Word in Edgeways

This modern life..

Watching OPB tonight I saw a preview for a series based on Jared Diamond’s best-selling book, “Guns, Germs and Steel.” Unlike the seemingly interminable previews one must endure in the cinema these days -- that far from whetting one’s appetite, leave nothing to hope for -- these were short, enigmatic, and seemed to feature, above all, a rather startled looking Dr. Diamond duly trooping around the places he wrote about in his book, as though he’s not quite sure how he got there. I’m sure the series will convey quite the opposite impression, but for the moment, what bothered me most was the voice-over promising to explain why (and excuse the paraphrasing) “some societies have become so advanced while others have been frozen in time.” I confess right here to not having read Dr. Diamond’s book. While he doesn’t seem the type to gloss over differences in what we in anthropology prefer to term “cultural complexity” I would sincerely hope he doesn’t use the creaky old phraseology of the OPB announcer, which suggests that human societies are rather like a set of train cars, where one or two have made it to the station, while others aren’t even anywhere near the platform, some others have found their way on to sidings, and still others have fallen off a cliff somewhere on a sharp turn. This view, which is utterly wrong and thoroughly old-fashioned, is startlingly resilient even among people who should know better. It doesn’t take a dogmatic cultural relativist (if such a person can even exist) to see the problem. Social advancement does not happen in one part of the world in isolation from the rest of it; life is the way it is over here because life is like that over there. There are no “modern” people and “backward” people; we are all equally as modern -- or equally as backward -- if you like. “Underdevelopment” is not a problem of your train car derailing; it is a problem of the pleasures of “advanced society” having been purchased at the expense of other, “less advanced” ones.

My understanding – which may be wrong – is that Diamond’s book tries to explain why political geography is ultimately political ecology – that there’s a reason why “western” society is where it is, if you like. It’s a different kind of argument than the one above, which while still somewhat blunt and imprecise (it doesn’t even begin to consider the considerable social diversity that exists within countries, for example) has pretty much prevailed in sociological and anthropological circles for ages. But it is also, I believe, quite different from the crude formulation given by OPB in their terse little preview, which at face value, would guarantee I wouldn’t watch this series for all the tea in China (which I’m sure comes into the story at some point….) It’s tough enough defending science against creationists in this country; do social scientists have to do battle with “modernization” proponents as well?

posted by Sylvie @ 11:26 PM