MetaFilter posts tagged with jareddiamond

Natives Telling Stories

CheeseDigestsAll — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:00:59 -0800

Last year, best-selling biologist Jared Diamond (prev) published an article in the New Yorker describing a cycle of revenge in Papua New Guinea, contrasting the conflicting human needs for vengeance and for justice. (Mefi discussion). Now, the subjects of Diamond's article are seeking their own revenge, suing the publishers for $10 million, claiming Diamond's story amounts to false accusations of serious criminal activity, including murder. Behind the lawsuit is a lengthy investigation by the Art Science Research Laboratory, a media criticism organization founded by Rhonda Roland Shearer. The ASRL investigation points to several significant errors attributable to Diamond and a lack of serious fact-checking by the New Yorker. It appears that Diamond may have relied on a single source, who may have been more of a raconteur than historian, and his reputation as a science writer will surely suffer as a result. Of course, the larger question of verifying anthropological studies remains. As a New Guinean notes, "When foreigners come to our culture, we tell stories as entertainment."

God, Memes and Steel

Artw — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:34:29 -0800

Jared Diamond on the Evolution of Religions. (SLYT)

Vengeance Is Ours: What can tribal societies tell us about our need to get even?

chunking express — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 11:20:57 -0800

Vengeance Is Ours: What can tribal societies tell us about our need to get even? From the article:

In 1992, when Daniel Wemp was about twenty-two years old, his beloved paternal uncle Soll was killed in a battle against the neighboring Ombal clan. In the New Guinea Highlands, where Daniel and his Handa clan live, uncles and aunts play a big role in raising children, so an uncle’s death represents a much heavier blow than it might to most Americans. Daniel often did not even distinguish between his biological father and other male clansmen of his father’s generation. And Soll had been very good to Daniel, who recalled him as a tall and handsome man, destined to become a leader. Soll’s death demanded vengeance. Daniel told me that responsibility for arranging revenge usually falls on the victim’s firstborn son or, failing that, on one of his brothers. “Soll did have a son, but he was only six years old at the time of his father’s death, much too young to organize the revenge,” Daniel said. “On the other hand, my father was felt to be too old and weak by then; the avenger should be a strong young man in his prime. So I was the one who became expected to avenge Soll.” As it turned out, it took three years, twenty-nine more killings, and the sacrifice of three hundred pigs before Daniel succeeded in discharging this responsibility.

[via kottke]

Collapse!

kliuless — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 20:30:10 -0800

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed [oh and, also see :]

Easter Island, Earth Island

kliuless — Sat, 13 Mar 2004 22:15:12 -0800

Twilight at Easter by Jared Diamond, offers us a clear summary of "Easter's settlement and subsequent history, its statues, the frightening collapse of its society, and its broader significance in our world beset with similar environmental problems." [via JBD's SDJ]

An academic justification for the multi-cultural society?

dash_slot- — Thu, 14 Nov 2002 05:22:03 -0800

HOW TO GET RICH, by Jared Diamond.
[via Boing-Boing] An academic justification for the pluralist society? Clay Shirley (guest blogger @ B-B) makes the point: "In a finding that everyone worried about having a single global IP regime should read, Diamond concludes that innovation requires having several different legal, cultural and technological regimes at the same time, in competition with one another. Columbus had to go to several countries before he got funding for the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. Had there been a pan-European agreement on naval expeditions, he would never have left port." [More inside]
*Warning*: 12, easily read pages in link. I hope this thread is a grower...

homunculus — Wed, 23 Oct 2002 09:45:35 -0800

"Religions potentially offer practical, social, and motivational benefits to their adherents. But religions differ among themselves in the degree to which they motivate their adherents to have children, to rear those children to become productive members of society, and to convert or kill believers in competing religions. Those religions that are more successful in these respects will tend to spread, and gain and retain adherents, at the expense of other religions." So says Jared Diamond in his review of David Sloan Wilson's book, Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, which views religion from an evolutionary perspective. Another writer interested in the evolution of religions is Toby Lester, who examines how present-day religious movements are "mutating with Darwinian restlessness."

lagado — Thu, 23 Nov 2000 20:45:30 -0800

The Polynesians were, undoubtedly, the greatest navigators of the ancient world. Using outrigger canoes, they were able to colonize lands spread as far apart as Madagascar and Easter Island and as far south as New Zealand. But where did they originally come from? Jared Diamond demonstrates how, by using linguistic and archaeological evidence, it's possible to reconstruct their journey from China and Taiwan to the Philippines, from there on to Borneo, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Guinea and out to the Pacific one way and Madagascar in the other. As an exercise, try comparing the numbers 1 to 10 in all Polynesian and Indonesian languages, to see how the language gradually changed as they hopped from island to island.