Yali's Question Once Again

Timothy Burke http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=94#comments has serious complaints with the analytical and rhetorical strategies pursued by Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz in the quarrel they pick with Jared Diamond at http://savageminds.org/2005/09/07/diamonds-argument-about-the-haves-and-have-nots/#comments.

I have considerably more serious and deeper complaints.

Let's look at what Jared Diamond reports in his Guns, Germs, and Steel of his conversation with Yali:

...a remarkable local politician named Yali.... We walked together for an hour.... Yali radiated charisma and energy.... He talked confidently about himself, but he also asked lots of probing questions and listened intently.... The conversation remained friendly, even though the tension between the two societies that Yali and I represented was familiar to both of us. Two centuries ago, all New Guineans... used stone tools similar to those superseded in Europe by metal tools thousand of years ago.... Whites had arrived, imposed centralized government, and brought material goods whose value New Guineans instantly recognized, ranging from steel axes, matches, and medicines to clothing, soft drinks, and umbrellas. In New Guinea all these goods were referred to collectively as "cargo." Many of the white colonists openly despised New Guineans as "primitive." Even the least able of New Guinea's white "masters," as they were still called in 1972, enjoyed a far higher standard of living.... All these things must have been on Yali's mind when, with yet another penetrating glance of his flashing eyes, he asked me, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"...

Now let's look at how Fred and Deborah characterize Diamond:

Whereas Diamond understands Yali to be asking about “things”—-about Western “goods”-—Yali was actually asking about social equality. Whereas Diamond thinks Yali envied nifty Western stuff, Yali actually resented the not-so-nifty Western condescension that allowed Europeans to deny PNGuineans fundamental worth. The misunderstanding matters, we think, as more than an issue of factual error. That Diamond does not stretch his imagination to understand Yali’s cultural views is consistent with the history he presents. This is a history that he believes happened for reasons that we in the contemporary West already believe in. It is a history that accords with our view of how the world fundamentally works. Because such a history conveys the perspectives of the “haves,” it not only hinges on the (seemingly) self-evident, it also sustains the self-interested...

Remember the words that Diamond write: "tension... colonists... openly despised... 'primitive'... white 'masters'... on Yali's mind... penetrating glance of his flashing eyes." Diamond does not believe that Yali is interested only in "goods" and not in social equality: Diamond thinks that Yali is very interested in social equality. Diamond is not ignorant of Yali's resentment of Western despisal of Papua New Guineans: Diamond is not so naive as to think that Yali only "envie[s] nifty Western stuff." And Yali was not asking about social equality--if he were, he would have said, "Why is it that you white people treat us black people like s---?" Instead, Yali was asking about "things"--"Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" is a question about things.

I cannot avoid interpreting Fred and Deborah's characterization as a bad faith misreading of Diamond. It carries us out of the territory of speech situations a la Habermas, and into the territory of Karl Rove.

Comments

[WatchfulBabbler]

I cannot avoid interpreting Fred and Deborah's characterization as a bad faith misreading of Diamond. It carries us out of the territory of speech situations a la Habermas, and into the territory of Karl Rove.

Ouch. Yet undeniably true.

[ralph]

Yep. Their characterization is really an argument about bad Western culture. Whatever. I do not happen to be of the opinion that had others been on top, no one would have died and we all would be governed by rational discourse.

[boing!!!]

Diamond is not a culture guy, he is an environmental determinist. In my experience, the environment may tell you what is on the menu, but it does not tell you what you will eat, how you will eat it, who you will eat it with, who won't get to eat it, how often, and for how long. In addition there is a great deal of naievete about the advancement of the West in terms of hygiene and disease control with inadequate historical support.
Further, Diamond's arguments are hypernomothetic generalizations in which the illustrative examples are meant to be small and easily digestible, certainly because it better supports his arguments but also because it is very difficult to assimilate enough of another culture to begin to understand the rational processes operating therein. To begin to learn another culture you read an ethnography or travelogue that represents an interpretation from one person's perspective and experience at a particular historic moment.
How they think they know what Yali is really thinking in that particular circumstance escapes me. This leads me back to the Obeyesekere v. Sahlins debate, and what may be a naive understanding of power relations in that circumstance and what is a politic thing to say (that won't come back to bite you or your people in the ass). Comparable examples are what "normal citizens" could say to tourists in the Eastern Bloc and Soviet Union in front of the Intourist guide, who could rat them out and get them busted for deviating from the party line (like, say, Helen Thomas.) Mir! Druzhba!
I liked Diamond's book, but I certainly don't buy all the just-so stories in it.

[Chris Lovell]

Here's Diamond, just after he describes his conversation with Yali (p. 15):

"Although Yali's question concerned only the contrasting lifestyles of New Guineans and of European whites, it can be extended to a larger set of contrasts...Peoples of Eurasian origin...dominate the modern world in wealth and power. Other peoples, including most Africans, have thrown off European colonial domination but remain far behind in wealth and power. Still other peoples...have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists.

Thus, questions about inequality in the modern world can be reformulated as follows. Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are, rather in some other way? For instance, why weren't Native Americans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated, subjugated, or exterminated Europeans and Asians?"

Yali's question leads Diamond to think about colonization--material and social inequality on a global scale. Diamond thinks that Yali was only asking about "contrasting lifestyles"--but if Yali's question is so naturally expanded to a discussion of material and social inequality, why can't Yali himself have been thinking about social inequality when he asked the question? Remember Diamond's description of the conversation: Papua New Guinea was about to gain independence, Yali was a local politician, and the two men were having a conversation about the colonization of Papua New Guinea:

"He then asked how the ancestors of his own people had reached New Guinea over the last tens of thousands of years, and how white Europeans had colonized New Guinea within the last 200 years...The conversation remained friendly, even though the tension between the two societies that Yali and I represented was familiar to both of us."

In a conversation like this I don't see how any question about differences between "you white people" and "we black people" is only about "things"

[I did not say that Yali's question was *only* about things. I said that Yali is--and Diamond knows that Yali is--deeply concerned about power and despisal and equality and justice and things. Things are an important part of Yali's concerns.

Back up and look at Fred and Deborah: they claim that Diamond thinks that Yali's question was *only* about things. They are wrong. Diamond does not think that Yali's question was *only* about things.]

--especially since the things play such a role in enabling the "white" people to colonize the "black" people. (Not to mention Yali's role as a leader/prophet figure in cargo cult, on which see Lawrence's _Road Belong Cargo_...)

[rea]

"why can't Yali himself have been thinking about social inequality when he asked the question? Remember Diamond's description of the conversation: Papua New Guinea was about to gain independence, Yali was a local politician"

Yali was a beleiver in the cargo cult, which is why he was asking about cargo. Usually, the simplest exlanation is the best . . .

[Roger Albin]

Karl Rove implies a level of cynicism which is unlikely to be a major factor. A more likely comparison and probable influence would Foucault, particularly his notion that power relations determine "truth." In an ideological sense, this is correct but is demonstrably false for many, many other things, including this situation.
A major problem with this criticism of Diamond is that it is condescending towards Yali, whom Diamond presents as a very intelligent and insightful individual. Why not take his statement at face value? Was Yali incapable of saying exactly what he felt? Does he need interpreters, particularly western interpreters? Particularly Western anthropologist interpreters brandishing their expertise about PNG cultures? Of course Yali is talking about inequality; its apparent from the context of the discussion and its clear that Diamond knows this as well. One of the things that makes Yali's question so acute is his realization that this social inequality is based to a large extent on huge technological advantage enjoyed by Westerners. This one of the things that makes Yali's question an important one. As Diamond points out, this is not a question that occurred to him (Diamond), and by implication it would not occur to most Westerners. It had to come from an outsider, particularly an outsider with a very different background but with considerable experience with western culture.

[J Thomas]

This whole argument happens because of different cultural background between people who primarily think economics versus people who primarily think anthropology.

Anthropologists live with communication problems. They can go into a foreign culture and spend months before they learn to think a new way that makes a lot of things fit together and make sense, and then if they keep at it for many years they still keep running into that.

People who think like economists are more likely to say things like "Why not take his statement at face value? Was Yali incapable of saying exactly what he felt?" as if words just have meanings that every competent person understands and it's a simple matter to say them so any other competent person will understand.

The trouble is, if you haven't had the experience you just don't get it. Discussing culture with somebody who hasn't experienced a different culture is like discussing Ricardo's Comparative Advantage with somebody who's never been exposed to it or come up with it independently, but worse. You can spend five minutes explaining comparative advantage and if they listen they'll get the idea snd then they can talk about it. But without those 5 minutes they'll just keep repeating "But what about the poor countries that aren't good at *anything*!". Without the background they simply won't realise that free trade is always best for everybody.

The natural impulse is to believe that everybodu understands everything the same way, and when they pretend to misunderstand it's because they feel it's to their advantage to misunderstand. (And of course that latter does happen.)

Is Errington lying about poor Jared? I don't think so. I think he's trying to explain his field of study the best he knows how. If he's doing it in a way that sounds pedantic, if he makes it sound like he has special knowledge that nobody else shares so we should just trust him, then he isn't doing it well. But if it was easy to explain about cultures in english to people who don't understand....

Consider the people who hear about comparative advantage and immediately say it's wrong and that economists are full of crap. And then consider the people who react that way to anthropologists. And now consider physicists and their quantum mechanics. There are a few people who say that QM is all wrong and physicists are full of crap. But we tend to believe the physicists because they can use QM to create cargo.

If understanding economics or anthropology gave people obvious power, if competent anthropologists or anthropologists were all rich, they'd get a lot more respect.

[Brad DeLong]

I don't think Errington is trying to "explain" anything. He's trying to misrepresent what Diamond says. He shouldn't have any trouble understanding that Diamond knows that Yali thinks that unequal distribution of cargo is a very important source of western colonial domination in Papua New Guinea, and something to be corrected.

[Steve LaBonne]

The problem with the anthropologists is that they still haven't gotten the memo about the self-defeating nature of relativism.

[J Thomas]

Does Errington misunderstand Diamond, or is he arguing that Diamond is wrong, or perhaps that Diamond is looking at things through a particular set of cultural blinders? I think it's the third, but of course these aren't mutually exclusive.

Has everybody here read about what Yali told his own people he believed?

[Timothy Burke]

Errington and Gewertz say fairly clearly in their Savage Minds posts and comments that they believe Diamond's understanding of Yali's question is factually incorrect.

They also say very clearly that they believe Diamond's factually incorrect understanding of Yali's question is not an innocent error or accident of "cultural blinders", but reflects Diamond's instrumental intention to provide the "educated haves" a way to absolve themselves of responsibility for global inequality, that Diamond's incorrect use of Yali's question is ideological and deliberate rather than an honest mistake.

[Retief]

Who cares about the minutia of the question. The anecdote of Yali is simply a rhetorical prop Diamond uses to introduce his topic. He claims to want to discover why wealth and power became distributed as they now are. As they now are must mean domination by Europeans, the "you white people." But he immediately muddies the waters by explaining why Eurasians dominated not why Europeans did. Yali is convenient because he is on an island. If a local brown politician had asked the question in Shanghai, Seoul, Hanoi, Bangkok, Tashkent, Mumbai, Peshawar, Damascus, Grozny, Cairo, or Istanbul, Diamond's answer about the inherent advantages of the Eurasian continent becomes a lot less interesting.

[anne]

Brad DeLong:

'I don't think Errington is trying to "explain" anything. He's trying to misrepresent what Diamond says. He shouldn't have any trouble understanding that Diamond knows that Yali thinks that unequal distribution of cargo is a very important source of western colonial domination in Papua New Guinea, and something to be corrected.'

Agreed. Errington and Gewertz are simply distorting Diamond.

[Steve LaBonne]

Cultural anthropolgy means never having to say you're sorry for making sh*t up.

[J Thomas]

They imply the unworthy motives that so many upper-class and upper-middle-class people might have for liking Diamond's work.

That isn't about Diamond.

They describe how Diamond's work fits into this mindset. I don't notice them saying whether Diamond did that instinctively or intentionally. They're more interested in why people like Diamond than in Diamond himself.

They describe the cultural assumptions that Yali came from. I'll look at that -- Yali's people had a religion that said the weather and the crops and all good things came from their ancestors, who heard their prayers. When they met the british their reaction was "How come your ancestors give you so much stuff our ancestors don't give us?". They listened to what the british said, to whichever british would talk to them. Particularly christian missionaries were glad to talk to them. And they understood that if they would only pray the way the christians did, theywould get all the good stuff the british did.

By Yali's time that had worn thin. Also the austrailans were upset about the christian heresies and wanted to stamp them out. Yali had been to australia and other places and he helped the british stamp out the christian heresies. He had a good friend who became an important prophet, and the friend's prophecies seemed to imply that Yali was the savior. He told people what he saw in australia. His people used to pray at altars with flowers. And when he went to australia, he saw lots of tables with flower arrangements on them. He'd ask them why they did that and they said it just looked pretty. Yali knew the australians had lied to them about christianity, and he decided that they were praying at altars like his people used to, and they were lying about that too. When he told people what he saw in australia they started going back to their old praying, at altars with tablecloths and flower arrangements.

Yali helped stamp out the christians for the australians, and it took awhile for the australians to realise that he was central to the new cult that was replacing them. When the australians figured it out they threw him in jail, which of course fit into the religion just fine. They had to keep him from showing his people how to get cargo. Someday Yali would return and bring the cargo secret with him. And he did return, and run for office and win. So he had the problem of actually finding a way to bring cargo to his people. Did he think like you would in his place, with a ritual belief in scientific method, technological innovation, R&D, and all that? Did he believe like his voters did?

How much good would Diamond's answer have given him, when his fundamental need was to actually get cargo before his voters abandoned him?

These guys claim that papua new guineans don't think about wealth the same way you do. I think they're right. When you meet a rich person do you hope he'll give you expensive gifts? Nor likely. He might intercede for you with the zoning commission, or the cops, things that don't cost him money. He might have the connections to get your son into the naval academy. He might get you a job. But he probably won't come out and give you stuff. In our system people try to concentrate capital.

But they didn't have that much capital accumulation. You're rich when people owe you favors, and in the long run what matters is that they're loyal to you when the chips are down. This is a different kind of wealth than owning a machine gun factory or having 50 sharecroppers work your land.

PNGans noticed that the british were stingy. As if PNG loyalty just wasn't worth much. And they noticed that the gods or ancestors or whoever were stingy with PNGans and not with british. That was a theological rebuke.

Machine guns represent power, 5 thugs with machineguns can easily outkill 50 brave warriors with clubs. Did Yali want machine guns so he could kill more people easily? Probably he wanted them so the australians would have to think twice.

So that's one thing these guys are claiming, that Yali probably doesn't think the way you do even though his question makes sense to you. Yali has missed the industrial revolution, he probably doesn't understand it at all. Controlling industrial output means power, but a preindustrial Yali has a different concept of power. He wants respect and his people want respect. Sure, that's tied up with cargo but it isn't about cargo the same way it is for you.

What difference does this difference make? I dunno. It's their field and they think they're making an important point.

Then they make a moral point. They think that people like Diamond because he's a historical determinist. Is he really a historical determinist? Does he really say that it was all inevitable? He leaves himself fudge factors and escape hatches, but I say that yes, that's basicly what he's saying. And that's what people like about what he's saying.

These guys want to say it isn't all inevitable, that the environment limits our options but doesn't determine them. And right there I say they might be missing one of his claims. He doesn't say that any single culture is determined, he's saying that in a large continent with lots of cultures in similar environments, it's inevitable that one of them will do things that trump the others. Your culture isn't determined, but if your choice is to do the things that let you enslave others or else be enslaved, how much freedom is that? They don't address Diamond's argument about natural selection among cultures.

And it appears that kind of natural selection hasn't happened in new guinea. They have a tremendous diversity of cultures and languages and a surprising genetic diversity. So that if something were to happen to our technology -- a medium-bad nuclear war, or a lack of alternate energy, or even a moderate-size meteor strike -- a thousand years from now someone might rediscover new guinea and find english-speaking tribes in a few valleys, with a lot of english genes, planting taro like everybody else, and they might have a legend that their gods science and technology control the weather and give them everything good.

[Jon Kay]

I see two nasty threads in the anti-Diamond statements.

Te worst one is an effective denial that PNGeans care about lifestyle and power. That is a form of Otherism every bit as bad as imperialism or racism. We can't possibly understand what They think.

The other is excuses for not thinking about what Diamond is saying. Of course Yali didn't mean what he said. He must've meant something totally differerent. Diamond just had "illustrative examples." Never mind that he didn't rest his evidence on any one, but rather on correlations and differences over a broad range of cultures.

> Your culture isn't determined, but if your choice is to do the
> things that let you enslave others or else be enslaved, how much
> freedom is that?

Isn't life great?

> And it appears that kind of natural selection hasn't happened in new
> guinea.

Of course it has. Circumstances didn't allow anybody within the valley to conquer the rest of it, though. But we can be sure plenty of cultures lost.

[Chris Lovell]

Brad wrote: "I did not say that Yali's question was *only* about things."

Your statement "And Yali was not asking about social equality--if he were, he would have said, 'Why is it that you white people treat us black people like s---?' Instead, Yali was asking about 'things'..." appears to draw a sharper contrast than you intended--to me, this looks like a statement that Yali's question is about stuff but not about social inequality.

"Back up and look at Fred and Deborah: they claim that Diamond thinks that Yali's question was *only* about things. They are wrong. Diamond does not think that Yali's question was *only* about things."

I don't want to defend everything that Fred/Deborah claim, and it's clear that Diamond is aware that Yali is concerned about social inequality. But, at least once, Diamond says that Yali's question is primarily or exclusively about *stuff*. Note the "only" in this quote: "Although Yali's question concerned only the contrasting lifestyles of New Guineans and of European whites, it can be extended to a larger set of contrasts..." I thought "lifestyle" pertained to individual decisions about consumer goods; Diamond seems to mean differences in standard of living, but as far as I can see he isn't directly addressing social inequality with the term "lifestyle." It's when Diamond extends Yali's question that social inequality comes in, but that extension of the question explicitly comes from Diamond's point of view, not Yali's.

Roger Albin writes: "A major problem with this criticism of Diamond is that it is condescending towards Yali, whom Diamond presents as a very intelligent and insightful individual. Why not take his statement at face value? Was Yali incapable of saying exactly what he felt? Does he need interpreters, particularly western interpreters?"

Diamond clearly found Yali intelligent and interesting, and presents him in a favorable light. But he doesn't take Yali's words "at face value," he interprets them, for example by glossing "cargo" as "goods." Yali's earlier career, especially his role in cargo cult (which J Thomas talks about two comments back), in which western material goods were thought to be created by supernatural sources, suggests that when he and other PNGuineans talked about cargo they meant something different than what modern Europeans and Americans mean by goods. The extensive literature on Yali and cargo cult (search for "Yali cargo" on Google scholar to see some of the range) is in part an attempt to figure out what PNGuineans mean by "cargo." So, we could say that Yali was capable "of saying exactly what he felt", but we do need an interpretation of it, because what he means by "cargo" is not necessarily what we mean by "cargo." I don't think making this interpretation is condescending at all--in fact, Lawrence's _Road Belong Cargo_ presnts Yali as a much more interesting figure than Diamond does, and certainly as intelligent and insightful a person and politician.

[anne]

JThomas, though I do not necessarily agree with your arguments they are quite interesting :)

[Roger Albin]

Chris, I agree that Lawrence presents Yali as more interesting than Diamond does(though this is based on my recollection of reading the book many years ago) but Lawrence's book is primarily concerned with the Cargo Cults and related phenomenon. Diamond, it seems to me, uses the Yali anecdote for a couple of very good reasons. First, he wants to emphasize the intelligence of non-Western peoples. Second, he wants to remind readers about the difficulty of seeing the major features of a system when you're on the inside. As for Diamond interpreting Yali, well, this is true to the extent that all exchanges require interpretation. Diamond, after all, was there, we weren't (neither were Fred and Deborah), and its not unreasonable to believe that two very intelligent people can employ terminology in a reasonably compatible manner. As for the cargo versus goods issue, its worth remembering that cargo-goods was the major way in which the PNG peoples first encountered westerners. In a simple sense, cargo-goods was really the major different feature of whites. They certainly don't seem to have been impressed with westerners as smarter or more gifted (nor should they have been). A preoccupation with cargo-goods when discussing differences between PNG peoples and westerners would be natural. Yali was also clearly aware of the huge advantages that western technology conferred.
Beyond this, I don't think that Yali meant "goods" in the sense that you see Diamond glossing the term but I don't think this is the way Diamond sees Yali's question. Diamond clearly and I think correctly understood Yali's question as a deeper one regarding the nature of 2 disparate cultures. This is the simplest and most commonsense interpretation of Yali's and Diamond's exchange, and it is taking Yali's comments at face value without adding some Foucaultian gloss (not that I'm suggesting you have done so).
As for how Yali saw western goods, this is a really interesting question. Certainly a society that attempts to use sympathetic magic to produce airplanes carrying tools sees things differently than we do but implicit in this aspect of the Cargo Cults is a very high valuation placed on western goods and an awareness of the importance of these goods in generating the powerful advantages enjoyed by Westerners. This is one of the things that makes the Cargo Cults so interesting; an effort to modernize your society without abandoning a supernatural worldview. I predict that Yali's encounter with Diamond occurred after the failure of Cargo Cult rituals to produce more cargo. This is probably when Yali really started to speculate on the basic differences between the industrial western world (of which he probably saw only a limited range of products) and PNG.