Robert B. Edgerton, Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony (New York: The Free Press, 1992). 278 pp. Cloth, including notes and index. $24.95.
The exaltation of the primitive was perhaps best captured in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's famous phrase about "the noble savage." Pre-industrial, pre-civilized man, Rousseau asserted, lived an idyllic existence in harmony with nature. In our times, Hollywood glamorizes traditional, indigenous cultures -- a well known recent example being Dances With Wolves -- while politically correct anthropologists blame colonialism for destroying the morally superior and ecologically conscious folk societies they conquered. "Multiculturalism" is perhaps the latest banner under which the cultural relativists march, lauding the contributions of all diverse cultures (except their own Western heritage).
To a certain extent the fascination with the primitive is an expression of the alienation and anomie felt by many moderns in the cold universe their secularism has created. God may be dead in much of the postmodern, post-industrial West, but the search for the spiritual and magical lives on. Small-scale, traditional societies are thus romanticized, and, with the growing influence of the environmentalist movement, held up as exemplary stewards of Mother Earth. Primitive communities, it is argued, enjoy placid and cooperative social relations, have developed ingenious and environmentally-conscious medicinal remedies and appropriate technologies, and live tree of the stress and frenzy of the Western capitalist world.
Even those who do not paint such a rosy picture refuse to make judgments against such societies. Cultural relativism asserts that no objective standards exist for comparing the cultural practices of different groups; rather, each's patterns of belief and habits can only be understood and evaluated from within their own context. What others do may appear to us to be bizarre, pointless, inefficient, cruel, or harmful, but must be accepted only as different from us, and most likely appropriate and positive for them. "Adaptivists" argue that the longevity of such practices is proof positive of their value to the community; to have survived so long they must be fulfilling some important or necessary function.
II.
In Sick Societies, Robert Edgerton presents a politically incorrect rebuttal of this prevailing wisdom. While quick to affirm the adaptive and impressive achievements of many small-scale societies, Edgerton forcefully disabuses his readers of the romanticized claims of the adaptivists. "Traditional beliefs and practices may be useful, may even serve as important adaptive mechanisms," he writes, "but they may also be inefficient, harmful, and even deadly." Sick Societies calls for "a moratorium on the uncritical assumption that the traditional beliefs and practices of folk populations are adaptive while those of modern societies are not" and a "commitment to examining the relative adaptiveness of the beliefs and practices of all societies."
Edgerton explains that most of what we know about traditional societies comes from the anthropologists who have lived among them. But the ethnographic record tends to underreport unfavorable, nonadaptive practices by these groups. This is because the anthropologists do not want to offend their hosts, or they become emotionally attached to them, or they believe that apparently cruel or irrational habits actually serve some useful function that the researchers have not yet discerned.
Though relativist and adaptivist assumptions dominate the field, Edgerton lists at length the large number of social scientists who reject them. His coverage of the empirical and ethnographic record is exhaustive, but unfortunately, also at times exhausting. It does serve to show, though, that considerable numbers of respected anthropologists think it folly to believe all cultural practices are equal, just different.
The bulk of the book contains countless examples of maladaptive practices drawn from hundreds of studies of primitive societies in all areas of the developing world. By "maladaptive," Edgerton refers to practices and beliefs that do harm to the individuals and societies who hold them. He addresses upfront the tricky issue of
"what's maladaptive for one group might be normal for another." His criteria for a maladaptive behavior is one that causes objective harm measured, for example, by the physical well-being of the community's members (e.g., lower life expectancies, higher illness rates), dissatisfaction expressed by the community members themselves, and, in the most extreme case, the failure of the group to survive.
Edgerton's case studies are descriptively colorful and span the globe. The Tasmanians, he reports, followed maladaptive practices in terms of their treatment of women. Females were the chief food gatherers, yet cultural norms dictated that they receive the least and worst food rations, leaving them weak and in ill health, and thus reducing their abilities to forage. Though living on an island and often at the edge of hunger, the Tasmanians did not fish. The Ijaw of Nigeria, despite their great desire for children as potential workers, killed all sets of newborn twins (apparently out of fear of offending some god). Most traditional societies restrict pregnant and lactating women from animal protein, leading to anemia, small birth weights, and low immunity/resistance to disease by mothers and children. The adaptive value of sickly women and children is not self-evident. The Maring of highland Papua New Guinea require the widow and close surviving relatives of a deceased male to mourn by fasting and refraining from food-producing work. This weakens the survivors: "As more and more nutritionally marginal people died, increasing numbers of previously healthy adults were compelled to deny themselves food while mourning, and they too soon suffered from malnutrition and the consequent risk of infection." The Sebei of Uganda treat people with severe headaches by pressing a red-hot spear against the sufferer's forehead -- a practice about which Edgerton, with characteristic understatement, comments, "While [the Sebei] may well have convinced that person not to complain about headaches again. . . it seems unlikely that the treatment addressed the source of pain."
Edgerton also challenges the idea that only people in modern societies experience the debilitating effects of stress. People in traditional societies, he reports from a large number of ethnographies, often live in terrible fear of community-enforced taboos and capricious, malevolent spirits. Women have to contend with heavy burdens of labor and frequent beatings from their husbands. Many traditional societies have engaged regularly in warfare and headhunting, practices that produced chronic uneasiness. Suicide rates in some primitive societies have been unusually high -- in one instance Edgerton cites, some 57 percent of deaths in the community were suicides. Mental illness has also been said to be a problem exclusively of the modem, hyper-active West, but reports of depression, schizophrenia, and psychosis in small-scale societies abound.
Unlike the adaptivists who posit some hidden positive function behind even the most bizarre rituals, many people in traditional societies themselves are discontented with traditional ways, according to Edgerton. Sometimes they rebel openly against them, and, when forced to abandon them (for example, under colonial edicts) did so quickly and without noticeable regret. In contrast, some anthropologists will tenaciously study traditional, seemingly pointless customs in hopes of discovering their true meaning and value, rather than admitting, with some of the society's members, that such practices are, afterall, simply pointless.
Edgerton fleshes out the idea of maladaption further by discussing how neighbouring communities sharing similar environmental challenges sometimes adopt different responses. Some react in maladaptive ways that are seen as such by groups in close proximity who have responded more effectively to the same ecology. Coastal Australian aborigines living across the waters from the Tasmanians, for example, were astonished that the islanders did not fish. The adoption of maladaptive practices by some groups and not others in response to similar circumstances suggests that psychological factors play a role in determining behavior patterns. This differs from the contentions of some anthropologists who argue that culture is completely a product of the external environment and its challenges. Culture, in other words, is not determined by the external world, but is also shaped by the choices -- sometimes foolish or irrational – of people.
Some societies engaged in such maladaptive practices as to become extinct, while many others remain at a precarious level of existence because of unwillingness to change their traditional ways in favor of ones that could produce greater food supplies, more physical security, and better health. Still others adopt practices that are beneficial only to the small, powerful, ruling elite while maladaptive and harmful to the majority of the population. While all societies contain some maladaptive customs, some are "sicker" than others, and if anything is to be done about addressing the human suffering resulting from such practices, the idol of cultural relativism must be destroyed.
III.
Edgerton's book is invaluable for its comprehensive and persuasive case against cultural relativism. It succeeds in shattering the "myth of primitive harmony," just as his subtitle promises. For Christians engaged in cross-cultural ministry, and especially in development work, Edgerton's study is must reading. For, with the best of intentions, Christians in overseas ministries often are oversensitive to charges of ethnocentricity and the failure to respect others' cultures. It is surely appropriate to "walk a mile in the other's shoes" before passing judgment on another's habits. Additionally, Christians -- of all people -- should be people of graciousness, patience, understanding, and humility, open to learning from others. Nonetheless, uncritical acceptance of nonChristian cultural practices is dangerous and wrong. When traditional cultural patterns pose barriers to development and/ or harm the physical and emotional wellbeing of the society's members, they can and should be challenged. When they are rooted in anti-Christian assumptions, they should be appropriately labelled "false." Efforts should be taken to shine Biblical light on such practices, demonstrating just how they are untruthful or harmful. In short, Edgerton's massive collection of evidence should be taken by Western development workers as a reminder that, while they certainly can learn much from the traditional societies in which they minister, they also have something to offer, something to teach that can contribute to a reduction of maladaptive behaviors and consequent improvements in the community's well-being.
IV.
Edgerton's book has its limits, though, for orthodox Christians. Sick Societies ably demonstrates that in many instances "suffering savages" rather than "noble savages" populate primitive, small-scale societies. It rejects the idea (posited by epistimological relativists) that these people are so different from us as to be "beyond knowing." It asserts that our own culture too, contains irrational and harmful traits, and that what is needed is a willingness to examine all societies without prejudice or romanticism, affirming that which is adaptive and good for people and rejecting that which is not. All of this is good. But Sick Societies fails to explain why maladaptive practices arise, and Edgerton's secularism makes it impossible for him to determine the real answers. The best hypothesis he can muster is to say that throughout the course of Darwinian evolution, that which eventually became man developed various practices (or experienced genetic changes) that may have served a useful purpose at a particular point, but proved maladaptive in a later, different environment. Orthodox Christians reject evolution and have a more reasonable explanation for the sources of maladaptation: sin and heresy.
Some of the maladaptive practices Edgerton describes are rooted in selfishness, pride, greed, and a desire to control others -- such as men's oppression of women and ruling elites' oppression of commoners. Orthodox Christians who understand the effects of the Fall and the inherent sinfulness of man are unsurprised at this. Other maladaptations are rooted in false understandings about reality. Animist societies, for example, fear the alleged spirit inhabitants of trees, birds, rivers, mountains, and stars, and think it necessary to appease such gods with offerings of food, crafts, blood, and sometimes even children. Some primitive societies lack an understanding of the real causes of disease, and thus adopt "healing" measures that inflict great pain and further harm, failing to address the root source of the malady.
Many maladaptive customs, indeed, are irrational in an even deeper way than Edgerton understands: they are "irrational" in the sense that they do not conform to the reality that exists as God created it. Herein, then, lies an additional imperative for evangelism and discipleship as part and parcel of Christian development work. Sharing the Gospel is necessary not only for the salvation of the members of traditional societies. It is also necessary for opening their eyes to a more accurate interpretation of the reality in which they exist. The Christian worldview, fleshed out in God's propositional revelation in His Word, provides the most basic framework for understanding the true nature of man, the right ordering of human society, a right relationship with the natural world, and fellow ship with God. It provides the basis for understanding the universe in which we live, so that our responses to that universe are appropriate, healthy, and "rational" in that they "fit with" reality and thus are truly adaptive. Christianity is, in Francis Schaeffer's phrase, "true truth." And, as Jesus promised, truth sets people free -- free from bondage to a false view of reality that stems from their subjective imaginings about the universe in which they live. This, hence, frees people from the maladaptive, harmful practices that emerge out of their false view. Christianity opens the way to knowledge of objective truth, and to a truer experience of life and joy. As Udo Middelmann has written:
God has made an objective universe and personal beings who can perceive this universe truly. The Bible allows the individual not only to live with his perceptions but to measure these with the Word of God and the reality in which all individuals have to live. This is the basis for a profound enjoyment of reality. . . . The more I can see the truth, the more justification I have to really live. Furthermore, both reality and the Bible impose a limitation on my own subjective imagination and consciousness-perception. Therefore, because I truly know what reality is I have a good chance of living in it and not being hurt by it.¹
In the final analysis, Edgerton's accounts of maladaptation are descriptions of traditional societies living in a reality they misunderstand, and suffering as a result. His plea at the end of Sick Societies is for a greater willingness to judge other cultures in order to alleviate the human suffering caused by maladaptation. Edgerton has written a courageous book that is sure to irk (or even infuriate) his cultural relativist colleagues in anthropology. But the answer to his call to help others "help themselves to suffer less" will only come from those who can teach the life-giving truth of Christianity.
¹Udo Middelmann, Pro-Existence: The Place of Man in the Circle of Creativity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1974), p. 64. Emphasis mine.
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