighbours, the Bilo3. Each Yakaassociates her or himself with a huntingand gathering territory called ‘ourforest’. Here, local groups of Yaka visitancestral campsites in favoured placeswhere they will gather, fish, hunt andcut honey from wild beehivesdepending on the season andopportunities available. Though manyoccasionally make small farms or workfor money or goods, they value forestactivities and foods as superior.

Yaka value travelling through the forestand camping in different places. Socialorganisation is based on a temporarycamp generally containing at mostsome 60 people in ten or so quickly butskilfully built leaf and liana huts.Camps are able to expand or contracteasily in response to changingconditions relating to the viability ofhunting and gathering activities orsocial events and needs. If Yaka havedifficulty finding game in one area offorest, they simply move to anotherarea, allowing game to replenish.In general, Pygmy peoples use theirmobility and flexibility to avoid orresolve problems like hunger, illness,conflict, political domination ordisputes among themselves.

Managing abundance, not chasing scarcity:the real challenge for the 21st century

Jerome Lewis is ananthropologist at UniversityCollege London. His researchinterests concern hunter-gatherers in Central Africa andhe studies child development,play, religion, and political andsocial organisation.

Cover story

Humanity must move away from seeing natural resources as scarcecommodities to be controlled by the most powerful, says Jerome Lewis


Hunter-gatherers such as the Yaka havebeen characterised as ‘egalitariansocieties’, where differences in power,wealth or authority are systematicallyavoided or undermined (Woodburn1982). This characterisation is based onan analytical distinction between an‘immediate-return’ hunter-gatherereconomy and agricultural, herding orcapitalist ‘delayed-return’ economiesthat is helpful for understanding thedifferences in approach to resourcemanagement and the environment.

In delayed-return societies work isinvested over extended periods oftime before a yield is produced or

consumed. This delay between labourinvestment and consumption results inpolitical inequality because it becomesnecessary to establish hierarchicalstructures of authority to distributework, yields and control vital assets aslabour matures into a yield. Themajority of contemporary humansocieties are based upon delayed-returneconomies. Efforts by communist statesto develop more egalitarian structuresinevitably yielded to these fundamentalforces, reasserting new types ofhierarchies and inequalities to managethe delay between labour and yield.

‘Immediate-return’ hunter-gathererssuch as the Yaka are strongly orientatedto the present. People like to obtain adirect and immediate return for theirlabour – eating most of theirproduction on the day they obtain it, ashunters, gatherers and sometimes asday labourers paid in food. They valueconsumption over accumulation andwill share their food with all present onthe day they acquire it. Without theauthority and power derived from theability to withhold vital resources,hierarchy has great difficultyestablishing itself. Thus societies whoseeconomies are based on immediate-returns tend to be egalitarian societies.These are common among hunter-gatherers such as Central AfricanPygmies, Southern African San and theHadza of Tanzania, as well as amongOrang Asli groups such as the Batek orChewong in South East Asia.

Yaka, like other immediate-returnsocieties, greatly stress obligatory, non-reciprocal sharing as a moral principle.A person who happens to have more ofsomething, such as meat or honey, thanthey immediately need, is under a

moral obligation to share it withoutexpectation of return. In this wayresources taken from the forest areequitably distributed among all present,and accumulation is both unfeasibleand impractical. Other camp memberswill, if necessary, vociferously demandtheir shares from someone with morethan they can immediately consume.

Anthropologists have characterised thistype of sharing as ‘demand-sharing’4

and observe that it leads to a highdegree of economic and social equality.There is a noticeable absence of socialinequality between men and womenand between elders and juniors. Anyindividual, man or woman, adult orchild, has the opportunity to voice theiropinion and resist the influence ofothers as they see fit.5 Yaka activelyshun status since it will attract jealousythat may ruin their success in valuedactivities. Thus, in contrast to westernexpectations, good hunters will refrainfrom hunting too often. They will avoidanything that could be interpreted asboasting about their skill or success,lest their colleagues become jealous andcurse them (see Lewis 2003).

The forest is idealised as theperfect place for people to live,in contrast to cleared spaces

such as farms or rivers. MbendjeleYaka women like to give birth to theirchildren in the forest. Everydayconversations are obsessed with theforest, with the locations of desirablewild foods, with different tricks andtechniques for finding and extractingthem, with the intricacies of animalbehaviour or plant botany, on storiesof past hunting, fishing or gatheringtrips, or on great feasts and forest spiritperformances. Yaka say that when theydie they go to a forest where Komba(God) has a camp. They cannotconceive of their lives, or deaths andafterlife, without the frame of theforest around them. They express theirdependency on and the intimacy oftheir relationship with the forest in theproverb, “A Yaka loves the forest asshe loves her own body.”

The Yaka believe that Komba createdthe forest for them. It has always been,and will eternally be there for them.They, similar to many other foresthunter-gatherers, as Bird-Daviddiscusses (1990; 1992), have a faiththat the forest will always provide them

with what they need. Abundance istaken as natural. Should people notexperience abundance, it is not becauseresources are diminishing but due toimproper sharing.

The emphasis on sharing as the meansto maintain abundance is peculiar toegalitarian societies. Conceiving ofresources as abundant can lead to avariety of approaches to them. Toillustrate this I will describe divergencesbetween the Yaka conceptions thatinform my argument and those held bytheir Bilo neighbours6, and others.

AbundanceMost local Congolese conceive of theforest and its resources as abundant. Inthe 1990s conservationists confirmedthis by designating this area as one ofrich biodiversity. But unlike Yakahunter-gatherers, Bilo groups dependon subsistence farming that requires thefelling of large trees and the clearing offorest to create fields for cultivationand dwellings. The forest borderingtheir clearings requires constant andenergetic cutting if it is to be preventedfrom reclaiming domesticated land.From this perspective the abundantforest is a wild force that needs to beconquered for successful social life tooccur. Bilo often justify claims to ownforest areas in terms of conquest.

As the experience of Europeans andAmericans attests, a ‘conquering’relationship with an abundant naturecan have disastrous consequences onnatural systems, especially whencombined with modern industrialtechnology. Only relatively recently,with the expansion of scientific researchinto industrialisation and capitalism’simpact on environmental systems, haveEuro-American conceptions of anabundant nature been replaced bycareful estimations of the value ofindividual resources in terms of theirscarcity and human demand for them.A striking example of this is theplanned launch of carbon trading oninternational stock markets in 2012, inwhich trees standing in NorthernCongo can be traded by bankers ascarbon stocks in environmentally ‘feel-good’ investment portfolios.

Bilo and earlier Euro-American viewsof an abundant and wild nature placedhuman society outside it, andemphasised metaphors of control and


conquest in describing human relationswith natural environments. In contrast,the Yaka see themselves as part of asocially interacting and generous naturethat provides abundantly to all so longas rules about sharing are respected.

Ekila7 as a guide toproper sharingFor Yaka, people should be successfulin their activities because nature isabundant. If they are not, it is becausethey, or somebody else, has ruinedtheir ekila by sharing inappropriately.Sharing is fundamental to sociality.Yaka share even when there wouldseem to be no need to share, forinstance, when huge amounts of fishare captured by everyone in the dryseason; and they still share even if thismeans the producer remains withalmost nothing. They explain that ifthey didn’t share, their ekila would beruined and they would no longer catchfish or find food.

Ekila regulates Yaka environmentalrelations by defining what constitutesproper sharing. For example, by notsharing food, especially meat, properlyamong all present, a hunter’s ekila maybe ruined so that he is unsuccessful infuture. A hunter who is too oftensuccessful may stop hunting for a whilefor fear that his successes will attractenvy and ruin his ekila. If either ahusband or wife inappropriately sharestheir sexuality with others outside theirmarriage, it is said that both partnershave had their ekila ruined. Amenstruating woman is said to be ekilaand her smell will anger dangerousforest animals. She must share part ofher menstrual blood with forest spiritsin order that her male relativescontinue to find food. Even laughter, ahighly valued activity, should beproperly shared. Whereas laughtershared between people in camp duringthe evening makes the forest rejoice,laughing at hunted animals ruins theekila of the hunter.

If ekila has been ruined it causes men tomiss when they shoot at animals, andfor women it causes them to havedifficulties in childbirth. If parents eatcertain ekila animals when theirchildren are still infants, this canprovoke illness in their children andeven death. Failure or difficulties in thefood-quest or procreation are discussedin relation to ekila rather than to

inadequacies in human skill or theenvironment’s ability to provide. Peoplerecognise each other’s skills, but in thisegalitarian society it is impolite to referto them. Rather, success or failure maybe discussed in terms of ekila.

A whole area of forest may becomeekila. This becomes apparent whenhunting is consistently unsuccessful,and successive misfortunes befall thosewho camp in or pass through a certainarea. Yaka hunters from the clanresponsible for that area will place leafcones stuffed with earth on all footpaths leading into the ekila forest. Thiswarns other Yaka that the forest isdangerous, and that they should notattempt to find food but turn back orsimply pass through quickly. Despite anon-scientific reasoning, the effect ofthis allows degraded areas of forest tobe left in order that their resourcesincrease to sustainable levels again.

Although couched in unfamiliaridioms, ekila is a theory formaintaining abundance. Adherence tothese practices, and their explanation,has established a relationship withresources that has assured Yaka peoplehave experienced the forest as a placeof abundance for the entirety of theircultural memory. Ekila teaches that bynot sharing properly resources becomescarce. By sharing properly, resourceswill be experienced as abundant.

From abundance to scarcityEven in the short time I have beenvisiting the forest, areas I stayed induring the 1990s are considerably lessabundant now than they were then.While visiting in 2003 I found myselfwalking in wide elephant trails(mbembo) that were obviouslybecoming overgrown from lack of use.I remarked this to my companions.They responded that the elephantswalk elsewhere now due to the noise ofthe loggers’ bulldozers, not thatelephants were becoming scarce.

Explained within the logic of ekila,outsiders coming into Yaka forest havenot understood the importance ofproper and equitable sharing as themeans to guarantee the continuingabundance of its resources. Indeed, theopposite is occurring as outsiders, suchas loggers, obtain exclusive rights toresources that they systematicallyremove without replacement for great

personal enrichment, and others suchas conservationists, who obtain largegrants to exclude all other people fromareas of forest they occupy. Thiscolonial-like expansion by loggers andconservationists is far advanced inforest belonging to another Yakagroup, the Baka of Cameroon. When Ivisited Cameroon in November 2002Lambombo, a Baka elder, explained:

Before all this was our forest, ourancestors were all hunters who livedin the forest. Our fathers told us tolive in this forest and to use what weneeded. Komba [God] made theforest for all of us, but first of all forthe Baka. When we see the forest wethink, ‘That is our forest’. But nowwe are told by the government andthe conservationists that it is not ourforest. But we are hunters and needthe forest for our lives.

Of these others who say our forest istheirs, there is Ecofac [theconservationists], MINEF [theministry for forests] and the loggers.When the loggers cut our trees wegot nothing, and we still get nothing.We who are older notice that all thatwas in the forest before is gettingless. We used to always find things –yams, pigs and many other things –we thought that would never end.Now when we try and look we can’tfind them anymore.

The government and theconservationists have messed up ourforest. When we looked after theforest there was always plenty. Nowthat we are forbidden to enter ourforest when we put out traps theyremain empty. Before if we put outtraps and nothing walked on themwe would take them elsewhere to letthe forest rest. We know how to lookafter the forest.’

Lambombo describes the movementfrom abundance to scarcity that he haswitnessed. His perceptive analysis ofhow this situation came about and thepersecution they continue toexperience is unfortunatelymarginalised by those, such as thegovernment and the conservationists,which have been entrusted withresponsibility for these areas.

Though it goes back further thanLambombo may realise, the increasing


scarcity of forest resources coincideswith Euro-Americans’ engagementwith the Yaka. Since the AtlanticTrade Era and the arrival ofEuropeans in Central Africa thedemand for forest products has beensteadily increasing. The Atlantic TradeEra brought ivory, slaves, and camwood onto international trade circuits.In the colonial period ivory, rubber,copal resin, duiker skins and red woodwere the main exports. Sinceindependence those resources thatremain valuable, namely hard woodsand minerals, have been increasinglyintensively exploited using industrialtechnology combined with politicaland military strategising.

In practical terms, for local peopletheir forests have been convertedinto floral and faunal assets that

have been traded or rented out by thenational government under pressurefrom international financialinstitutions, such as the World Bank,wishing to reclaim loans. It is thissystem of intensive and unsustainableexploitation of forest resources byoutsiders, euphemistically calledeconomic development, that is theroot cause of the severe environmentalproblems facing the forests of theCongo basin.

By contrast, the sustainability andsuccess of Yaka forest managementover many centuries is portrayed asunrestrained and primitive by non-Yaka. Traditional subsistence activitiessuch as hunting, petty trade in forestproducts or slash and burn agricultureare often depicted as destructive. Localpeople are stereotyped as carelessabout their environment, uneducated,easily corrupted and only interested inshort-term gain. However, themajority of intensive commercialpoaching is organised by localeducated elites who manipulate theirpower to set up effective poaching andtrafficking networks that are immunefrom prosecution. The weak majorityis being scapegoated due to theactivities of a powerful minority.Such misreading of local realities servesto justify international elites sendingexpatriate conservation managers toapply Euro-American ideas aboutwildlife management, developed inindustrialised countries, to places suchas Yaka forest. The result is militaristicmanagement regimes that convert part

of the forest into an animal refuge fornorthern scientists to study forestecology, and for northern tourists towatch forest animals, while the landaround the park is ‘developed’. InCongo, government and internationalattitudes perceive of hunting andgathering in areas around the park asprimitive and wasteful, whereasindustrial logging, extensivecommercial tree plantations and similaractivities are desirable developments.

Yet this view of development isbringing about the steadyimpoverishment of the world’sresources to the benefit of rich nationsand national elites. Forest resources arenow so effectively destroyedthroughout the rest of the world thatthey are increasingly scarce and thesubject of guilt and intense anxietyfrom industrialised governments andtheir peoples. However, theircommitment to globalising industrialcapitalism overrides this realisation.The current fashion to promoteprotected areas legitimises this whilecondemning the Congo Basin tobecome just like European orAmerican landscapes where nature issubjugated to the needs of people.Conservationists promoting protectedareas seem to have already given up onthe possibility of maintaining theforests of the Congo Basin intact.Without change this is likely to be aself-fulfilling prophecy.

Amazingly, the relationshipbetween the intensification ofindustrial extraction and the

increasing diminishment of naturalresources continues to be ignored orglossed over. So a recent effort toimpose more industrial exploitation onthe Congo Basin was presented as aconservation initiative called the CongoBasin Forest Partnership (CBFP). InSeptember 2002, the United States andSouth Africa joined 27 public andprivate partners to launch the CBFP atthe World Summit on SustainableDevelopment in Johannesburg, SouthAfrica. Its stated goal is to promoteeconomic development, alleviatepoverty, and improve governance andnatural resource conservation throughsupport for a network of protectedareas and well-managed forestryconcessions in the Congo Basin. Theseinitiatives promote alliances betweenhuge logging companies, national

governments and internationalconservation organisations to imposemilitarily enforced protected areas insmall areas of forest while encouragingindustrial development in remainingareas. At the time the CBFP wasconceived, no forester in Central Africahad Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)certification8 demonstrating that theycould log sustainably and many loggerspublicly claimed it would be impossiblefor FSC to work in Africa.

Enforcement of forestry regulationswas, and continues to be, underminedby rampant corruption. Availabledocumentation of illegality and abuseof cutting regulations9 provides strongevidence of the profoundlyunsustainable logging practiced bymost companies in Central Africa. Yet,despite all this, conservation organis-ations have encouraged, facilitated andestablished numerous such partner-ships. The World Wide Fund forNature (WWF) even created its ownnetwork called Central African ForestTrade Network (CAFTN) when sub-stantial funds became available fromUSAID (the United States Agency forInternational Development) in 2002.

But the evidence suggests that manylogging companies use the panda (theWWF logo) to shield themselves fromcriticism that could damage their imagein high value European and Americanmarkets, and to facilitate getting publicfunds and cheap bank loans. In 2005Greenpeace released a damning reporton Danzer’s illegal activities and urgeda general boycott of Danzer products10.In spite of this WWF continued tosupport Danzer by facilitating access tomarkets to sell their goods throughWWF’s Global Forest Trade Network,and in 2007 WWF was activelylobbying a major German bank for aloan on Danzer’s behalf.

There seems to be a significant risk thatsupporting such initiatives as the modelfor the future of forest conservation inthe Congo Basin will condemn CentralAfrica to become an expanse ofunsustainably logged and impoverishedwoodland surrounding small islands ofmilitarily protected forest.

Red river hogs: loggersand conservationistsA partnership between loggers andconservationists seems strange at first


sight. However, conservationists andloggers have been mutually dependentfor some time already. Since the 1970sindustrial logging has rapidlyexpanded with the importation ofimproved technology and skills toexploit the forest in ways that mostlyearn money for internationalcompanies and local elites. This hashad numerous consequences.

Industrial logging requires asubstantial labour force and largeinfrastructural developments to

sustain it. Regular wages createdemands for goods and services fromemployees that attract other people toprovide them. Employees’ less well-offrelatives come to live with them intown. These communities need feeding;intensive farming or hunting to supplythe town with food offers an attractiveincome for traders and others. Roadsused to evacuate logs also providetransport for bushmeat and otherforest products. They also disenclaveremote villages. People flock to thelogging town out of curiosity, to seekemployment and to enjoy the intensesocial life available there.

Urban developments suddenly emergein areas of high biodiversity, changingthe land for kilometres around andleading to the common problemsassociated with rapid urbanisation in aforest environment. Local elites seelucrative opportunities for gain bycombining their political immunitywith modern technologies and theaccess to the forest provided by theloggers’ infrastructure.11

The consequences of opening up forestby loggers draws wider attention to itfrom international environmentalistswho take an interest in logging’simpact, and associated activities onforest resources. The impact is great.To date most environmentalists’reaction to this focuses on establishingsmall areas of protected forest forisolation from local people, andintensively policing them rather thanseeking to ensure that industrialactivities such as logging are onlypermitted if they are sustainable.

Despite this peculiar myopia, currenttrends are to establish even largerprotected areas that cross nationalboundaries in what is being called a‘landscape management approach’.

Major international finance for this hasbeen provided through the CentralAfrican Forest World HeritageInitiative (CAFWHI), whose focus, likemost conservation projects in CentralAfrica, is policing the bushmeat trade –84% of the budget is for this activityalone. The illegal bushmeat trade iscited as the single greatest threat to theCentral African forests and used tojustify the draconian imposition onlocal people of exclusion zonesprotected by armed ‘eco-guards’. Theactivities of illegal and unsustainablelogging companies are not addressed.Despite many millions of dollars, nofunding is planned for communityconsultations, co-managementinitiatives or local capacity building.

Exclusion zones and protected areasdisplace the problem, they do not solveit. Elephant poachers I met near theNouabale Ndoki National Park in1996 in Congo explained that theysimply crossed the river into Cameroonto hunt there for the local Congolesemayor. Corruption allows the biggestculprits of environmental crime toescape with impunity. Commercialbushmeat traders and farmers goelsewhere. But for Yaka hunter-gatherers it is much more difficult sinceeach zone will have important seasonalwild resources not necessarily availableelsewhere in the territory they normallylive and travel in. The militaristicenforcement of hunting restrictionsaround protected areas does notaddress the root causes of the bushmeattrade. These are economic and political.

Using shocking images of dead apes,monkeys and other game,conservationists obtain funds in richcountries to support their activities.But this focus is acting as a diversionfrom addressing the root causes of theserious environmental problems facingCentral Africa. Local people are beingscapegoated unfairly, while the urgentneed to reign in corruption and developpractices that ensure sustainableresource use continues to be neglected.

As international capital draws outmore and more of the forest’sresources, internationalenvironmentalists are seeking toisolate increasingly large areas offorest and exclude local people fromthem. The implications of this dualoccupation of the forest by loggers

and conservationists are potentiallyvery serious for Yaka and otherPygmy people. They are the easyvictims of those outsiders extractingresources and those ‘protecting’ them.

From Yaka perspectives conservation,like logging, makes abundant forestscarce. By sealing off areas to all exceptthe privileged (Euro-American scientistsand tourists, important officials andproject workers), conservationists claimto protect wildlife. This enforcedpreservation of forest in some areasserves to justify the forest’s destructionelsewhere. International institutionssuch as the World Bank promote andfinance conservation initiatives at thesame time as promoting, funding, andeven obliging governments to opentheir national resources to exploitationby foreign corporations.

Surprisingly, this contradictorybehaviour only occasionally provokesoutrage. In 2005, for instance, in acampaign spear-headed by theRainforest Foundation and Greenpeace,the World Bank was widely criticisedfor appearing to have pushed throughsurreptitiously forest legislation thatwas advantageous to internationallogging interests and internationalconservation organisations but ignoredcivil society and local forest peoples’needs. The furore that followed resultedin a moratorium on new loggingconcessions in Democratic Republic ofthe Congo and a very critical WorldBank Inspection Panel Report (2007).

Justifying the promotion of industrialexploitation by providing grants at thesame time to conservationorganisations is not a new strategy.Already in 1992 Polly Ghazi, writing inThe Guardian, noted how the WorldBank, despite a ‘green forestry policy’,offered commercial rate loans to boostCongo-Brazzaville’s timber exports.‘To help tempt the government of theCongo, which already owes the Westhuge debts, the loan offer is beinglinked to a free UN grant for setting upprotected conservation areas. The $10million grant will come from the newGlobal Environment Facility, raisingfears that the much heralded greenfund could be misused to damagerather than protect rainforests…’

Like the World Bank, loggers andconservationists are each using the


other to justify their actions and obtainfunding to develop their activities.Loggers are able to divert attentionfrom the harmful impact of theiractivities by pointing to efforts beingmade to protect conservation areas andby paying lip-service to the ideals ofsustainable forestry. Conservationistsjustify the draconian repression of localpeoples’ traditional rights by referringto the destruction caused by activitiesassociated with logging or that dependon the infrastructure created byloggers. As exclusion zones encompassmore and more forest, loggingcompanies use their existence to justifyenlarging and accelerating theiractivities around the protected areas.

Why conservation agenciesfocus activities on limitinglocal peoples’ hunting or

bushmeat trading activities rather thanon the massive road building activitiesof multinational companies seems to bean issue of scale linked to what isachievable in a funding cycle – oftenjust three years. It is less daunting toattempt to control local people than toaddress the underlying causes ofenvironmental destruction – theobligatory capitalisation of resourcesimposed by the big internationallenders on poor countries governed bycorrupt political systems.

The dominance of protected-areathinking in conservation planningmeans that the economics of industrialforest exploitation are rarelychallenged by national governmentsor conservationists working in CentralAfrica. Within the context of the debtarrears facing the Congo the valueof the forest is calculated according toits value on international markets – ie,the commercial worth of its timber.The value of non-timber forestproducts to forest people, one of themost impoverished social groups, inaddition to the ecological functions ofwatershed maintenance andbiodiversity protection that a largeforest provides, have been ignored.Promoters of industrialisation couchtheir arguments in terms of wealthgeneration and poverty reduction.However, the substantial profitsgenerated by industrial exploitationare unequally distributed. The lion’sshare goes to a few, probably foreign,businessmen and members of thenational elite.

The political economist Bayart (1993)characterised these political systems asbased on ‘the politics of the belly’; theprinciple that a person will use theirposition of authority and power to ‘eat’whatever they can, and grow fat(wealthy). Indeed this tendency amongcivil servants and politicians has createda context of pervasive corruption thatundermines the normal way that statesredistribute wealth through taxationand local investment. Major socialinvestments in infrastructure or inequipping buildings to serve the publicinterest, such as schools or hospitals,are undermined by corrupt individualssiphoning off money and equipment.This makes social planning subject toall kinds of unexpected problems thatoften cause actions to fail spectacularly.

Omitting these factors in conventionaleconomic analysis undervalue theforest’s resources and make industrialand commercial land use appear moreattractive than they are. In one of therare studies to quantify the alternativevalue of forest resources to localpeople, Camille Bann’s (2000) 18-month study in Ratanakiri, Cambodia,estimated the value of harvesting non-timber forest products (NTFP) to yieldUS$3,922 per hectare to local people incomparison to no more than US$1,697per hectare if harvested for timber.

NTFP are a very important source ofsubsistence for the poorest sectors ofsociety. All households in the studyrelied on NTFP, but only 30% ofhouseholds in the region have a familymember engaged in the wage economy.Forest products provide an importantnatural mechanism for alleviatingpoverty without explicit governmentinvestment. Additionally forest mustremain intact for local peoples’ uniquecultures, values and traditionalknowledge to continue. Given thenegative ecological impacts of timberharvesting on watershed maintenanceand biodiversity conservation, then thenet benefits from harvesting timber arediminished further.

Not calculating the value of the forestfrom local peoples’ perspectives iscondemning huge areas of CentralAfrica’s forests to become resources forindustrial activities, the great majorityof which are not conducted in asustainable way. Of the hundreds oflogging companies operating in the

Congo Basin, not even a handful haveachieved Forest Stewardship Council(FSC) certification, indicating that theyare sustainable forest managers. Andamong those that have been certified,controversy often surrounds thelegitimacy of the certificate, to such anextent that some founders of FSCmilitantly oppose the Council today.

ScarcityEuro-Americans, and people fromcapitalist countries more generally, areinfatuated with goods that are scarcein their own countries. The discourseof endangered species is premised onthis. Rarity is an explicit theme inmedia portrayals of Yaka forest. It isdepicted as the last great wilderness ofthe Congo basin (Congo. Spirit of theForest, 2000), or more dramatically inthe National Geographic as ‘Ndoki,Last Place on Earth’ (Chadwick1995). These sensational portrayalsare promoted by documentariesglamorising their material andunderpin conservationists’ fundingapplications.

Both loggers and conservationists aremonopolising what they conceive of asscarce resources; loggers want controlof precious trees, conservationists ofrare animals and undisturbed forestareas. The perception of scarcity is theideological bedrock of both theseactivities, and a driving force in theindustrialisation and capitalisation ofthe world’s resources. The Yaka’sconflation of loggers andconservationists is more perceptivethan most people realise.

Most conservationists come fromindustrialised nations where theawesome power of industrialexploitation has devastated theoriginal environment and turned itinto patchworks of spaces in use bypeople in different ways, with theoccasional token to the originalappearance of the land in the form ofwell-managed parks. Industrialised-nation conservationists then go out tonon-industrialised nations like Congoand apply the same model ofdevelopment, focusing themselves ondelimiting and protecting smallpockets of faunal and floral resourcesfrom local and industrial exploitation.

The competition for scarce fundingputs pressure on conservation to


appear to be effective; to be seen toachieve goals and be successful.Indeed, these pressures are so greatthat most conservation organisationsneed to be more concerned withappearances to the rich north than tothe local area where work is beingdone. The quickest way of appearingto be doing something in this contextis to take the protectionist approachand isolate an area of forest, excludelocals and enforce protection.

The enforcement and protection ofprotected areas becomes a military-likeoperation, sometimes described byconservationist field-workers as a ‘waron poaching’. Since the mid 1990swhen Eco-guard militias became apopular conservation tool, I haverecorded a number of cases of serioushuman rights abuses, including murder,by Wildlife Conservation Society Eco-guards in northern Congo, andcomplained to those responsible. I havealso been told by victims of veryserious abuses by WWF Eco-guards insouth-eastern Cameroon ranging fromtorture and public humiliation to theburning down of an entire village.

This aggressive and colonial-likeimposition of protected areas on localpeople understandably antagonisesmany and establishes their relationshipto conservation as involuntary andbased on force. This is the basis formost of the conflicts conservation facesand is likely to face in Central Africa.

From local perspectives, rich andpowerful outsiders are denying poorpeople access to their basic needs. Thisis seen as a grave abuse of basic humanrights by many. Local people mayrarely protest in front of powerfulwhite people, but the resentment theyfeel may (and does) lead to seriousproblems for conservationists. In thiscontext it is very difficult forconservationists to convince localpeople that they are concerned withtheir best interests. Protected areas inthe Congo basin have been imposed onlocal people by internationalorganisations pressurising nationalgovernments. Many contemporaryconservationists’ narrow view of theirtask in Central Africa is resulting in theacceleration of the industrialisation offorest resources, the very processunderlying the problems conservationseeks to remedy.

In Central Africa, rather than graspwhat local conceptions can offer,conservationists constantly seek totransform how locals understand theirenvironment. The very notion of‘endangered species’ judges resourcesaccording to their scarcity. For peoplesuch as Mbendjele, this is contradictedby their experience. To understandcurrent conservation discourse requiresa dramatic reformulation of theirthinking based on counter-intuitiveclaims that they have little reason to do.

The current dominance of the scarcitymodel precludes the idea of sharing, iteven encourages voraciousconsumption. Conservation needs toget away from the paranoid thinkingthat informs the hoarding mentalityunderpinning industrial capitalism andmuch conservation activity, and ceaseto be enslaved to market economics.The economic considerations ofmultinational corporations andinstitutions presently dominate toomuch decision-making. Insteaddecisions should be based on theunderstanding that nature is indeedabundant and capable of sustaining alllife, if it is shared properly.

Making theYakalifestyle scarceYaka forest knowledge and practicehave ensured that large areas of forestthrive and endure. Later-comers, suchas conservationists, are benefitinghugely from this good custodianship offorest resources. While conservationistsdepend on Yaka forest knowledge andskills to identify, explore, andunderstand the environments theycome to control, the exclusionarypolicies they impose on Yaka peoplethreaten the very relationship with theforest that permitted the transmissionand development of the forest skillsand knowledge conservationists need.

When access to good forest is denied ormade dangerous for Yaka, it becomesdifficult to transmit forest knowledgeadequately to succeeding generations.Over time forest knowledge willbecome rarer among young Yakapeople as resources are impoverishedor access denied. Eventually Yakaknowledge may only remain in thenotebooks and publications ofanthropologists, ecologists and otherscientists. The ultimatedisenfranchisement of the hunter-

gatherers will thus be complete. Theirforest land and resources are deniedthem or destroyed, and they no longerhave the knowledge necessary to returninto the forest if ever their rights wereto be recognised. This process isoccurring to varying extentsthroughout the region. It is probablymost advanced among the TwaPygmies in the Great Lakes Region,most of who have become landlesspotters and beggars (Lewis 2000).

Forest knowledge, like forestresources, has been transformedfrom being abundant and widely

available into a scarce and controlledexpertise, only recorded in formatsavailable to those with a northern-styleeducation – a format that so farexcludes access by Yaka forest people.

If current activities continue in theCentral African forests, the hunter-gatherers’ fate will be sealed by thecontinued imposition and dominanceof an ideology of scarcity. Whetherforest resources are over-exploited anddepleted as a consequence of industrialcapitalist extraction methods or sealedoff from local people by zealousanimal protectionists from richcountries, the result for local people isthe same. There will be no space in theforest for forest people unless theybecome involved in the activities of theforesters or the animal protectionists.Their livelihood and resource basehave been swept away from them andcontrol over it given to multinationalcompanies and Euro-American animalprotection agencies.

While the forest was in local people’scontrol it was considered abundant,and actually was so. Since Euro–Americans arrived and began toperceive of forest resources asscarce, desirable and valuable, sothey have become. Now controlover the future of the forest is vestedin the hands of people with little or nogenuine long-term or generationalinterest in preserving it beyond theirlimited engagement with it, often forjust a fiscal year or two, or a projectfunding cycle.

This tradition of natural resource usethat is based on what was done in richcountries, if widely applied through theprocess of globalisation to other partsof the world, will result in massive


areas of farmland, urban dwellings andindustrial areas, surrounding theoccasional token to the originalappearance of the land in small andinsignificant protected areas. This is nota viable model for the future of thetropical forests of the Congo Basin.

Nor is it a model for long-termenvironmental conservation moregenerally in non-industrialised areas.How long will small islands ofprotected resources be able to survivewhen surrounded by extensive urbansprawls with subsistence slash and burnagriculture supporting impoverishedpopulations, or when surrounded byindustrially exploited or otherwisetransformed areas from which allvaluable resources have beenintensively removed, and most of theprofits from their exploitationsuccessfully exported to rich countries?

Abundance as the basis forenvironmental managementRather than attempt to change theconception of abundance commonamong local people, maybe the onus ison conservation to change its point ofview from one that endlessly chases andprotects scarce natural resources to onethat sees natural resources as adequate,even abundant. Seeing that there isenough for everybody, but it just needsto be shared properly, is the lesson thatwe can learn from the Yaka and ekila.

The Yaka are offering conservation amodel for the future. Rather thanrepressing them and disregarding theirbasic human rights, conservationistsneed to learn from them. Takingabundance as the starting point for ameaningful dialogue with local peopleconservationists could create theconditions necessary for effective long-term conservation of Congo Basinenvironments. For conservationistsekila is a metaphor for the need forpolitical engagement in decisions abouthow resources are distributed and used.

This would result in conservationtaking the maintenance of abundanceas its goal, rather than the protection ofscarcity. Following ekila logic, the keyto abundance is equitable sharing. Thistranslates in the language of modernenvironmentalism as assuring effectiveresource management and benefitsharing – a movement away fromseeing conservation as a series of

protected areas surrounded byindustrial zones, to a process ofequitably managing resources for all.This is clearly not happening within thecurrently popular paradigm of scarcity.

However, there are indications thatwhen the Forest Stewardship Council’sPrinciples are applied rigorously thehunter-gatherers’ model is beingadopted. The Forest StewardshipCouncil approach, although expressedin very different language, has adoptedsimilar principles to those of Yakaforest stewardship. When takenseriously, the FSC management modelis based on maintaining the forest’sabundance through socially just andecologically sustainable harvesting offorest resources. This is a modernidiom for talking about the same issuesthat concern ekila.

Unfettered industrial capitalism is thereal menace to the key worldenvironments that we all depend upon,not Yaka hunters seeking food for theirfamilies. While happy to imposehunting bans on traditional hunter-gatherers such as Pygmies,conservationists are surprisinglyreluctant to impose logging bans oninternational logging companies. Unlessindustrialists can show their methods tobe both environmentally and sociallysustainable they should be preventedfrom continuing to exploit the forestsof the Congo Basin. The reluctance toapply the same standards to richnortherners as are applied to localpeople is the downfall of conservationefforts in the Congo Basin.

Environmentalists can only expect non-industrialised nations to stand up to theforces of capitalism if they do sothemselves, and apply greater pressureto counter the imperatives of globalcapital in the places from where itoriginates – in Europe, Asia andAmerica. There can be no effectiveconservation of our planet withoutcommitted political engagement and awillingness to question the assumptionsthat underpin dominant attitudes toour environment. As is self-evident tothe Yaka, but seemingly not to manyconservationists, humanity is part ofnature, not something that it is possibleto isolate from nature. We need tomove away from seeing naturalresources as scarce commodities to becontrolled by the most powerful and

follow the Yaka lead to realise thatnature can be an abundant providerand home for all creatures if we sharewhatever we take properly, and behavewith consideration and respect to eachother, and the planet that we all dependupon. This is the real challenge facingus all in the 21st century. �

ReferencesFor a full list of references, see www.radicalanthropology.org/journal.htm

Notes1. Field research was undertaken in theNorthern Republic of Congo, in 1994-1997,with generous support from the Wenner-GrenFoundation for Anthropological Research, anEmslie Horniman Anthropological Scholarshipand a Swan Fund Scholarship. I am grateful foran Alfred Gell Memorial Scholarship. Annualvisits have been made since 2000.2. Mbendjele claim shared ancestry with otherforest hunter-gatherer groups in the region suchas the Baka, Mikaya, Luma or Gyeli. All thesegroups are called Ba.Yaka (Ba’aka) people bythe Mbendjele. The academic name for thesediverse groups is ‘Pygmies’. The term can beobjectionable outside this context.3. The Yaka term ‘Bilo’ refers to any non-Yaka,village-dwelling African people who live nearYaka people. Although growing urban popula-tions are also called Bilo, typical Bilo are villagedwelling, agriculturalists, and fishing or trappingpeoples, who speak Bantu or Ubangian languages.4. Woodburn 1998.5. Lewis 2002 elaborates on this in Yakasociety. Gender relations in immediate-returnhunting and gathering societies are the mostegalitarian anthropologists have observed(Endicott and Endicott 2006, Woodburn 1982).6. The Yaka describe Bilo village people as recentarrivals to the forest who discriminate againstthem, attempt to exploit them, claim rights overtheir land and labour, and make aggressiveclaims to own farmland, rivers, forest and evenother people. Yaka elders often emphasised thatit is their transience that makes Bilo claimsvacuous and therefore not to be taken tooseriously. Rural migration to urban centres is thelatest migratory movement of the Bilo. Currently80% of Congo’s population lives in two cities.7. Ekila is a fascinating cultural category that Idiscuss in Lewis 2008 and 2002: 103-120.8. Forest Stewardship Council certification iswidely considered the least controversial criteriafor establishing sustainable forestry practices.9. Forest Monitor 2001 provides examples.10. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/forests.cfm?ucidparam=2004120114353811. In northern Congo in the mid-1990smembers of the local elite were responsible fororganising some of the most damagingenvironmental practices. These included large-scale elephant massacres using high poweredmilitary machine guns (the remains of over 300corpses were found in one forest clearing in1997), large-scale wood theft from loggingcompanies and the extensive clearance of forestfor commercial plantations and farms.Anecdotal evidence of extensive poaching beingorganised by the highest political powerscontinues to emerge.

ReferencesBann, Camille.2000 An Economic Analysis of

Tropical Forest Land UseOptions, Ratanakiri Province,Cambodia, InternationalDevelopment Research Centre,Ottawa, Canada.

Bird-David, Nurit H.1990 ‘The Giving Environment:

Another Perspective on theEconomic System of Gatherer-Hunters’. Current Anthropology31 (2): 189-196.

1992 ‘Beyond “The Original AffluentSociety”. A CulturalistReformulation’. CurrentAnthropology 33 (1): 25-47.Barume, Kwokwo.

2000.Heading Towards Extinction?Indigenous Rights in Africa: Thecase of the Twa of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, DemocraticRepublic of Congo. IWGIADocument No. 101,Copenhagen: IWGIA/ ForestPeoples Programme.

Bayart, Jean-Francois.1993 The State in Africa: the politics of

the belly. Longman: London.

Chadwick, Douglas.1993 ‘Ndoki, Last Place on Earth.’ In

National Geographic, July 1995,188, 1: 2-45.

Endicott, Karen and Kirk Endicott.2006 The Headman was a Woman.

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control transnational forestrycorporations: a European casestudy. Cambridge: ForestsMonitor.

Ghazi, Polly.1992 ‘Congo’s rainforest threatened by

World Bank loans’,Observer,26.1.92.

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Forest Initiative (CAWHFI). Aworking draft project proposalfor the CAWHFI partnersconsultation workshop (25February – 1 March 2002). Paris:UNESCO.

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Congress: resolutions andrecommendations. Gland: IUCN.

Köhler, Axel and Jerome Lewis.2002 ‘Putting hunter-gatherer and

farmer relations in perspective. Acommentary from CentralAfrica’. In Ethnicity, hunter-gatherers, and the "other":Association or Assimilation inSouthern Africa? Susan Kent(ed.). Washington: SmithsonianInstitute.

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Region. London: Minority RightsGroup.

2002 Forest Hunter-Gatherers andTheir World: A Study of theMbendjele Yaka Pygmies ofCongo-Brazzaville and TheirSecular and Religious Activitiesand Representations. PhD Thesis:University of London. 2002.Available at:http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/pub_lewisthesisfull.pdf.

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peoples’ resources, and theirenvironments? Indigenous Affairs4/06: 8-15.

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1998 “Sharing is not a form ofexchange”: an analysis ofproperty sharing in immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies,in C.M. Hann ed., PropertyRelations: Renewing theAnthropological Tradition,Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, pp. 48-63.

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Radical Anthropology: It’s unusual onthe left to work explicitly, as you do,with a concept of geneticallydetermined human nature. Manysuspect the idea must set limits on ourability to change the world and alsochange ourselves in the process. So,let’s start by asking, what exactly doyou mean by ‘human nature’?

Noam Chomsky: It is consideredunusual, but I think that is a mistake.Peter Kropotkin was surely on the left.He was one of the founders of what isnow called ‘sociobiology’ or‘evolutionary psychology’ with hisbook Mutual Aid, arguing that humannature had evolved in ways conduciveto the communitarian anarchism thathe espoused. Marx’s early manuscripts,with their roots in the Enlightenmentand Romanticism, derivedfundamental concepts such asalienation from a conception of humannature – what we would callgenetically determined. In fact, anyonewho merits attention and whopromotes any cause at all is doing soon the basis of a belief that it issomehow good for humans, because oftheir inherent nature.

To object that the facts about humannature set limits on our ability tochange the world and ourselves makesabout as much sense as the lament thatour lack of wings sets limits on ourability to ‘fly’ as far as eagles under ourown power. There is nothing moremysterious about the concept humannature than about the concept bee orchicken nature, at least for those whoregard humans as creatures in thebiological world. Like other organisms,humans have a certain geneticendowment (apparently varying littlein the species, not a surpriseconsidering its recent separation fromother hominids). That determines whatwe call their nature.

RA: We agree! We would also insist onthe importance of anthropology, in

order to be sure that the concept of‘human nature’ we’re working withcaptures the diversity of humanexperience. Your work on linguistics,on the other hand, deliberately set outin isolation from anthropology and thesocial sciences. Why? Do you stillconsider that separation necessary?

Chomsky: The idea of a ‘separation’ isan interesting myth. It might be worthinvestigating its origins. The facts arequite the opposite. Some of the earliestwork in our programme at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT), back to the 1950s, was onnative American languages (Hidatsa,Mohawk, Menomini). Later, with KenHale’s appointment 40 years ago, thedepartment became one of the worldcentres of research in Australian andnative American languages, soon afterothers, worldwide. That engagedfaculty and students in issues of landrights, endangered languages andcultures, cultural wealth, educationaland cultural programmes in indigenouscommunities (run mainly by MITgraduates brought here from indigen-ous communities), the spectacularrevival of Wampanoag as a spokenlanguage after 100 years (mainly thework of Hale and Jesse Little Doe),stimulating cultural revival as well, andmuch else. And of course all of thisinteracting closely with theoreticalwork, contributing to it and drawingfrom it. Where is the separation?

RA: But you have always insisted,haven’t you, on the difference betweennatural and social science? Is linguisticsa social or natural science? Or has theprogress of linguistics as a scienceblurred any meaningful boundarybetween the two?

Chomsky: I have never suggested anyprincipled difference between thenatural and social sciences. There are,of course, differences between physicsand sociology. Physics deals withsystems that are simple enough so that

it is possible, sometimes, to achievedeep results, though leaving manypuzzles; I just happened to read anarticle posted on physicsworld.com onthe basic unsolved problems aboutformation of snow crystals. It’s roughlythe case that if systems become toocomplex to study in sufficient depth,physics hands them over to chemistry,then to biology, then experimentalpsychology, and finally on to history.Roughly. These are tendencies, andthey tend to distinguish roughlybetween hard and soft sciences.

RA: OK, let’s consider yourcontribution to the science oflinguistics. First it might be worthreminding our non-specialist readerswhere it all began. Your work onlanguage started with a critique of thethen-prevailing view that children hadto learn their natal language. Youinsisted instead that it was an innatepart of our brain. In other words,humans no more have to learnlanguage than we have to teach ourstomachs how to digest. How did youcome to this conclusion? And how canwe know whether it’s true?

Chomsky: I cannot respond to thequestions, because I do not understandthem. Plainly, children learn theirlanguage. I don’t speak Swahili. And itcannot be that my language is ‘aninnate property of our brain.’Otherwise I would have beengenetically programmed to speak(some variety of) English. However,some innate capacity – some part ofthe human genetic endowment – entersinto language acquisition. That muchis uncontroversial among those whobelieve that humans are part of thenatural world. If it were not true, it

Human nature and the origins of language

Noam Chomsky is instituteprofessor and professor oflinguistics (emeritus) at theMassachusetts Institute ofTechnology.

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky ranks among the leading intellectual figures of modern times and has changed theway we think about what it means to be human, revolutionising linguistics and establishing it as amodern science. He agreed to discuss just some of his ideas with Radical Anthropology.


would be a miracle that mygranddaughter reflexively identifiedsome elements of the blooming buzzingconfusion as language-related and wenton to acquire capacities of the kindthat you and I are now exercising,while her pet kitten (chimp, songbird,bee…), presented with exactly the samedata, could not take the first step, letalone the later ones. Andcorrespondingly she could not acquiretheir capacities. There is also aquestion about whether mygranddaughter’s achievement fallsunder the technical concepts oflearning developed in one or anotherbranch of psychology, or whether theyare more properly subsumed undergeneral theories of growth anddevelopment. About these mattersthere are real questions and legitimatecontroversy: What is the nature of thegenetic endowment? How doesacquisition proceed? Etc. Scientists doroutinely ask similar questions aboutthe visual system, system of motororganisation, and others – including, infact, the digestive system.

RA: Point taken! But aren’t what youterm ‘external’ languages such asSwahili of secondary interest from ascientific point of view, since languageas you define it is basically for internalcognition, not social communication?It’s surely central to your position thatyou don’t need Swahili or any otherexternal language just to think logicallyand clearly? A second point is thatmost of us take for granted that innatehuman capacities such as vision ordigestion evolved gradually, throughwhat Darwin termed ‘descent withmodification’. Your argument thatlanguage emerged in an ancestralindividual in an instant – before anyexternal language could have existed –suggests that we are talking about anentirely different kind of thing?

Chomsky: I would not say that Swahiliis an ‘E(xternal) language’. I don’t evenunderstand what that means. In fact, Iknow of no characterisation of E-language. I introduced the term, butdidn’t define it, except as a cover termfor any conception of language otherthan I-language. Without anexplanation of what you mean bySwahili (apparently, something otherthan the similar I-languages ofindividual speakers), I can’t answer thequestion whether it is of secondary or

primary (or no) interest. I do not agreethat I-language is “basically forinternal cognition, not socialcommunication.” It is surely used forboth, and it’s not “for” anything, anymore than hands are “for” typing onthe computer, as I’m now doing.

It’s a mistake to suppose that capacitiesmust evolve gradually. There are manyknown examples of sharp changes –slight genetic modification that yieldssubstantial phenotypic effects, andmuch else. By coincidence, I was justlooking at an article in Science on the‘Avalon explosion’, which appears tobe one of many examples of anexplosion of forms without gradualselection. But it really doesn’t matter inthe present context. The humandigestive and visual systems did clearlyevolve over a very long period.Language as far as we know did not.Anatomically modern humans arefound up to 200,000 years ago;behaviourally modern humans appearvery recently in evolutionary time, asfar as evidence now exists, perhapswithin a window of 50-100,000 yearsago, a flick of an eye in evolutionarytime. That’s why palaeoanthropologistIan Tattersall regards humanintelligence generally as an “emergentquality”, not “a product of Nature’spatient and gradual engineering overthe eons.”

I did not say that language as a com-pleted system emerged in an individualin an instant. But I cannot think of acoherent alternative to the idea thatmutations take place in individuals,not communities, so that whateverrewiring of the brain yielded theapparently unique properties oflanguage, specifically recursive gener-ation of hierarchically structuredexpressions, would therefore havetaken place in an individual, and onlylater been used among individuals whohad inherited this capacity.

RA: Sure, evolution proceeds throughthe selection of chance mutations thatarise in individuals. But is therenothing we can say about the terms ofselection? Nothing about why a chancemutation for language might haveincreased in frequency in thepopulation? Fingers surely evolved forsomething, after all – even if not fortyping e-mails! To be sure we’veunderstood you here: you say that

communication is a possible functionof language but that it’s just oneamong many possible functions, henceof no special relevance either to thenature of language or its origins?

Chomsky: At the Alice V. and David H.Morris Symposium on the Evolution ofLanguage held at Stony BrookUniversity in October 2005 (andelsewhere), I quoted evolutionarybiologists Salvador Luria and FrancoisJacob, both Nobel Laureates, asexpressing the view that communicativeneeds would not have provided “anygreat selective pressure to produce asystem such as language,” with itscrucial relation to “development ofabstract or productive thinking”; “therole of language as a communicationsystem between individuals would havecome about only secondarily… Thequality of language that makes itunique does not seem to be so much itsrole in communicating directives foraction” or other common features ofanimal communication, but rather “itsrole in symbolizing, in evoking cogni-tive images,” in “molding” our notionof reality and yielding our capacity forthought and planning, through itsproperty of allowing infinite combin-ations of symbols” and therefore“mental creation of possible worlds.”

There is good reason to believe thatthey are right, in part for reasons Imentioned in the passage to which youare referring. If the rewiring of thebrain that yielded recursive generationof hierarchically structured expressionstook place in an individual, not agroup (and there seems to be nocoherent alternative), then interactionmust have been a later phenomenon.Language would have evolved first asan internal object, a kind of “languageof thought” (LOT), withexternalisation (hence communication)an ancillary process. I can’t review herethe strong and growing evidence tosupport this conclusion, but I haveelsewhere. There are ample reasonswhy having a LOT would conferselectional advantage: the person soendowed could plan, interpret, reflect,etc., in ways denied to others. If thatadvantage is partially transmitted todescendants, at some later stage therewould be opportunity forcommunication, and motivation todevelop a means of externalising theinternal LOT – a process that might


not involve evolution at all; perhaps itwas a matter of problem solving usingavailable cognitive mechanisms. Thisis, of course, speculation, like all talkabout the evolution of language. But itis the minimal assumption, and I thinkenters in some way into all suchspeculations, even if tacitly. Theconclusion, quite plausible I think, isthat while language can surely be usedfor communication (as can much else),communication probably has nospecial role in its design or evolution.

As for organs, traits, etc., being “for”something, the notion may be a usefulshorthand, but shouldn’t be taken tooseriously, if only because of theubiquitous phenomenon of exaptation.Suppose that insect wings developedprimarily as thermoregulators and thenwere used for skimming and finallyflying, evolving along the way. Whatwould they be “for”? Or what is theskeleton “for”? For keeping oneupright, protecting organs, storingcalcium, making blood cells…? Aproperty of an organism enters into itslife (and survival) in many differentways, some more salient than others.But there is no simple notion of itsbeing “for” some function.

RA: At the conference you mention,you also talked about ‘the great leapforward’ – the ‘human revolution’, asmany have called it. It’s fair to say, wethink, that most Darwinian theoristswould regard the social dimensions ofthis major transition as having played adecisive role. We are thinking, forexample, of the late John MaynardSmith, who linked the emergence oflanguage with the earliest socialcontracts – an idea harking back toRousseau. How does your originsscenario fit with approaches of thissocial and political kind? Darwiniansdon’t take cooperation for granted.Can you say anything about the socio-political conditions which might havedriven our ancestors to start talkingand listening to one another?

Chomsky: I should make it clear thatthe term ‘great leap forward,’ referringto the burst of creative activity, suddenin evolutionary time, was not mine. It’sJared Diamond’s. It’s commonlyassumed that the emergence oflanguage was a key element of thegreat leap. We of course know verylittle about the sociopolitical

conditions that existed at the time, butthere’s no scenario I can think of thatsuggests how a sudden change in theseconditions could have led to theemergence of language. The onlyplausible assumption I have ever heard,and I suspect the only one that wouldbe taken seriously by evolutionarybiologists, is that some rewiring of thebrain, perhaps the result of some slightmodification in the functioning ofregulatory circuits, provided the basisfor this new capacity.

The simplest assumption – whichappears to be implicit in all of the morecomplex ones that have been proposed– is that the rewriting yielded ‘Merge’,the simplest recursive function, whichinstantaneously made available aninfinite array of structured expressionsgenerated from whatever conceptual‘atoms’ are available. That yields, ineffect, an internal I-language, a‘language of thought,’ providingobvious advantages to the person soendowed. If the mutation is partiallytransmitted to offspring, they toowould have the advantage. And overtime it might have come to dominate asmall breeding group. At that stagethere becomes a motivation toexternalise the I-language, that is, tomap the internal objects generated tothe sensori-motor system, yielding whatwe think of as language – the externalexpressions we are exchanging now, forexample. That mapping is quite non-trivial, and the problem of how toconstruct it can be solved in manydifferent ways. It is in these ancillaryprocesses that languages differ widely,and in which the mass of complexity oflanguage resides. It’s not at all clear thatthis is, technically, a step in theevolution of language. It might havebeen just a matter of problem-solving,using existing cognitive capacities.

The secondary step of externalisationevidently took place under existingsociopolitical conditions, and probablyprofoundly changed them. Beyondthat, evidence is thin. I do not see hownotions of social contract might playmore than a superficial role. Scientistsgenerally, not just evolutionarybiologists, don’t take much for granted.But there isn’t much doubt that likeother animal societies, those of Homosapiens involved plenty of cooperation,which might have been considerablyenhanced, one would suppose, by the

emergence of the remarkableinstrument of language.

RA: Would you agree that scienceinvolves restricting our speculativehypotheses to those that can be testedagainst empirical data? We are notclear in what sense the speculation youhave just offered us is testable.Presumably we should expect to findrecursion playing a central role in everyknown language – not just in thelanguage of thought but in language asactually spoken. It seems that this isn’tthe case. Some linguists have claimedthat the language of the Piraha, forexample, almost entirely lacksrecursion and for that reason presentsa challenge to your theory. Does it?

Chomsky: Don’t quite understand thefirst question. Which speculation doyou have in mind?

As for the Piraha, there’s a commonconfusion between recursion andembedding. Everett claimed that Pirahalacks embedding. Others challenge thatclaim (since his examples of Pirahalanguage appear to me to haveexamples of relative clauses embeddedin phrases, I don’t know what Everettmeans by embedding). But I haven’tseen any claim that Piraha lacksrecursion, that is, that there are a finitenumber of sentences or sentenceframes. If that’s so, it would mean thatthe speakers of this language aren’tmaking use of a capacity that theysurely have, a normal situation; plentyof people throughout history woulddrown if they fall into water. Nothingmuch follows except for a question asto why they haven’t made use of thesecapacities (a question independent ofEverett’s assumptions about theculture). No one seriously doubts that ifPiraha children are brought up inBoston they’ll be speaking BostonEnglish, that is, that the capacities arepresent, unlike other animals, as far asis known. There’s no challenge to thetheory – not mine, but everyone’s – thatthe human language faculty providesthe means for generation of an infinitearray of structured expressions.

RA: We had in mind your wholespeculative origins scenario. How doesit stand up to what we know aboutprimate politics and cognition? Thehypothesised behavioural ecology ofour hominin ancestors? The laws of


evolution of animal signals? Does it sayanything testable in the light offindings from these arguably relevantfields, or in the light of archaeologicaldata? And so on…

Chomsky: You’ll have to explain to mewhat you mean by my ‘speculativeorigins scenario’. In particular, can youidentify what I’ve written about thisthat is even controversial enough torequire empirical test? Or is it notperfectly consistent with what isknown about our ancestors? Or, forthat matter, what is not accepted,tacitly, by everyone who has had aword to say on this topic?

RA: It is a refreshingly bold “just-so”story for the evolutionary emergence oflanguage. It’s certainly parsimoniousand has a kind of logic on its side, buthow could we discriminate betweenyour story and any other? ModernDarwinism provides us with ways toturn a just-so story into a testableproposition – by modelling the costsand benefits of proposed adaptivebehaviours, for example. To count asscientific, a hypothesis surely has to betestable. Can you specify just one ortwo experimental results orarchaeological finds or anything elsethat might in principle pose a problemfor your hypothesis of instantaneouslanguage evolution?

Chomsky: I’m afraid I am still puzzled.The question I raised remainsunanswered, and as long as this is so, Ido not really understand what you areasking. If it is true that what I havesuggested is not even controversialenough to require empirical test, isperfectly consistent with what isknown about our ancestors, and isaccepted, tacitly, by everyone who hasa word to say on this topic, then I donot see how the question you areposing arises. So I cannot proceed untilyou indicate to me in what respectsthat judgment is incorrect.

I have not suggested that theemergence of language isinstantaneous. Rather, that therewiring of the brain enabling aninfinite array of structured expressionswas in effect instantaneous. I havenever heard of an alternative to thissuggestion. That leaves plenty ofquestions, among them, the question towhat extent the internal computational

system that arises is a “perfectsolution” to conditions imposed by theCI (conceptual-intentional) interface(hence in effect also instantaneous),and the question how the internalsyntax-semantics is externalised, a laterprocess virtually by definition, and onethat might not even involve evolutionin the sense of genomic change.

RA: Let’s try to summarise yourargument so the point we’re driving atcan be made clearer. Althoughlanguage in a broad sense relies onvarious evolved structures andmechanisms, and although languagecan be used for communication, thecrucial step that gave our species thelanguage faculty was a chance rewiringof the brain. This genetic eventinstantly gave rise to a computationalmechanism for recursion – somethingunique to humans, and perhapsoriginally nothing to do with language.Perhaps it evolved as an adaptation for,say, navigation, this mechanismsubsequently being exapted forlanguage. In your 2002 Science articleco-authored with Marc Hauser andTecumseh Fitch, you describe all this asa “tentative, testable hypothesis inneed of further empiricalinvestigation”. Our previous questionswere merely inviting you to clarify forour readers what some of these testsmight look like. What kind ofexperimental or observational resultsmight pose a problem for the theory?

We’re taken aback by your claim thatevery serious scholar agrees with youon these points. Our own impression isthat virtually every scholar vehementlydisagrees! Ray Jackendoff and StevenPinker come to mind. We are notinterested, for the moment, in whetherthe truth lies more with you or morewith Pinker and Jackendoff. If we areto have a Darwinian account of theemergence of language, we surely needto ask what might have been theselection pressures that gave rise to it inhumans but in no other animal? Pinkerargues that the explanation is socialcooperation, explaining this in turn byinvoking kin selection and reciprocalaltruism. But these are widelyapplicable Darwinian principles, by nomeans restricted to Homo sapiens. Sowhy didn’t apes evolve language? Orsomething a bit like language? Wereour hominin ancestors particularly co-operative? Which ones and when? Is

there any archaeological evidence, forexample, that our ancestors of four orfive millions of years ago were gettingespecially co-operative? What socio-ecological factors might have driventhis? And so on. This has turned into alonger than usual question, but thereason we’re interested in these kindsof issues – and why we’re interested inthe fact that you seem to ignore ordownplay them – is that they haveobvious political dimensions. Whatecological and social conditions, forexample, are conducive tocommunistic co-operation? Or iseverything we need to know to befound in the computational mechan-isms of individual human brains?

Chomsky: You say you’re “takenaback by your claim that every seriousscholar agrees with you on thesepoints,” namely the points I’ve actuallymade. As far as I am aware, that istrue. Pinker and Jackendoff, forexample, tacitly pressuppose thesepoints. Of course they disagree withviews that they’ve attributed to me. Butthat was not my question: to repeat,what is controversial in what I’veactually said and written?

There’s no “hypothesis” in the paper Ico-authored with Hauser and Fitchabout recursion in language being anexaptation from deeper capacities,maybe used in navigation. Rather, that’sproposed as a possibility that could beexplored, and tested. It’s easy to seehow it could be explored: e.g., bystudying these processes in differentsystems and looking for commonalities,differences, appearance at various timesof evolution, the usual approaches ofthe comparative method; obviouslypremature in this case, because notenough is known. There are plenty ofhypotheses discussed, and there aremasses of empirical evidence testingthem, but they are about the nature ofthe system that evolved – obviously aprerequisite to study of its evolution.

So I’m back to where I was. Unless youcan identify some thesis that iscontroversial, and that isn’t accepted,at least tacitly, in all speculations aboutlanguage evolution that can be takenseriously, I can’t respond to the queries.

RA: OK, we take your point, but we’retrying to get you to talk about someinteresting issues in evolutionary


science. The popular science writerMarek Kohn describes well what Imean in his chapter on trust in hisbook As We Know It. Kohn quotesanthropologist Chris Knight as sayingthat “Darwinian theory shows thatcheating is likely to result in higherfitness than co-operating – and thegreater the rewards of co-operation,the greater the unearned benefits to thefreeloader. Any theory of how lan-guage, symbolism or culture originatedhas to show how a system based oncooperative agreement could havedeveloped without being destabilised atany stage by the pursuit of individualinterests.” What do you think of this?

Chomsky: I don’t see the force of theclaim. For one thing, evolutionarytheory has nothing to say, in general, asto whether cheating is more advantag-eous than cooperating. There are manycircumstances in which the contrarywould be true, and empirical evidence,though it exists, has little bearing onreal situations. For another, there’s noneed (or way) to establish what Knightdemands. One might just as well arguethat language differentiation resultsfrom pursuit of group interests, likeother kinds of cultural variety. Andindividual interests are beside the point.Furthermore all such matters (evenmapping of I-language to the sensori-motor system) may have nothing to dowith evolution in the biological sense.

RA: The question is under whatcircumstances is the sharing of valuableinformation with non-kin using acheap signalling system like languagean evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS)?In all other species, a signal must becostly to be seen by the signal receiveras reliable in situations of conflict. Butif you don’t accept that language is anadaptation or arose in a Darwinian,biological world, then you need notsubmit to the constraints posed byselfish-gene theory. Is that why youdon’t see the force of these arguments?

Chomsky: Selfish-gene theory tells usnothing about the value of interactingthrough language. Human language isnothing like the signalling systems ofother animals. Of course languagearose in a Darwinian biological world,because that’s all there is, but thatworld relates only superficially to thepop-biology that circulates informally.RA: OK, let’s move on. Our activist

readership will be interested to knowwhat they can do with your ideas.Frederick Engels once wrote, “Themore ruthlessly and disinterestedlyscience proceeds, the more it finds itselfin harmony with the interests of theworkers.” That’s quite an inspiringidea. Revolutionaries need no ideology,he is saying – only science, conducteddispassionately for its own sake. Arewe right in saying that you don’tencourage socialists or anarchists toview science – or at any rate, your ownlinguistic science – as having potentialin that political sense?

Chomsky: I don’t encourage socialistsor anarchists to accept falsehoods, inparticular, to see revolutionarypotential where there is none. AntonPannekoek didn’t encourage radicalworkers and other activists of the anti-Bolshevik left to see revolutionarypotential in his work in astronomy, forthe simple reason that he was honest,and knew there was none to speak of.The shred of truth that can beextracted from the remark of Engelsthat you cite (which I don’t recognise)is that those who wish to change theworld should have the best possibleunderstanding of the world, includingwhat is revealed by the sciences, someof which they might be able to use fortheir purposes. That’s why workerseducation, including science andmathematics, has commonly been aconcern of left intellectuals.

RA: But do you think the scientificcommunity should get collectively self-organised and consciously activist?Let’s take the example of climatechange. Is astronomy entirelyunconnected with the task offamiliarising ourselves with the bigpicture here? With the origins of life onearth, with the reasons why we havelife on earth in the first place and withcomprehending why capitalism mightbe ultimately inconsistent with Earth’sfuture as a habitable planet? AntonPannekoek may, rightly or wrongly,not have seen the revolutionarypotential of his astronomy, but hecertainly linked his scientific outlookwith his politics – in politicalpamphlets on Darwinism and humanorigins, for example. Might we yet seea pamphlet by Noam Chomsky, linkingyour scientific and your politicalthinking for a popular audience?Chomsky: I am reasonably familiar

with Pannekoek’s writings, and do notrecall his drawing conclusions abouthis political stands from his work onastronomy, nor do I see how one coulddo so. Nor why it should be a demand– no sane human being devotes 100%of his or her life to political activism.

If scientists and scholars were tobecome “collectively self-organised andconsciously activist” today, they wouldprobably devote themselves to serviceto state and private power. Those whohave different goals should (and do)become organized and activist. All thequestions you raise merit inquiry andattention, and if there are lessons to bedrawn from the sciences, then thatshould be the concern of everyone,including scientists to the extent thatthey can make a contribution. Onecontribution they can and should makeis to be clear and explicit about thelimits of scientific understanding, amatter that is particularly important insocieties where people are trained todefer to alleged experts. I have writtenoccasionally on links between myscientific work and political thinking,but not much, because the links seemto me abstract and speculative. Othersbelieve the links to be closer, and havewritten more about them (CarlosOtero, James McGilvray, Neil Smith,and others). If I can be convinced thatthe links are significant, I’ll be happy towrite about them.

RA: We have mostly talked about theevolution of language, but you areperhaps most famous for your politicalstand. It is understandable that yourpolitical work should attract hostilecriticism – material interests are atstake. What can seem more puzzling iswhy arcane academic debates, morefittingly subject to disinterested inquirythan political polemic, can provokeequally impassioned criticism. Why isthis, do you think?

Chomsky: It should seem puzzling, toprofessionals as well. I have seen manyillustrations over the years, and they goback quite far in history. Sometimespeople are “defending their turf.”Sometimes it is personal jealousies. Iknow of cases that are really depraved.Academics are not necessarily nicepeople. And one might mention aremark attributed to Henry Kissinger:the reason academic disputes are sovicious is that so little is at stake. �

Radical Anthropology: How and whydid you get interested in prehistoricmonuments and Stonehenge?

Lionel Sims: I was not interested inprehistoric monuments or Stonehengeat all until around 1989/90, when Ibecame involved in a debate within theBritish left defending Friedrich Engels’claim, outlined in his book The Originof the Family, Private Property and theState, that humans are a revolutionaryspecies, and that the oppression ofwomen was a late development inhistory. This debate sparked suchvitriol that I realised there must be bigstuff behind it. The majority wasagainst me in the debate, but I was notat all convinced by the confused andangry counter-arguments.

Rather than give up, I decided topursue the matter in my personalresearch. My intention was to open upthe debate in the light of recentresearch in anthropology and thenatural sciences, and use whateverfindings came up to strengthen themarxist case first set out by Engels.I knew this would be a long haul, butalso knew that nobody else was doingit, and I felt that I was well placed.In particular, I was a member of theRadical Anthropology Group (RAG),which was a great support andsounding board. Secondly, I enrolledon a Masters course at UniversityCollege London (UCL) inanthropology, and attended classes in

archaeology led by Chris Tilley.Thirdly, I started contributing to whatwas then the annual RAG day-trip tothe Avebury monuments. The trip washilarious: none of us had a clue whatthe monuments were, but just knewthey had to be something to do withthe collapse of hunting cultures and insome way were a memory of ourancient origins. So when anybodyasked, ‘What is Silbury Hill?’, orAvebury circle, or Stonehenge, therepeated reply was – ‘We don’t know’.My research came out of bothattempting to defend Engels and tolessen the embarrassment of alwayssaying ‘We don’t know’.

RA: It seems that that is still theofficial answer when archaeologists areasked what Stonehenge is! Not only dowe not know, we can’t know, they say.To the layman, then, the choice isbetween official scepticism and aninfinite array of mystical answers.How did you approach the question?

LS: The quick answer is: with science!The second answer is: the officialarchaeology response that we can’tknow is only for those outside theircircles. They now say they can comeup with an answer – Mike Parker-Pearson has come up with ‘monumentsfor the living’ (Durrington Wallsmonument) and ‘monuments for thedead’ (Stonehenge), and his theoryrecently reached a wider audiencethrough New Scientist magazine. It isinteresting that to make this argumentParker-Pearson has had to engage witharchaeoastronomy. This is a big shiftfor British archaeology.

Returning to the main question –science can investigate what is notdirectly observable. In fact, all ofscience is about finding the indirect

unobserved ‘reality’ behind the directlyobserved ‘reality’. Just because we haveno written records from prehistory doesnot mean we can’t test theories ofprehistory and reject some of them. Forexample, John North showed in 1996that Stonehenge cannot be aligned onsummer solstice sunrise, but does haveone main alignment on winter solsticesunset. That therefore excludes anytheory which requires a ritual timed forthe start of the longest, possiblybrightest, day. Another theory suggeststhat Stonehenge is an astronomical‘computer’ designed to predict eclipses(Gerald Hawkins). I was initiallyimpressed with this claim since itseemed to be congenial to a culture thatrespects the lunar scheduling of ritual –the eclipse of full moon would bedisastrous for a lunar-scheduled ritualsystem (Chinese priests in the past wereexecuted if they failed to predict one!)and therefore it would be powerfulknowledge to have. To test this theory Ihad to learn astronomy – about which Iknew zero when I started. After twoyears of study I realised Stonehengecould not possibly be designed topredict eclipses, but was designed topredictably avoid them!

Therefore the method of science allowsus to reject some theories and narrowthe range of possible explanations formonuments like Stonehenge. Anyinterpretation that can’t be tested, suchas mystical answers, I have no time for.Or rather, they tell us something aboutthe teller, but usually very little aboutthe object of the telling. Further, if wecan mobilise a range of differentmethodologies, in combination thenumber of theories they allow us toreject grows exponentially. Therefore, Istarted with a marxist method inanthropology, archaeology andarchaeoastronomy. If I come up with a

Stonehenge: monument ofcounter-revolution

Radical Anthropology

Lionel Sims is an anthropologistat the University of EastLondon, a member of theEuropean Society for Astronomyin Culture (SEAC) and theStonehenge Round Table Group.

24

Lionel Sims

Stonehenge has long been a fascination and a mystery. What were the monument builders doing?What was it all for? Recent archaeological digs raised hopes that we might finally get someanswers. The diggers need to start looking up, not down, argues Lionel Sims

hypothesis from any one of thesedisciplines, I then test it out withanother. If it checks out, my hypothesisgrows in confidence. In the last tenyears this has been my finding – eachtime I move over to anothermethodology, the initial hypothesis isconfirmed and therefore strengthened.A few years ago I was at a conferencein Sardinia and a man I met there,Marco, convinced me to read Indo-European myths. I was astonished tofind that a team of researchers atChicago University have reconstructedthe root myths that can be dated toabout the time of Stonehenge, and theyconfirm in details I would never haveimagined the findings of the previousmethodologies I have used.

RA: We’ll come back to those myths!But for now, let’s stay with themonument itself. Contrary to Parker-Pearson, you call Stonehenge a‘monument of counter-revolution’.First, tell us what revolution andcounter-revolution you are talkingabout. Stonehenge was built by settledNeolithic farmers, wasn’t it?

LS: Like Engels I believe that wehumans are a revolutionary species.Our hunter-gatherer ancestorsoverthrew primate jealousy andselfishness and established a mode ofproduction through the revolutionarycreation of matrilineal/matrilocalclans. The solidarity of classificatorybrothers and sisters, what Morganand Engels called ‘the gens’, was theorganisational heart of the firstcommunist society. Chris Knight, aprofessor of anthropology at theUniversity of East London, andothers, have made this claimscientifically respectable on the basisof modern scientific methods.

However, that theory, sex-strike theory,has a number of assumptions for it towork. The main one is a materialistassumption – that there are plenty ofbig game animals for launching apredictably successful, monthly biggame hunt. Now, that assumptioncannot be true by at least ten thousandyears ago, if not much earlier. Many ofthe big game animals died out by then,and much of the grasslands of theworld disappeared under forests –which have a much lower biomassthan grasslands. All I asked is – whatwould we predict the hunters would

have done? All we do is test out theavailable alternatives – they could havebeen conservative, and carried onhunting, or they innovated. To carryon hunting in the old way meantdispersing into smaller, more scattered,more mobile groups and, perhaps,coming back together again once ortwice a year. This is what happenedover most of the world in a period wecall in British archaeology theMesolithic. If they innovated therewere two main ways to do so – becomecomplex hunters who ‘farmed’salmon/cod from the sea and rivers (forexample), or become ‘farmers’.

Up until 20 years ago, it was the‘farming revolution’ theory that heldsway. Archaeologists assumed that thehunter-gatherer precursors of farmerswere irrelevant since “nothing muchhappened” (as archaeologist ColinRenfrew put it) until the farming of theNeolithic. We now know that the first‘farmers’ who built Stonehenge (andAvebury, and so on) weren’t settledfarmers at all, but cattle herders whostill hunted, occasionally planted andwere not living in settled villages butwere still ‘nomadic’, ie, they preservedas much of their earlier hunter-gathererlifestyle as possible. This has beenestablished by the last two decades ofresearch in archaeology, and is foundto be true for much of the world.Intensive, sedentary farming wasresisted as much as possible by all thepeople of the world. It was only underthe most pressing circumstances that itwas adopted.

The key to this, I am sure, wassexual/economic politics. In a huntingsociety, a man only earns sexual rights,marriage, in return for hunting servicesto his wife and in-laws. This is calledbride-service. Once domestic cattlehave been adopted, they are not usedfor food, but for purchasing wives.Then a man can approach anotherman who has a daughter, and insteadof promising a life-time of hunting henow bargains to purchase a wife inperpetuity for a once-for-all paymentof a number of cattle. This is calledbride-price. Now look at thisarrangement from the point of view ofthe bartered woman. What if shedoesn’t like her new husband? What ifshe complains to her brother(s) or hermother(s) that he is not a nice man?What will they say? Go back to him,

they will say. Do you think we aregoing to return his cattle? How will weget a wife/children if we return hiscattle? Now brother/sister solidarityhas broken down, patrilineal/patrilocalclans become the organisational heartof a society increasingly stratified bydegrees of cattle wealth and warringcattle-raiders. One way to keep suchgroups from falling apart from internalcompetition is to build monuments.

I’m no stone-hugger. These monumentswere labour-intensive structures to testthe loyalty of groups with the need toatone for the crime of women’soppression. That’s a counter-revolution.

RA: If the solution to the puzzle ofStonehenge can be found in sucheveryday, earthly matters as trade andmarriage, why are so many peopleconvinced that the builders werelooking at the stars? Were they? Andhow do we know either way?

LS: Most archaeologists would still saythat Stonehenge has no ‘astronomy’.However, there is no other explanationfor the accurate alignments on wintersolstice sunset from the right hand sideof the Heel Stone through the gap inthe grand trilithon or on the southernminor standstill moonsets from the lefthand side of the Heel Stone through theupper gap. (To make sense of this andof much that follows, we recommendyou go to www.stonehenge3d.co.uk.)In my article in the CambridgeArchaeological Journal in 2006(available at www.radicalanthropologygroup.org), I identified 27 or so otherproperties that were consistent withthis lunar-solar double alignment. Mypoint to archaeology was: if you cancome up with one simple explanationfor 28 properties of the architecturewhich is better than mine, then do so!

The monument builders were not just‘looking at the stars’. As you imply,you can do that without getting ahernia by building Stonehenge.Obviously, Stonehenge is not just asighting device. It is a cosmologicalcentre, which creates the illusion whenstanding at the Heel Stone that the sunand the moon enter the underworld atthat point. It becomes therefore aportal into the underworld. We wouldpredict that sex-strike theory, when itcollapses in the Neolithic, wouldrequire a device to simulate what


everybody would havedone naturalistically in thePalaeolithic – that is, alunar-scheduled, ritual life-cycle – but now found itvery difficult to do becauseof the emerging divisions insociety as cattle wealthundermined clan solidarity.

Farming revolution theorywill only allow monumentalignments on the solsticesun as primitiveagricultural calendars. Butit has now been shown thatmost of them have at leastdouble alignments on both the sun’ssolstices and the moon’s standstills. (Alunar standstill is the lunar equivalentof the sun’s solstice in horizonastronomy – a place on the horizonwhich defines the moon’s rising andsetting range – with one difference: thatthose positions change between a majorand a minor limit, each spanning thesun’s solstice positions, according to an18.61 year cycle.)

Another property of these two cycles –the sun’s solstices and the moon’sstandstills – is that this knowledgeallows you to predict the phase-lockingof solstices with dark moons twiceevery 19 years. The sun’s solsticesoccur twice a year for a period of aweek around winter and summersolstice, but the moon’s standstillsoccur over a period of a year twice inan 18.6-year cycle.

Look at the two pictures of Stonehenge(at the top of this page and the next),shown from the Heel Stone. You willsee that Stonehenge, viewed from theHeel Stone, once appeared as a solidwall of stone with two windows. Thelower gap within the grand trilithontraps a ray of light from the settingwinter solstice sun; the upper gap trapsthe southern standstill moonsets overthe course of a standstill year. Thirteenmoons will have set in that upperwindow, culminating in dark mooncoinciding with the winter solsticesunset. That is the start of the longestdarkest night, and therefore predictablyallows observing the greatest possiblenumber of stars. This is a much moresophisticated ‘astronomy’ than farmingrevolution theory allows, displayscomplex knowledge of the moon’smovements, and is consistent with a

culture that is confiscating monthlylunar cycles to a solar timescale. That iswhat we would predict for a culturemoving from hunting to agriculture,but during a period of relative‘equipoise’ between these two systems.

Every counter-revolution has to takeaccount of the previous revolution. So a‘machine’ that can lie, that can pretendit still is true to the old way, but nowhas adapted it to new conditions – thatis a useful machine to an emergingwarrior-priesthood which is displacingmatrilineal solidarity with its own formof solidarity – monument building.

RA: You mentioned earlier thatarchaeology has long resistedarchaeoastronomy, but that it isstarting to come around. Why theresistance, do you think? Does the factthat it is coming round mean that itnow has to take your theory seriously?

LS: We are now in the third stage ofthe history of archaeoastronomy(Norman Lockyer was the first at thebeginning of the 20th century; thenGerald Hawkins and Alexander Thomin the 1960s and 1970s; now led byClive Ruggles in Britain since the1980s). Ruggles was research assistantto Richard Atkinson, the leader ofBritish archaeology in the 1960s and1970s. Ruggles has shown that theclaims for scientific, precisionastronomy of Hawkins and Thom areincorrect, and also established modernstandards for testing for intentional(rather than accidental) alignments inancient monuments. But most of thishas passed archaeology by, andarchaeologists know virtually nothingof the details. They let Clive Rugglesget on with it, and basically come up

with very cautious claimsfor astronomicalalignments in prehistoricmonuments. Previouslythey ridiculed such claimssince their main theory ofprehistory was of aslowly accumulatingfarming revolutionemerging out of hunter-gatherer savagery.Atkinson called them‘howling barbarians’!Therefore the first claimsof ‘scientific astronomy’made no sense toarchaeologists. But now

that the farming revolution theory isno longer accepted within archaeology,and since archaeoastronomers nolonger claim a scientific, but areligious, role for horizon ‘astronomy’,there is the chance for convergencebetween the two disciplines.

All of this has nothing to do with myviews becoming more acceptable. Myarticles are being met with aresounding silence! My work beganwith a detailed critique of themarvellous work done by John North.I have been the only researcher to takeNorth’s work seriously. Without hisachievements there is no way I couldhave come up with the arguments I amnow making. North’s work is also metwith a resounding silence!

RA: Could you tell us briefly what youthink North’s achievement was?

LS: John North’s book – Stonehenge:Neolithic Man and Cosmos – waspublished in 1996. He proved thatStonehenge had a double mainalignment from the Heel Stone onwinter solstice sunset below another onthe southern minor standstill moonsets.The first is an annual property, thesecond once every 19 years spread overthe course of a year. He demonstratedthis through 600 pages of carefulargumentation, showing in a patientexamination of hundreds of earlier andsimilar monuments the principles ofNW European prehistoric monumentdesign. Some of these principles are:how horizons were manipulated bydigging ditches and banks aroundmonuments to preferentially shift thetrapping of the sun and moon’s lightrays between posts or stones; the use ofstandard gradients in earth mounds


The setting winter solstice sun from the Heel Stone at Stonehenge

which allowed doubledreverse viewing of certainstars or the sun and themoon; the construction ofartificial and level horizonsfor establishing alignmentsaccurate to one-third ofone degree; and manymore. Once he haddemonstrated how theseprinciples operatedelsewhere, he could thentest them out atStonehenge. He thereforeshowed us the method wecan use to decodemonuments. Nothing inthe archaeoastronomy or archaeologyof NW European monuments canmove forward until North’s work iscritically acknowledged.

RA: OK, and what about yourcontribution? Above you said thatyour theory explains 28 features of thearchitecture of Stonehenge and that noother theory comes close. Perhaps thatwould be the best way to approachyour work. What architectural featuresare you talking about?

LS: They are not just mine, many arefrom North. I just put them together ina new way to show that the combinedresult was to build a monument thatcould predictably stage rituals whenwinter solstice sunset coincided withdark moon – therefore at the start ofthe longest, darkest night. Nobody hadcome up with this before. Some of theproperties which all go together and areexplained by this single motivation are:

� Approaching Stonehenge from theNorth East along the Avenue,Stonehenge paradoxically appears as asolid wall of stone except in twoplaces, even though it is full of gapswhen viewed, as archaeologist do ontheir site plans, from above.� The two nearest trilithons point to aconvergence on the Heel Stone.� The lower gap is exactly aligned onwinter solstice sunset; the upper gap onthe southern minor standstill moonsets.� Stonehenge is built on the sideof a hill. As you walk to the centreof the monument from the HeelStone at winter solstice sunset, theupward movement of the eye counter-balances the sinking of the sun,creating the illusion of suspending itssinking movement.

� Stone 11 is half the height, half thewidth and half the breadth of the other29 stones in the outer sarsen circle.There are therefore 29.5 stones in theouter circle. This is the average lengthof the (synodic) month.� There are 19 bluestones in the innerarc. This is the length of the standstillcycle of the moon.� The bluestones, which come fromthe Preselli Hills in Pembrokeshire, aredark blue with mica flecks. If themonument is designed for a ritual ofthe longest darkest night, then thisselection of stone is a good rendition ofthe night sky in the middle of winter.� The monument is binary – twocircles (one of sarsen, one of bluestone)and two horseshoe arcs (one of sarsen,one of bluestone). This is consistentwith the main double alignment on thesun and the moon.

I could go on. All of these pointsand others outlined in my articlein the Cambridge ArchaeologicalJournal are consistent with myargument, and no other theory canintegrate them in this way.

RA: You mentioned above that a studyof Indo-European myths confirms yourfindings. Could you tell us a little bitabout this with reference to thefeatures you have just described?

LS: It is a remarkable achievement ofscholarship that not only has some ofthe proto-Indo-European languagebeen reconstructed, but also some oftheir origin myths. This is the rootlanguage and origin myths of all thepeoples from Iceland to Sri-Lanka.From both Indo-European study, andfrom the archaeology, a strong case cannow be made that Indo-Europeans

were patrilineal cattleherders of the lateNeolithic and earlyBronze Age. Somecomponents of theirorigin myths have beenreconstructed by, inparticular, WendyDoniger, Bruce Lincolnand Calvert Watkins.

These myths are obsessedwith heroes killing thecattle-stealing dragon,repairing the cosmos andforestalling its imminentcollapse, and the original

patriarchal twins instituting humansacrifice as the pre-eminent means ofkeeping the cosmos stable and self-replenishing. If you start yourunderstanding of human origins withsex-strike theory, of culture led bymatrilineal/matrilocal coalitions ofhunters which then started to breakdown when big game huntingcollapsed, then these myths are exactlywhat you would predict as one of theoutcomes of that collapse. In terms ofmonuments, double alignments of thesun and the moon, in which monthlylunar phases are being transplantedonto annual solar cycles, and in whichdark moon rituals are now beingritually celebrated twice a year ratherthan 13 times a year, are also what youwould predict. None of this is explic-able or explainable by the standardmodel of culture-creating farmers outof hunter-gatherer savagery.

RA: Finally, can we return to your firstanswer, and consider why it was thatthe people you were debating on theBritish left were hostile to these ideas.Why were they? And what can ouractivist readers take from your work?

LS: In the winter of 1989/90, the viewsof the section of the British left I wasdebating with were no different tothose common among the liberal leftand ‘intelligentsia’. There was a veryambiguous and weak endorsement ofthe claims of Engels (and Marx) thatour species was born in a revolutionarybreak with primate ‘politics’.A number of reasons lay behind this.First and most important was aninability to critically use the methodsof the new Darwinism – selfish-genetheory. All the left and liberalintellectuals were (and still are)


Stonehenge traps the southern standstill moon

biophobic. Any recourse to using themathematics of selection processes wasconsidered a collapse into a right-wingagenda. Second, the left had a weakresponse to the radical feminist attackof patriarchy theory and, in defence oftheir organisations, wanted to close offthe debate rather than embrace a newand, to them, untested theory.

Third, much of academic anthropologywas profoundly anti-marxist, and usedmethods that were uncongenial tomarxists. Therefore, whereasanthropologists celebrated the thoughtsystems of ‘simple’ societies, marxists,and in part including Engels, usedecological methods, which led them toclaim that hunter-gathers had aninsubstantial hold on survival becausethey had to rely on hunting with a‘primitive technology’ and so on.Therefore, before agriculture, theecology of hunter-gatherers waspredicted to be close to starvation.If you started talking about the highlevels of solidarity between brothersand sisters in matrilineal clans as thebasis for the first communist society,then it was heard as utopian. Instead,marxists celebrated agriculture as thefirst mode of production whichafforded plenty. Yet Engels had alwaysclaimed this as the counter-revolution –

not the deliverance from hunter-gatherer poverty!

Fourth, during the 1970s feminism andmarxism were involved in acrimoniousdebates over the roots of women’soppression and Engels’ part in thatdebate. In their failure to resolve theissue both sides retreated, wounded indifferent ways, to leave the issue alone.Academic anthropology hasconsistently attacked (vulgar) marxismwith the evidence from pre-statesocieties. Those of us in RAG who aremarxists believe that if it seems thatanthropology undermines marxism onthe issue of the roots of oppression,then only anthropology can rescue it.That is why we call ourselves theRadical Anthropology Group.

The main messages I would wantactivists to take from all this are thefollowing.

Firstly, in the last 40 years therehas been a revolution in the lifesciences and, I would claim, thisrevolution has provided the methodand the data to confirm the truth ofEngels’ claim that we are arevolutionary species, and thatwe established the first humanculture as communist.

Second, this communist society startedbreaking down as the big gameanimals of the Palaeolithic started todie out. By the Neolithic, whenmonument building began, wealthycattle-owning men are establishingtheir power, partly through monumentbuilding, at the expense of the earlierbrother-sister solidarity of thematrilineal/matrilocal clans. This eventwas, as Engels claimed, the world-historic defeat of women and theestablishment of the first class societies.

Third, as the Neolithic counter-revolution was based on economics,not biology, and as we were presentat our own making as communists,then the next revolution is a return tothe first, but now on the basis ofmodern technology that can assureplenty for all.

These claims strengthen our resolve byarming us intellectually. Who wouldnot want that? �

Lionel Sims gives guided tours andtalks on Avebury and Stonehengeas part of the Radical AnthropologyGroup’s lecture series and annualfield trip to Stonehenge and Avebury.For more details, see www.radicalanthropologygroup.org.


Rough equality among men in patrilineages sits upon systematic

inequality between men and women.This is the first inequality out

of which all later inequalities spring – this is Engels’ basic

argument. The imbalances that can occur within this relation of

inequality are like a proto-class out which all later classes evolve.

The main imbalances suggested in the scholarly literature are:

� Cattle herders also hunt and garden, therefore there are three

dimensions for ‘chance’ inequalities to arise.

� Political authority (chiefs, kings, etc) can grow as the reverse-

dominance structures of matrilineal/matrilocal organisation

weaken (see, for example, Hierarchy in the Forest:The Evolution of

Egalitarian Behaviour by Christopher Boehm).This can have

economic consequences, eg, monument building.

�Agricultural labour services, except plough agriculture which

uses oxen, are the province of women, and variable opportunities

for wealth inequalities exist with multiple wives (see, for example,

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond).

� Before cattle-herders there were the complex hunter-gatherers

of the Mesolithic, something like the NW coast American Indians.

Most of these were slave-owning misogynist warriors who

vigorously defended territory. As there were at least 4,000 years of

the Mesolithic which preceeded NW European Neolithic

monument building, we would expect some degree of gender

inequality and ranking among men before cattle-herding.

� Brian Hayden of Columbia University has suggested an

‘accumulator-feasting’ complex to explain ‘potlatch’ type rituals.

These involve the conspicuous display and destruction of wealth,

and the profligate consumption of luxury foods.They are run

competitively by ‘big men’ ‘financed’ by calling in debts.This

increases ranking differences among men in the midst of plenty.

� ‘Trade’ in, for example, stone axes, flint cores and artefacts, and

in the early bronze age in copper and bronze, had a restricted

circulation linked to rank.Variable trading opportunities are

therefore a source of inequality.

� Exotic luxury goods, such as types of stone, silver, gold, confer

unequal power on those who control their circulation. For

example, a Zulu bride can be purchased with a brass ring: see

Eileen Krige, The Social System of the Zulus.

� Napoleon Chagnon’s social circumscription theory suggests

that, when there are fewer opportunities to flee from intra-group

problems, this intensifies the emergence of rank inequalities.

�The spoils of raiding and war – from revenge to cattle raiding to

territorial defence– create inequalities.

� Resource stress.

�Migration.

� Colonialism.

There is evidence for the first nine of these factors operating in the

prehistory of the British Isles and north Europe.

The material origins of inequality


Radical Anthropology: In your newbook, Trust: Self-Interest and TheCommon Good, you discuss thebiological origins of trust. Is trustpeculiarly human? Or does it haveparallels in the animal world?

Marek Kohn: The primatologist Fransde Waal observes that, “We have notrouble recognising the differencebetween a trustful or distrustfuldog, and we know how long it cantake to turn the latter into the former.”If an animal can form expectationsabout how another will act withrespect to itself, we can think of it asbeing able to trust. But the questiongets more difficult and interesting ifone understands trust as involving asense of selves and others: that to trust,one needs to have a sense that othersare individuals, with interests andmotives of their own. Trusting them isexpecting that they will incorporateone’s own interests into theirs. So thisis a question about whether non-human animals have what’s known as‘theory of mind’ – which will doubtlessbe the subject of heated debate amongprimatologists for years to come!

RA: If trust has parallels in the animalworld, and if human life is socharacterised by trust, why it is aproblem in the first place?

MK: Sure, there’s a lot of trust about,but the particular problem these days isthat it doesn’t go very deep. Aconstantly moving, accelerating worldreduces the opportunities for trust togrow through experience, familiarity,habit, and the commitment involved inrelationships – personal, intimate oroccupational – that are intended to lasta long time. This isn’t to say that trustis a peculiarly modern problem,though. It’s a problem in the first placebecause co-operation is fundamentallyproblematic between agents whoseinterests are not identical. Tounderstand how to promote trust andhow to place it well, we need to work

from first principles to see how interestsmay be combined into a common good.

RA: And what are those firstprinciples? Are they Darwinian, wouldyou say?

MK: They are; though they can bederived from other kinds of cost-benefitanalysis. Differing genetic interests cancause problems of trust, particularly in‘familial’ societies where families trusteach other implicitly and everybodyelse very little. This often arises whenthe state is oppressive or dysfunctional,failing to implement laws fairly andinhibiting the development of civilsociety: under such conditions thefamily becomes a fortress.

RA: So traditional societies can be tooparochial for widespread trust todevelop; modern societies too chaotic.But why do you think widespread trustis desirable anyway? Could we not justget by, as Thatcher implied, withindividuals and their families?

MK: Another politician, DavidTrimble, recently observed (in thecontext of his experience in NorthernIreland) that trust is “over-rated andfrequently misplaced”. He has a point.Trust is not strictly necessary toachieve many forms of co-operation,and to focus on trust, as politicalcommentators often do, can be toconcentrate on the icing when whatmatters is the cake.

However, even in situations where co-operation can be achieved withouttrust, trust may be needed to sustainthe co-operation. Reading accounts ofinformal truces on the Western Frontin the First World War, I was struck bythe extent to which trust seemed toarise between soldiers on opposingsides, and how such sentiments mayhave helped to maintain the truces insituations where violations wouldinevitably occur. In real life, signals areoften noisy – in the trenches literally

so, the signals often actually beingtransmitted by gunfire – and so peopleneed to interpret them according totheir understanding of others’intentions. No ceasefire would havelasted if any shot was interpreted as adeliberate breach. Trust makes co-operation resilient instead of brittle.

Well-placed trust makes relationshipswork better. It allows people to takeadvantage of opportunities they wouldotherwise miss, and makes the coloursof social interaction more intense.

RA: In your book you say “capitalismhas won the global game of how tomake a living”. Marx and otherspointed out that capitalism is parasiticon trust. Workers in the factory, in thehome and in society generally operateon communist principles – if mycolleague asks me to pass the spanner, Idon’t charge him for my time; my mumdoesn’t put a padlock on the fridge. Yetthe profits that accrue from this socialtrust go into the pockets of a smallminority of individuals. Isn’t the globalconsensus on capitalism more anexample of misplaced trust than ofdeserved success?

MK: It depends on where you thinkvalue comes from. By locating thesource of value in labour, Marxismproposes that capital is inherentlyexploitative and implies that workersare wrong to trust in it. Orthodoxeconomics, on the other hand,welcomes capital as a source of value.In Britain, the old labour movementwas deeply mistrustful of capital andmanagement, whereas on theContinent, notably in West Germany,relations between capital and labourwere structured around an idea ofsocial partnership which implied trust.Indeed I believe they still largely are, tothe workers’ benefit.

RA: Trust is not only good for ourpocket, you say in your book, butgood for our health too. How so?

Trust: self-interest and the common goodMarek Kohn

Marek Kohn is a science writer whose previous books include As We Know It: Coming To TermsWith An Evolved Mind, and A Reason For Everything: Natural Selection and the EnglishImagination. Here he talks to Radical Anthropology about his latest work on trust.


MK: One specific way that it works isthrough the National Blood Service.People trust that they would receive atransfusion if they needed it, becausethey trust unknown others to donateblood, and this public trust encouragespeople to make the donations. It’s avirtuous circle, providing public goodsat a reduced cost – the medical good,of the blood itself, and the social goodof solidarity.

More generally, trust can be seen as asource of health through its closerelationship to equality. The work ofRichard Wilkinson, Michael Marmotand others has shown that equalitypromotes health, while inequalitydamages it. This effect seems to workthrough the reduction of stress in socialrelationships: being a subordinate canmean a life lived in an unhealthilyprolonged emergency mode, andshortened by it. Relative equalitymakes for a healthier socialenvironment. Pleasant, co-operativesocial relations make for longer,healthier lives: trust, forming a basisfor relaxed co-operation, shouldtherefore be good for health.

RA: You quote some studies in yourbook that seem to show trust is lesslikely to be spontaneously extended topeople of different race. Are multi-culturalism and liberal immigrationpolicies therefore doomed to fail?

MK: Not at all. It’s hardly surprising tofind that ethnic differences may be anobstacle to trust. After all, trustinvolves confidence in one’s ability topredict how others will behave. It iseasier to predict how others will act ifyou share a set of rules and customswith them: you can ask yourself,“What would I do if I were them?”People will build relationships acrosscultural divides if they are persuaded itis in their interests to do so, and as theylearn to co-operate, they will come totrust. On the other hand, if they seetheir interests as best served bymaintaining group divisions, they willreinforce their prejudices and theirmistrust. That can happen where civilsociety is weak and people have littlefaith in the state as an arbitrator orguarantor of fairness. It may alsohappen where political strategiespromote identity politics. But thatdoesn’t mean that multiculturalism isnecessarily divisive. It means that

people have to see the benefits ofbuilding relationships with others ofdifferent cultures, have to find sharedinterests, and build on the elements intheir cultures that they share - whichmay mean building a new sharedculture. People have to want to make ithappen, and, as with any relationship,they have to work at it.

RA: What about religion? You put amuch more positive spin on the subjectthan we are used to hearing fromscience writers. What would you say to‘militant atheists’ such as RichardDawkins? Can we expect trust andmoral behaviour from the humananimal in the absence of religion?

MK: I’d say, “To an evolutionarypsychologist, the universalextravagance of religious rituals, withtheir costs in time, resources, pain andprivation, should suggest as vividly as amandrill’s bottom that religion may beadaptive.” In fact, I did say that in myreview of Daniel Dennett’s bookBreaking the Spell. Richard Dawkinsused it as the epigraph to a chapter ofThe God Delusion, but it didn’t seemto make a huge amount of difference tohis argument! They just can’t seem tobring themselves to accept thepossibility that there might be anythingof value in religion.

As for morality, rather than adaptation,I’ve become increasingly confident thatpeople can manage fine withoutreligion. I used to be in awe of the wordof God as the basis of right and wrong,but now I don’t worry that people needsuch an absolute foundation fordeciding how they should behave.Good strong relationships betweenpeople – implying a profound role fortrust – can be just as powerful. Thisconfidence is almost entirely based onmy experience of parenthood.

RA: You say that, in modern societies,the “attenuation of traditionalauthority has created a vacuum insocial relations that is being filledby bureaucratic regulation”.Where once there were customs incommon, now there are contractsbetween individuals. Is thisdevelopment largely good or bad?Is it reversible? What kind of politicalstrategies and real-world projects giveus grounds for hope that the futurecould be more trustful?

MK: You often see signs on busesalong the lines of “Please give up thisseat for someone who is less able tostand than you”. It’s welcome thatpublic transport providers areconcerned to redistribute seats fromthose with standing ability to thosewith a need to sit down, butregrettable that passengers shouldneed to be asked. And the further anorganisation goes in its efforts tobring about fairness by regulation, theweaker the relations between peoplebecome. When they are required toobey rules, individuals are relieved ofthe responsibility to make their ethicaldecisions for themselves, and to thinkabout how they should engage withothers. French public transport has atradition of chapter and verse on this– priority in descending order to‘mutilés de guerre’, blind civilians,industrially disabled people, and so on– which replaces individualjudgement, and public spirit, with abureaucratic code. Doing the rightthing becomes doing what isprescribed – and if it’s not prescribed,it probably won’t be done. People’srelationships are with authority ratherthan with each other.

The question is, though, how wouldthey behave if they weren’t told howto behave? We should bear in mindthat a lot of behavioural prescriptionsin organisations have been introducedbecause people couldn’t be trusted notto discriminate against women, ethnicminorities or other groups. Suchprejudice has become much lesssocially acceptable, so by and largepeople will have become moretrustworthy in these respects. At themoment, organisations remainobsessed with achieving standardsthrough detailed bureaucraticprescription, so that will probablycontinue for the time being. But I canimagine things changing as the costsof such strategies become tootiresome, and as institutions becomemore confident that their people couldbe trusted to treat others withoutprejudice. Trust lowers costs – of lostopportunities as well as of policingbehaviour – so organisations shouldbe able to appreciate the value ofrediscovering it. �

Trust: Self-Interest and the CommonGood is published by OxfordUniversity Press, £10.99.

Moving testament toan extraordinary lifeReview of Pilgrim State byJacqueline Walker, Sceptre2008, pp352.Jacqueline Walker’s novelPilgrim State is a fictionalisedmemoir. She takes the life of hermother, Dorothy, and tells itthrough a variety of sources,official documents andnarratives. The result is amoving testament to a womanwho, despite much hardship,instilled in her daughter astrong sense of family.

Dorothy was born in Jamaicain 1915. A conscientiousstudent, she earned ascholarship to study medicinein the US. It was there that shemet and married her husband,Clifford Brown. What begins asa passionate and lovingrelationship soon changes onceDorothy becomes pregnantwith their first child, Pearl.Pilgrim State is named after thepsychiatric facility into whichDorothy is sectioned, afterbeing drugged by her husbandwhile suffering from what maynow be thought of as post-nataldepression. Her treatment waselectric shock therapy. Afterbeing forced into giving overher savings, her husband allowsfor her temporary release. Butnow that she has been admitted

once, it only takes a phone callfrom him to have her returnedthere once she becomespregnant with Teddy, theirsecond child. She is eventuallyreleased, the years of(mis)treatment having takentheir toll. Deportation back toJamaica, with Teddy and herthird child Jackie, follows.Clifford retains custody of Pearlin the US. Thus begins a life-long struggle to find a safeplace and be reunited with allher children. It is a journey thattakes them through severalseparations, and a move tosouth London, where theylived, until Dorothy’spremature death (in 1965),when Jackie was 11 years old.

Despite these tragic events thestory is an uplifting one. Eachpage is filled with optimism, aswe get to know the Dorothythat Jackie knew, with herintellect and love of dressing upand music. It holds out anexample of how the bondsbetween mother and daughtercan remain unbroken. This is,at root, an inspiring love story.

But Pilgrim State isn’t just anovel. It is a challenge to ourunderstanding of what goodparenting means. The over-whelming message is that socialservices failed this funny and

courageous woman, and manyothers like her. What Dorothyneeded (and asked for) wassupport. She didn’t get it, butfortunately, this may change.Pilgrim State is now on thereading list for all trainee socialworkers at Brunel University.

The use of myth gives the bookan added resonance. The mythof Demeter and Persephoneframes the narrative; in thesame way that we hearDorothy speak throughJacqueline’s words, Demetertoo calls out to us in herdistress. There is the separationof mother and daughter,echoing when Persephone isstolen away into theUnderworld by Hades, and thesubsequent ‘madness’experienced by Demeter as shesearches for her daughter.

This myth is one of universalimportance. It symbolises thenecessary periodic separationbetween mothers anddaughters, as a girl matures andmarriage takes place. But witheach new spring Persephoneand Demeter are broughttogether again. In this, it alsospeaks of an ancient time whenthe bonds between husbandand wife were not permanent,allowing for a solidaritybetween female kin, which

would have created a new wayof living and with it thebeginnings of culture.

Myth has long been used as atool to make sense of our ownlives. Separation can, and does,occur. But this need not be theend. Throughout the novel, likethe voice of Demeter, we hearDorothy calling to herdaughter, her love never-ending.–Eleanor Leone

Books received� Possibilities: Essays onHierarchy, Rebellion, andDesire by David Graeber. AKPress 2007, pp400.Inspiring collection of essaysfrom anarchist David Graeber.

�What Gives Work Its Value?The Human Worth of aPhysical Project by DavidWilson. Edwin Mellon Press2006, pp212.A reinterpretation of KarlMarx’s value theory.

� Expedition Naga – Diariesfrom the Hills in NortheastIndia by Peter van Ham andJamie Saul. ACC Editions2008, pp300.Accounts of a trip to theBurmese border to meet theNaga – notorious for theirhead-hunting activities.Includes 140-min film on DVD.


Books

Radical Anthropology Network� Dear Radical Anthropology,Acting as a representative of two Cubancollectives of activists and intellectualscommitted to social and cultural researchas well as to exploring new emancipationparadigms for our country, Latin Americaand the planet, I’d like to suggest thecreation of a Radical AnthropologyNetwork. The membership of the Cubangroups includes some of the moreinteresting social researchers of thiscountry. Due mainly to historical reasons,Cuban social science still largely followsEuropean ethnocentric patterns, a factwhich seems bizarre to many foreignersbecause it contrasts with the revolutionary,third-worldist and latin-americanist historyfor which our country is famous. The needfor new approaches is strongly felt. As aresult of our debates, my Cuban comradesshare many of the goals of the RadicalAnthropology Group. I have sent them acopy of the first issue of your journal and

all the feedback I received was positive andencouraging. We evidently have many aimsin common. We think that co-operationcould prove fruitful, and we would like tocontribute to your journal, publish aSpanish version of it, organise events, andsupport community initiatives. We are openfor discussion and eager to hear from you.

Dmitri Prieto-Samsonov, CubaEditors reply: At the RAG AGM in June2008, Dmitri’s proposal to set up a RadicalAnthropology Network was unanimouslyagreed. Anyone interested in contributingshould e-mail [email protected].

� Dear Radical Anthropology,Congratulations on a fascinating,enjoyable, and inspiring first issue.I particularly liked David Graeber’s article.His work epitomises for me whatcontemporary libertarian socialist theoryshould be all about: finding new forms ofresistance appropriate to the times we livein. Such openness to ideas is essential to

the construction of a praxis that is bothethical and capable of achieving ourincreasingly urgent goals.

John Green, County Meath, Ireland

� Dear Radical Anthropology,I did a table at the Montreal anarchistbookfair in May and another in Hamiltonin June, and Radical Anthropology waseasily the most thumbed publication on mytable. The idea of a radical anthropologywas for many people a novelty: “Whatcould be radical about anthropology?”Yet the necessity of such a project is onlymade more urgent by current attempts tointroduce the renamed version ofCreationism, Intelligent Design, into theGrade 10 science curriculum. In thiscontext a radical anthropology truly is arevolutionary practice. Congratulations ona great journal. It’s my current favouritealong with Aufheben, CommunicatingVessels and Internationalist Perspective.

Fischer, Toronto, Canada

Letters


Both Karl Popper and MarioBunge described anthropology asthe key social science. For

despite its diversity, anthropology has acertain unity of purpose and vision. Itis unique among the human sciencesboth in putting an emphasis and valueon cultural difference, thus offering acultural critique of western capitalism,and in emphasising people’s sharedhumanity, thus enlarging our sense ofmoral community and placing humanssquarely “within nature”.Anthropology has therefore alwaysplaced itself – as a comparative socialscience – at the “interface” between thenatural sciences and the humanities.

Sadly this ‘dual heritage’ of anthropol-ogy, which combined both humanismand naturalism, interpretive under-standing and scientific explanation ofsocial phenomena, has come underattack from two types of extremists.On the one hand, hermeneuticscholars, literary anthropologists andthe so-called postmodernists, haverepudiated the Enlightenment traditionof anthropology. They have thusattempted to reduce anthropology tosemiotics – or even to autobiography!– rejected history and social science,embraced a dubious moral andepistemic relativism, and have becomeincreasingly obsessed with the study ofsymbolism and ritual. On the otherhand some anthropologists have goneto the other extreme. Influenced bysociobiology and its offshootevolutionary psychology, they haveadvocated a reductive form ofnaturalism. This has involved theattempt to explain complex socialinstitutions, particularly religion, interms purely of cognitive mechanisms.They thus suggest that an explanationfor religious beliefs and practices is tobe found solely in the way the “humanmind works”. With great aplomb theyinform us that religion is a “naturalphenomenon”, as if this was some newidea. In fact, ever since LudwigFeuerbach, social scientists haveemphasised that god (along withbeliefs about deities, spirits, angels andwitches) have no ontological basis, butare essentially the products of humanconsciousness and imagination.

There have been many books andarticles that have attempted to definereligion. For like reason, culture andeconomy, the concept of religion hasan historical trajectory, and indifferent contexts diverse meanings.Anthropologist Melford Spiro definedreligion as a social institutionconsisting of patterned interactionswith “culturally postulatedsuperhuman beings”. This is a usefulworking definition and emphasisesthat religion is a social institution –not merely a “symbolic system”(Geertz), or “awareness of thetranscendent” (Tambiah), or a“feeling of the numinous” (Otto).Functional definitions of religion, incontrast, tend to be rather vague, likethat of J. Milton Yinger, who definedreligion as a system of beliefs andpractices that dealt with the “ultimateproblems of human life”. By thiscriterion Marxism, evolutionarynaturalism and secular humanism are“religions”. Indeed, in the US, bothJohn Dewey’s empirical naturalismand secular humanism have beendeclared a “religion”.

Long ago, in my AnthropologicalStudies of Religion (1987), I outlinedthe many and varied ways in whichphilosophers and social scientists haveattempted to understand and explainreligion – as a natural phenomenon.I thus critically discussed in detail themany approaches to the study ofreligion: intellectualist, psychological,structuralist, interpretive,phenomenological, and, especially, thesociological approach derived fromMarx, Weber and Durkheim.

In recent decades anthropologists suchas Pascal Boyer and HarveyWhitehouse, and the philosopherDaniel Dennett, have enthusiasticallyembraced sociobiology, and itsoffshoot evolutionary psychology, as a

strategy by which to advance a truly“scientific” study of religion. The basicidea is that religious systems can beexplained in terms of pan-human“psychological characteristics”, ormore specifically, the emphasis is oninnate “cognitive mechanisms” orpsychological “modules”, that havebeen adaptive in a biological sense,namely, in fostering the survival orreproductive success of humans in thepast. Religious beliefs, duly fragmentedinto atomistic “memes” (whichseemingly have a life of their own), aredescribed as “counter-intuitive”, thatis, contrary to commonsenseassumptions and experience. Hardlynews to social scientists! Dismissive ofother approaches to religion, andignoring social factors in theunderstanding of religion, advocates ofthe cognitive approach make somerather grandiose claims for this modeof understanding. Mario Bunge andthe essays in Hilary and Steven Rose’sedited volume Alas, Poor Darwin(2000) have provided us with someimportant criticisms of this approach.

As religion is a complex andmultifaceted social phenomenonit can be fully understood only

by adopting an integral approach, inwhich all approaches to religion mustbe taken into account. But historically,anthropology, given its “dual heritage”(embracing both humanism andnaturalism) has always combinedhermeneutics – the interpretiveunderstanding of religious beliefs andpractices – with a social-scientificperspective that seeks to situate religionin its wider socio-historical context.And this dual approach has alwaysbeen expressed within specificethnographic contexts. There is thus aneed to avoid the extremes of both anarrow hermeneutics, embraced byliterary anthropologists andphenomenologists, and the equallynarrow scientistic approach of theevolutionary psychologists, who wouldinterpret religion purely in terms ofpan-human instincts – cognitivemechanisms. The “dual heritage” ofanthropology is surely worth sustainingin order to develop a more integralapproach to religion. �

Has the key social science lost its way?The last word

Brian Morris is emeritus professor ofanthropology at Goldsmiths College,University of London, and author of

Religion and Anthropology:A Critical Introduction (Cambridge

University Press 2006).

interpreting the world – and changing it thescarcity...

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