CULTURE CHANGE
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Transcript of CULTURE CHANGE
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& CULTURAL SURVIVAL
CULTURE CHANGE
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The Cultures Studied in this Course• Have all been re-shaped by colonialism
& capitalism• There is no un-touched, “pristine”
society• People we have studied have been
changed by 4 major processes:• Genocide (Mayan peasants)• Ethnocide (!Kung, Yanomami)• Assimilation (Native Americans, Bakairí)• Resistance (Mayans, Kayapó)
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Some History…• 1519: Conquest & territorial
domination of Western Hemisphere– Complete by 1600– Native populations
reorganized by Spanish, Portuguese
– Indigenous labor used in mines (Tío), plantations (Menchú), haciendas (Mexican peasants)
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Rapid Population Decimation• 1519: 25 ML 1600: 1 ML• Yanomami: 1980—10,000;
1988—1/4 died
• 16-19th C. African Slave Trade– Colonial powers turned to Africa for labor– 10 ML slaves shipped to America
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In Africa• Congo: 8 ML died in 25 years
as result of genocide & slavery• German settlers in SW Africa
– War of extinction vs. Herero if they did not surrender their lands
– Resistance: 1500 troops with machine guns surrounded & massacred 500 Herero (genocide)
– Poisoned water holes• !Kung San: Boers, British,
South Africa, reservations
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Colonization• Europe assumed military,
political, & economic dominance
• 1885: Imperialist powers partitioned Africa into colonies– “To bring the benefits of civilization to primitive peoples & end their barbarous customs”
• This constituted an internationally approved mandate for ETHNOCIDEETHNOCIDE
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German Colonial Administrator:“The native tribes must withdraw from the lands on which they have pastured their cattle & so let the white man pasture his cattle on these lands…for people of the culture standard of the South African natives, the loss of their barbarism & development of a class of workers in the service of the whites is primarily a law of existence in the highest degree…this existence is justified in the degree that it is useful in the progress of development”
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Customs seen as Backward, Primitive
• “Customs of native groups, in so far as they threaten European control or offend western notions of morality must be abandoned”
• “Colonial authorities have the right in virtue of their relatively civilized position to savages to enforce abstinence from immoral & degrading practices”
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“Primitive” Customs seen as Obstacles to Progress:
• Infanticide (!Kung)• Bride price (Tiv)• Polygyny (Bakairí)• Polyandry (Nepal)• Kinship obligations (Bedouin)• Extended families (India, Taiwan)
“a drag on economic development & a serious obstacle of economic progress”
• Initiation rites (Masaai)• Shamanism (Jívaro)• Tribal warfare (Yanomami)
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Genocide in Australia• 1803-76: Tasmanians were extinct
within 73 years of contact• British wanted land for sheep grazing• Tasmanians were shot down like
animals for sport• Skulls were exhibited
in museums• Truganini—the last Tasmanian
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Native Americans• 1830s: Trail of Tears
– 4000 Cherokee died– (1/4 population)
• Villages burned, given blankets infected with smallpox
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Education as Assimilation• 1889-1909: UMM Boarding School
• Hopi– Taught language of the dominant culture– Imposed western dress, English names– Forbidden to speak native language
• African textbook:“It is an advantage for a native to work for a white man, because the whites are better educated, more advanced in civilization than the natives and thanks to white men, the natives will make more rapid progress”
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Industrial Revolution• Required raw materials & markets
The destruction of indigenous peoples was unparalleled in its scope
• 1780-1930: Tribal populations declined by 30 ML as a direct result of the spread of industrial civilization
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Neo-Colonialism• By the 20th C.: major dislocations,
population decline, reorganization• World War II was a watershed• Shift from political to economic domination• People everywhere are integrated into the
world economic system• Autonomous people within state
boundaries are seen as a threat (pastoralists)
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Huarani, Ecuador• Progress Brings death to Amazon
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Slain bishop & nun victims of Indians’ bitter struggle to
survive “civilization”• Oil companies & pacification
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Friday: “Trinkets & Beads”• “The latest victim of a brutal cultural
struggle that has pitted a dwindling band of primitive warriors against civilization’s formidable army of oil companies, settlers, & christian missionaries”
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Ecologist:• “The people who keep taking stuff
out of th forest are like shoppers at a closeout sale, rushing in & taking what they can, as fast as they can, before somebody else gets the last piece of goods”
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Genocide in Rwanda:Ancient Tribal Hatreds?
• Original Twa hunters & gatherers• Hutu settle area 1000 AD,
monarchy dominated Twa• 16th C. Tutsi herders enter• 1884 Germans colonize, racist ideology vs.
Hutus • After WW I Belgium took over colonial
control, racist doctrines• Replace Hutu chiefs with Tutsis
– Ethnic Identity cards– Allow Tutsis to take over Hutu lands– Require peasants to grow export crops (coffee)
Hutu rebels
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• 1950s Tutsis struggle for independence• Belgians switch support to Hutus• 1962 independence; Hutu limit Tutsi
access to education, government jobs• 1973 military coup• 1974 World Bank project for cattle ranches
disadvantages Tutsi herders
Tutsi refugees
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• 1989 coffee prices collapsed (major export)– Loss of income, famine
• 1990 IMF austerity program impoverished farmers & workers– Cuts to education, health care– Malnutrition
• Tutsi refugees invade, French provide military aid to the government
• Death squads emerge, racial hatred toward Tutsis
• Hutu state formed, committed to genocide– 50,000 Hutus & Tutsis killed
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• 1994 800,000 Tutsis slaughtered by Hutu-run state
• The causes were carefully obscured– Based on Western stereotypes of savage Africans– “Tribal warfare involving those without the
veneer of Western civilization”– Genocide not recognized until months later
• As changes are instituted to accommodate capital accumulation, lives are disrupted & conditions created that fuel hatred & violence
• Colonial history, state genocide, global economic integration
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• “World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, visiting a Rwandan genocide memorial, apologized on Thursday on behalf of the international community for not trying to prevent the 1994 slaughter”
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Policies of Assimilation• (!Kung, Bakairí, Kayapó, Bedouin)• Community control of land –
replaced by private property– 1887 Dawes Act
• Corporate kinship groups based on kinship relations – incomprehensible to dominant society
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Economic Development• Incorporate indigenous people
into the capitalist economy-- • Forced labor
• Requirement to pay taxes in cash– Work on plantations, mines, cash crops
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Azande• (Sudan, horticulturalists):
– Introduction of cotton as cash crop– 1980s decline of cotton market left
Azande in economic ruin
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Guaraní (Paraguay)• Egalitarian horticulturalists, hunting
& gathering, fishing, collection of forest products for sale (agroforestry)
• Integrated into European markets since contact, maintained sustainability– Engaged global economic system
without becoming dependentMate Yerba
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Capitalist Expansion in Paraguay
• Dramatic expansion of agricultural cash-crop production
• Rainforest felled for intensive, industrial agriculture
• Lumbering to extract hardwood for U.S. market (parquet floors)
• 1970—6.8 ML has. 1984—2.1 ML has.
• Small-scale producers displaced• Floral & faunal diversity destroyed
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• Guaraní Cash-crop disappeared, they enter market economy as waged laborers on cotton & tobacco plantations
• 1995: 3 suicides/month (unknown before)
• Economic development spawned by the needs of the global economy are destroying Guaraní
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• A casualty of the expansion of the culture of capitalism is cultural diversity
• With incorporation into the world market economy “their standard of living is lowered, not raised, by economic progress… This is perhaps the most outstanding & inescapable fact to emerge from the years of research that anthropologists have devoted to the study of culture change”
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Resistance: Sioux Ghost Dance
• The Ghost Dance was a spiritual movement in the late 1880s in reaction to the destruction of Native American cultures
• Wovoka died, went to the spirit world, returned as a prophet
• Nativistic Movement• Told people to return to
the old ways, continue dancing & whites would be destroyed, the dead & the buffalo would return
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1890: Wounded Knee• Wovoca had told people “You must not
do harm to anyone. You must not fight.”• People believed the ghost shirts they
wore made them impervious to bullets• Army troops arrived, killed 200 Lakota
& Chief Big Foot• Gen. Sheridan:
“The only good Indian is a dead Indian”
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Resistance: Cargo Cults
• Milenarian Movements (esp. Melanesia)• Exposure to whites & material goods
during World War II• Context of rapid social change, foreign
domination, relative deprivation• Tribal people did all the work, whites
owned all the goods
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• Converted to Christianity, but cargo did not arrive
• To acquire wealth through ritual means
• Creation of a new world by mimicking Europeans– Whites knew the secret of cargo– Whites had stolen cargo from ancestors
• Built airstrips, killed pigs, abandoned gardens, destroyed native wealth
• Ancestors would arrive with cargo in ships & planes
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• “John Frum (messiah) promised he’ll bring planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us from America if we pray to him: Radios, TVs, trucks, boats, watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola and many other wonderful things.”
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Total Incompatibility• Tribal economies aimed at
satisfaction of subsistence needs– Hunters & gatherers– Horticulturalists– Pastoralists– Peasants
• And the culture of consumption– (A Poor Man Shames Us All)
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How is the culture of indigenous peoples
incompatible with the culture of capitalism?• Communal ownership—land & valued
resources can not be purchased• Distribution through sharing, gift-giving,
labor reciprocity reduce need to consume & work for wages
• People are not naturally driven to accumulate wealth
• Conservation strategies make lands less subject to exploitation for profit
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Culture of Capitalism• Capitalism seeks continual
expansion, growth to obtain new markets, to promote consumption, increase profits
• Indigenous cultures are thus vulnerable to destruction by capitalist expansion
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Walmart• 3000+ U.S. Walmarts
sell at lowest cost– $245 BL sales– Largest private
employer in Mexico• Acting as Adam
Smith’s “invisible hand”
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Polanyi’s Paradox• Externalities:
– Forces companies to reduce production & labor costs– Loss of 1000s of jobs as companies shift to other
countries– Imports 12% Chinese exports, workers earn $32/month– Environmental damage– Energy resources for transporting goods around world
• These costs do not appear on the price tag• Buyers are not saving money; they pass the cost
on to someone else• 1% of the profits of 5 Walmart owners could pay
decent wages & health insurance to all of its employees
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Consumerism• We are all involved:• Progress is synonymous with having
things--Macs, PCs, Cells, DVDs, IPODs• Other cultures survived 1000s of years
without these luxuries; their lives were not “nasty, brutish, & short” (Hobbes)
• But based on family ties, kinship relations, sharing, cooperation
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Diseases of Industrial Society
– Hypertension, circulatory system, mental stress, diabetes, obesity
– Malnutrition is a hazard of “progress”
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Is Sociocultural Diversity Worth Preserving?
• Medicines: anthropologists have catalogued indigenous knowledge– Malaria: Peru—Quinine from the bark of
the cinchona tree (“Out of the Forest”)– Diabetes, leukemia, Hodgkins disease—
Madagascar periwinkle– Muscle relaxants—S. America (poison
arrows with poison from the chondodendron tree)
– Aspirin: Native Americans—willow bark
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Adaptive Wisdom• Slash & burn horticulture (Bakairí,
Kayapó)• Technologies that do not destroy the
environment• Crop varieties selected over 1000s of
years– High protein content: amaranth
(Mesoamerica), Quinoa (Peru), Tepary Bean (Papago)
• Self-sufficiency
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What Is Progress?• The reckless pursuit of “progress”
has brought the wholesale destruction of indigenous peoples
• Racism, ethnocentrism, evolutionary ideas about progress justified the atrocities committed against tribal peoples – AND CONTINUE TO DO SO !!!
Civilization
Barbarism
Savagery
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“Progress”• Bt corn in Mexico
– GM foods– Patents– Pesticide poisonings– Contamination of environment
• Progress has brought erosion, over-grazing, deforestation
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“Progress”• From hunting & gathering to market
capitalism
– Increasing centralization of power– Increasing concentration of access to
wealth, power, prestige– Shift from egalitarian sharing of resources
to increasing gap between elite & poor
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PARADOX• Hunting & gathering societies – equality• Industrial nations – poverty,
homelessness (A Poor Man Shames Us All)
ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF BEING HUMAN SHOULD BE VALUED & ARE
WORTH PRESERVING !