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Post by swl on Mar 22, 2009 22:08:26 GMT
I was watching a very interesting prog this evening when my head fell off. Just like that, no warning, just rolled into the corner of the room and glared at a rather startled cat. "The hottest place on earth" on Beeb Beeb Ceeb One. Basically, a group of scientist types rolled up to visit the Afarr tribe in Ethiopia and do some geology stuff. Good stuff. The geology types got all excited about a crack in the ground that apparantly means Africa is broken. Meanwhile, a sociology-type woman was studying the tribe. It was while she was doing this that she came to the startling realisation that the women did all the effin' work whilst the men did eff all. No shit Sherlock. That's what primitive tribes do  But, the bit that made my head fall off was when she said she intended to confront the women about this. WTF? Look, this is what happens in tribal society. It's very basic. Yes the women do all the work but they know no different and they're happy. They're doing what their mothers did and their mothers before them. The system works. But now some Western bint is going to come along and question that and put doubt in their minds. Will it make them any happier? Will it change anything? How f'n dare she apply Western morals and standards, silly bint. Hasn't she read the Prime Directive? Seriously, we have some strong women here. What do you think? |
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 22, 2009 22:13:10 GMT
I was watching a very interesting prog this evening when my head fell off. Just like that, no warning, just rolled into the corner of the room and glared at a rather startled cat. "The hottest place on earth" on Beeb Beeb Ceeb One. Basically, a group of scientist types rolled up to visit the Afarr tribe in Ethiopia and do some geology stuff. Good stuff. The geology types got all excited about a crack in the ground that apparantly means Africa is broken. Meanwhile, a sociology-type woman was studying the tribe. It was while she was doing this that she came to the startling realisation that the women did all the effin' work whilst the men did eff all. No shit Sherlock. That's what primitive tribes do But, the bit that made my head fall off was when she said she intended to confront the women about this. WTF? Look, this is what happens in tribal society. It's very basic. Yes the women do all the work but they know no different and they're happy. They're doing what their mothers did and their mothers before them. The system works. But now some Western bint is going to come along and question that and put doubt in their minds. Will it make them any happier? Will it change anything? How f'n dare she apply Western morals and standards, silly bint. Hasn't she read the Prime Directive? Seriously, we have some strong women here. What do you think? I think the 'leave them alone; it's their culture' argument is bs. I think people sentimentalise tribal cultures, and encourage them to be preserved in aspic, and I think it sucks. OK? |
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Post by Patrick on Mar 22, 2009 22:13:55 GMT
Sociology will be the downfall of us all! How's the course btw?  |
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Post by swl on Mar 22, 2009 22:21:34 GMT
It's all bollox Pat ;D
Riot - do you think these women will be made happier when it's pointed out the men are taking a loan of them?
What it doesn't take into account is women are sociable by nature. I noticed the women didn't go off to the well for water alone, it was a group activity. In fact, everything was a group activity. That's the way women are and that's the way they naturally interact. There was an experiment done once. They put two young boys (strangers to each other) into a room with toys. The boys played with them, but only talked in the context of the game. The two girls however talked about anything and everything while they played.
Those tribeswomen are happy because their sociality is met through daily chores which they carry out together.
In the West, the only time women get together to socialise is mostly to get pissed. Is that better?
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Post by everso on Mar 22, 2009 22:25:08 GMT
Once upon a time, when the people of this country existed in tribes, I suppose it was the same here, and it's taken a few thousand years to change and become what we are today.
By the same token, we can't expect African tribes to change in a few decades, can we? And if they never change it's not something we should be interfering with anyway imo. I don't think it's our business.
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Post by Patrick on Mar 22, 2009 22:34:04 GMT
I would venture to say that our "tribalism" was stronger just 60 or 70 years ago. It's our mobility that has taken it away from us. The suspicion folk have for each other these days - the lack of communication. The Pigeon-holing of our different segments of life - "Work Friends" "Pub Friends" "Family Friends" "Family" and never the twain shall meet.
And it polishes stereotypes and engenders bad relations in the end. I sometimes long to live where neighbours are popping in and out in the day - and barbecues are enjoyed across back gardens and problems are shared and solved. I have a lot of fluffiness to give - but it's wasted here. I quite liked the residential world of college years ago - where I could go and see any number of people and they could call in anytime. I like communities. As long as they're not too suffocating of course. What a shame we've come to what we have.
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Post by Flatypus on Mar 22, 2009 22:50:18 GMT
It has always seemed deeply ironic to me that a generation of women arose complaining how unfair it was to women that they were expected to stay idle indoors while men did all the work, and when they find some place where men expect to stay idle indoors while women do all the work, their argument reverses to say that that is unfair to women.
All I can see is that some women are predecided that being female is necessarily unfair, however that means reversing their justification to suit whatever conditions they find. It must encourage the next generation because then they can complain how unfair all the changes their mothers wrought are to women and return to their grandmothers' attitudes, all the time insisting they are quite different. I have a simple criterion here: who benefits from labour is a class above who does it.
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Post by everso on Mar 22, 2009 23:04:34 GMT
It has always seemed deeply ironic to me that a generation of women arose complaining how unfair it was to women that they were expected to stay idle indoors while men did all the work, and when they find some place where men expect to stay idle indoors while women do all the work, their argument reverses to say that that is unfair to women. All I can see is that some women are predecided that being female is necessarily unfair, however that means reversing their justification to suit whatever conditions they find. It must encourage the next generation because then they can complain how unfair all the changes their mothers wrought are to women and return to their grandmothers' attitudes, all the time insisting they are quite different. I have a simple criterion here: who benefits from labour is a class above who does it. I think the difference here is that although the women of the tribe do all the work and the men sit around doing nothing, the women are STILL second class citizens when it comes to power sharing and decision making. In the west, women wanted to be able to work and expected to be paid the same rates as men if they did the same job. You're comparing two entirely different cultures Piffle. Do you have a problem with 21st century women, Piffle? Do you not think that men and women, while being different, are equally important in this world and should be given equal choices? |
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Post by Flatypus on Mar 22, 2009 23:25:43 GMT
Yes, I do have a problem with at least some 21st century century women. They often rate traditionally feminine occupations and values far lower than masculine, while my whole background has been the other way round to believe the sexes roughly equal but women's work the real what it's all about of 'life' and all told, women the more privileged sex to achieve equality with, not women the social inferiors that so many have been taught to believe is expected of them. I see that as just a way of getting women into the same economic thrall as men and breaking the threat that equality posed to changing men's belief that their work mattered more than women's. That might have had men trying to change working practices and purposses to achieve equality with women. We keep hearing about 'feminised' society and 'feminised' workplace - but I reckon we were closer to that and to true equality before Thatcher than we are now.
Once there was a division of labour accounted roughly equally, now the old women's work is seen as inferior, to the detriment (and annoyance) of a lot of women who resent being told that they are inferior unless they conform to traditional masculine expectations. Annoyance of a lot of men like myself too, who believed in equality and expected it to mean being free to place domestic commitment as highly as women did in our own little independent mutually self-sufficient matriarchal communes waving two fingers at Business.
I do believe that both sexes should be given equal choices. Men never had much of a choice, women always could opt for the career of family or a masculine-style career. Now women have been been deprived of any real choice and men have not gained much of a one. I do not accept your belief that men and women are substantially different except physically. I think we've seen over the last 40 years that women can do everything men can. What we have not seen is men allowed to do everything women can because that would mean revolutionary change to the traditional male-orientated social structure. Besides, neither sex really gets choice, they get options. That is, choice is What I want to do but options are Pick from this list I've decided for you.
Think of it as a kind of gender colonialism: my kind of equality says curry is as good as chips and ends up with curry and chips. What I see called 'equality' is far more like the 'equality' that says Indians are as good as Englishmen any day and just as entitled to exactly the chance of Eton and Oxford and Sandhurst to liberate themselves from their second-class culture. What passes for equality usually takes the inferiority of women's culture for granted and all women have to do is adopt 'masculine' values. I don't buy it: it's men who need to be much more like women.
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Post by housesparrow on Mar 23, 2009 8:42:09 GMT
Though I don't agree that men and women are differently only physically, I can agree with most of your post, Piffle - largely with great guilt because I rather looked down at stay at home mums when I was younger. But you are speaking of a society far removed from the tribe described in swl's post and I'm not quite sure how to make a connection.
Anthropology isn't my forte but traditionally tribal men went out hunting while women stayed at home to look after the children and the division of labour was not so unbalanced, if different. I suppose the male role became largely redundant over the years but they didn't think of stepping in to help out on the home front. Why should they? Unless of course the women mutiny...
Interfering with tribal ways is a dangerous game, whether you approve of them or not. Tears before bedtime, you mark my words!
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Post by Flatypus on Mar 23, 2009 10:29:07 GMT
Of course our societies are very different, but I just like to find some things very cynically amusing. My grandmother was horrified that my mother had to go out to work to keep my stepfather. Yet because I was born male, what's degrading for a woman is fine for me! Then again, males have always had to 'woo' females and treat them with a deference and politeness neither sex show to its own or to males. Although a woman is perfectly capable of looking after herself and most had to, there was always the pretence of being the weaker sex so that men would run round after women as servants. Once we did get a bit of equality, reaction against it threw up a whole bunch of self-styled 'feminists' inventing new ways for women to pretend to be the socially weaker sex and regain these traditional exemptions from equal responsibility that most women no longer have or really want.
There have always been women who expected to show their social superiority by conspicuous helplessness - that is, along lines of the Chinese mandarin showing his superiority to working peasants by never cutting his nails, the woman binding her feet to show she has servants to carry her. Maybe even, high heels fulfill a similar function, of showing the woman may walk to display but not to be a practical lifter and trudger! On the other hand, I rather like all that as long as it can apply to me to. I only wish my fingernails would grow instead of breaking off all the time! Then I could paint them blue.
The last thing I wrote last night, I woke up with. I didn't have a proper name for it before but it's gender colonialisation. Sex is a matter of physical fact. Gender is a social construct. I much prefer feminine gender to masculine. The industrial world, however, is thoroughly masculine and since about 1980 has become almost exclusively so. I'm with William Morris in loathing industry - it is for machine slaves, not for human beings: craft and art are for people.
We have achieved a sort of sexual equality, but one where masculine gender colonises and suppresses feminine in both sexes, not one of gender equality for both sexes. I remember my grandmother complaining that the only way to tell the sexes apart was to take their pants down (and me replying that I looked for the breasts). That is is the equality that matters to me, when we're all girls together, not all blokes.
You might even be able to understand the popularity of Barbie girlieness in some quarters as gender as reaction against this gender-colonisation. Much as there's a lot more conspicuous attention to an image of 'conspicuous' Irish culture overseas and in the North than there is in the Republic.
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Post by motorist on Mar 23, 2009 10:38:01 GMT
I agree with Riot on the premise of whether or not we should try to change it. When we read about muslims executing gays in Iran or the atrocities in Saudi Arabia we don't say "oh well, it's quaint customs, we have no right to criticise it". I would apply the same premise here
However, in this instance, a sociologist taking it upon herself to try and talk to the tribals would not be a very productive move IMO as you would need to couch your terms in ways they would understand, not from a Western moral perspective
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Post by Flatypus on Mar 23, 2009 10:51:23 GMT
It is an amazing thing to think of in this age. That sort of missionarisation without prolonged background study went out pretty much when ethnography started. There've been horror stories before about changing what looked like an abusive culture without realising what underlay it. On the other hand, I people have been conquered and told they'll damned well do it the way they're told hereafter, and survived.
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Post by housesparrow on Mar 23, 2009 11:40:53 GMT
I'm sory I missed the programme. Was the "sociology-type" woman merely going to ask them questions, do you think? I'm not sure how dangerous that is.
I can remember hearing of girls from an African tribe who were horrified to discover that in Western societies , no money is given by the groom to the family of the bride. How could the women live with the shame, they wondered, and no doubt went on to reflect how much better things are in their society.
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Post by Flatypus on Mar 23, 2009 12:08:34 GMT
She probably wanted to ask questions. I do recall somebody who changed her ideas after living with the men of a West African tribe like this. Good ethnographers do get inside the people they're studying, as far as they can. It's far too easy to assess them from a superficial western view that often misses that the obvious practicalities are not what matters to them.
On the surface, the women did all the farming and every so often the men wnet off on a jolly old hunt and otherwise lazed around. Of course the men made most of the decisions because there wasn't much to decide about as far as casual farming goes. But she found that the hunt was far more exhausting than it appeared because they'd be running for a couple of days before they even reached the hunting grounds and afterwards there was a great flurry of carving everything up to keep it and then carry it all back.
They are a case where modernisation is buggering them up because the hunting is frowned on and becoming more difficult. In fact it sounded as if some is more like illegal poaching now and possibly corrupted by selling bushmeat to town gangsters. As the idea of regular working for a living comes in, it connects more with the women's farming than the men's hunting but at the same time takes them off it. No doubt they'll end up as another of these places where the men spend their time drunk and the women are in poverty making sweatshop goods they'll never use or want to at the mercy of commercial providers.
At the same time, we have this Rousseau-esque glamourisation of the Noble Savage that likes to take the bits of their culture that look good without the rest of the context. North American Indians in particular don't like it. You don't do the sweatlodge bit without the rest of it.
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Post by housesparrow on Mar 23, 2009 13:15:09 GMT
That was the kind of scenario that got me worried about the idea of interference: I'm a great believer in the maxim "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Where the balance is tipped away from traditional tribalism, it seems the women do end up worse than before. The men go off to cities to look for work; the women are left as before, but at the mercy of invaders and greedy relations; they are often not even allowed to own the land they work .
I would feel differently if the women were routinely abused or the trie was starving, I'm sure.
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Post by Flatypus on Mar 23, 2009 14:21:16 GMT
Everybody usually ends up worse than before. For one thing you destroy the unity. If the men go off to work in the city, why should they come back? They start to think of money they earn as their property instead of part of the collective effort, so they entitled to do what thye like with it. It's better financially if they do because then they have no personal ties to stop them spending their money in the city. Actually, if the women can maintain traditional farming, then they could be better off without the men there to feed.
All the same, it's even more culturally disruptive than what happened to us 200 years ago because at least then it was whole families moving off the land and into factories. If only people would build on their own foundations! I missed getting a book once by Julius Nyerere, but again he made a mess of Tanzania by moving people around and centralising everything instead of developing subsistance farming into something more productive.
Why must our way always be the only way? It's not as if we can even agree on what 'our' way is. The isolated American ideal is very different from the values of France or Italy.
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Post by swl on Mar 23, 2009 18:23:06 GMT
I think the next prog is on Thursday - the preview showed the men of the tribe getting upset with the sociologist woman. Might be worth watching.
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Post by everso on Mar 24, 2009 15:13:20 GMT
I agree with Riot on the premise of whether or not we should try to change it. When we read about muslims executing gays in Iran or the atrocities in Saudi Arabia we don't say "oh well, it's quaint customs, we have no right to criticise it". I would apply the same premise here However, in this instance, a sociologist taking it upon herself to try and talk to the tribals would not be a very productive move IMO as you would need to couch your terms in ways they would understand, not from a Western moral perspective We have every right to criticise it - so long as it's from our side of the fence. Voicing our opinion, so to speak. IMO we do not have the right to visit or live in their country and start telling them to change their culture or their laws. It's up to them to finally see the error of their ways, and maybe they never will. That's fine by me, just so long as they don't aspire to live in my country and tell me that we should stone adulterers and gay people. |
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Post by Flatypus on Mar 24, 2009 17:07:48 GMT
They're just talking about "Things fall apart" and that's all about that. Maybe rights is something questionable in itself. I think we do have a right to interfere indirectly in some cases but not in others. Mainly it's the cases of dealing on a national level with a country like Arabia that expects to be taken 'seriously' as an equal and then we have to get them to accept where democratic agreement may over-ride their particular codes. For instance, they are well aware that hardly any other nation interprets 'modesty' in their way for women and there is no choice about that, while if they want to stone adulterors, adultery is a choice.
We maybe have less right to interfere, but more to discuss, when it's a tribal tradition. OK that's effectively a division between Civilised and Primitive "They don't know any better". So be it. It is very possible that a primitive people will be more amenable to change than one regarding itself as a Civilisation as good as any other. Primitive peoples often find good compromises and alternative ways of dealing with their world if they have to: a symbolic act may be substituted for a real one in a world with little distinction between them.
I keep coming across an opposite but related argument (which I think fatuous at the best) about personal consent to the democratic consensus, the tyranny of the majority. Mostly it takes the form that involuntary taxation is theft. The State does not have any right to force its citizens to do what they do not wish to do. That is of the same order as 'we' do not have the right to force 'them' to do what they do not want to do.
Maybe we think of what is right from a personal point of view of the Individual 'good' even at risk to the total of individual goods reducing the overall 'good' of the majority, and that will always clash with a culture (like China) where the overall majority 'good' takes precedence over a minimum 'good' per individual. We still have not settled this even among ourselves. We would rather risk more deaths by murder than the death of one murderer. We amble along in a state governed largely by voluntary contract than at the hothouse developmental pace that Fascism could achieve with directed slave labour. In their terms, we sacrifice majority privilege to minority rights. For us, it is not a practical argument: it is as much a matter of ethical faith as wearing the hijab.
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