The World Until Yesterday
In The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond compares
traditional societies with the more-mainstream modern culture in an
effort to answer the question posed by the subtitle --- "What can we
learn from traditional societies?"
Diamond draws upon his extensive experience with the people of New
Guinea (many of whom had no contact with Western society until 1931),
along with data from other researchers about hunter-gatherer groups
around the world, to reach wide-ranging conclusions about how
traditional people interacted, what they ate, and how they lived.
In the process, Diamond doesn't sugar-coat the reality of traditional
societies, admitting that warfare, infanticide, and many other aspects
of these cultures are things we're glad to be rid of. However, he
does suggest other features of traditional societies that we can
selectively incorporate into our own culture to improve our lives.
The book is a bit hit or
miss, with some chapters stating the seemingly obvious, while others
delve deep into fascinating topics I'd never considered. It's also
data heavy, perhaps because the author's Guns, Germs, and Steel
opened Diamond up to wide-spread criticism from historians. What I
only realized after reading this later book, though, is that Diamond is
an anthropologist, not a historian, so his conclusions are more about
broader issues of the human experience than they are about factual
histories.
Later posts in this week's lunchtime series are going to suggest homesteading-related implications of Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday.
However, I'll skip over discussing about two-thirds of the book, either
because I don't feel like I have the know-how to rehash certain
assertions (like his parenting tips), or because I don't want to open an
un-homesteading-related can of worms (for example, about Diamond's
analysis of the purposes of religion). Which is a long way of
saying --- if what you read here sounds interesting, this is one book
you'll want to delve into more deeply on your own.
| This post is part of our The World Until Yesterday lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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This book is going on my reading list. My alma mater would be distressed to find that Diamond is not a historian. I took a upper level history course there in the 90s entirely devoted to Guns, Germs and Steel. Although it is a tough read, it has provided me with some effective arguments against racism. Sad that such arguments are still needed. Good Blog!