Wade discusses Donald Brown’s concept of Universal People, an analogy with Chomsky’s (always Chomsky) Universal Grammar. This is really just a different way of talking about quasi-universal characteristics of human society, a subject pioneered in modern times by George Murdoch. In other words, the mother-child bond, male dominance, reciprocity and barter, belief in the supernatural and the practice of some kind of religion. There is a long line of studies, including my own The Politics of Human Nature, and Wade does not seem to realize that the recent works he is citing are hardly path-breaking. One older piece of information is that observation that the San typically work 40 hours a week or less to provide for necessities, make tools, etc.
He quite properly dismisses Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s characterization of the !kung san as “harmless,” but he readily accepts the other erroneous term, egalitarian. While it is true that there is not much status to be had in a nomadic group of hunter-gatherers, men still dominate over women, adults over the immature, and parents over children. Since there is no need, at their primitive level of existence, for organized social structures, and since any family is free to wander off whenever it feels like it–fission being the normal way of resolving tensions–the !kung have nothing in the way of hierarchy. But, in a society based on the family, the father possesses considerable authority. In other words, one might just as well say that the !kung represent in embryonic form the patriarchal authority that develops into kingship and the state, just as they also represent most social institutions in embryonic form.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Dr. Fleming continues his discussion of Wade
Descent of Man, Pt. 2
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