travis@houston.cs.columbia.edu (Travis Lee Winfrey) (09/13/90)
Well, to offer a new subject, I found the following short description in a book called "The Collapse of Complex Societies" (full reference at end). I have little to add to it, other than to note that I think of examples like this whenever I hear people discuss the "natural urge to marry" or whatever acculturated trait they think instinctual to humans. t ------------------------------------------------------------ The Ik are a people of northern Uganda who live at what must surely be the extreme of deprivation and disaster. A largely hunting and gathering people who have in recent times practiced some crop planting, the Ik are not classifiable as a complex society in the sense of Chapter 2. They are, nonetheless, a morbidly fascinating case of collapse in which a former, low level of social complexity has essentially disappeared. Due to drought and disruption by national boundaries of the traditional cycle of movement, the Ik live in such a food- and water- scarce environment that there is absolutely no advantage to reciprocity and social sharing. The Ik, in consequence, display almost nothing of what could be considered social organization. They are so highly fragmented that most activities, especially subsistence, are pursued individually. Each Ik will spend days or weeks on his or her own, searching for food and water. Sharing is virtually nonexistent. Two siblings or other kin can live side-by-side, one dying of starvation, and the other well nourished, without the latter giving the slightest assistance to the other. The family as a social unit has become dysfunctional. Even conjugal pairs don't form a cooperative unit except for a few specific purposes. Their motivation for marriage or cohabitation is that one person can't build a house alone. The members of a conjugal pair forage alone, and do not share food. Indeed, their foraging is so independent that if both members happen to be at their residence together it is by accident. Each conjugal compound is stockaded against the others. Several compounds together form a village, but this is a largely meaningless occurence. Villages have no political functions or organization, not even a central meeting place. Children are minimally cared for by their mothers until age three, and then are put out to fend for themselves. This separation is absolute. By age three, they are expected to find their own food and shelter, and those that survive do provide for themselves. Children band into age-sets for protection, since adults will steal a child's food whenever possible. No food sharing occurs within an age-set. Groups of children will forage in agricultural fields, which scares off birds and baboons. This is often given as the reason for having children. Although little is known about how the Ik got into their present situation, there are some indications of former organizational patterns. They possess clan names, although today these have no structural significance. They live in villages, but these no longer have any political meaning. The traditional authority structure of family, lineage, and clan has been progressively weakened. It appears that a former level of organization has simply been abandoned by the Ik as unprofitable (Turnbull 1978). ... Some simpler collapsing societies, like the Ik, clearly do not possess these features of complexity [central food supply, religion, etc.]. Collapase for them entails loss of the common elements of band or tribal social structure --- lineages and clans, reciprocity and other kin obligations, village political structure, relations of respect and authority, and constraints on non-sociable behavior. For such people, collapse has surely led to a survival-of-the-fittest situation, but as Turnbull (1978) emphasizes, this is but a logical adjustment to their desperate circumstances. - Joseph A. Tainter, "The Collapse of Complex Societies", pp. 17-20 (Cambridge University Press, 1988, New Studies in Archeology series) Bibliography Turnbull, Colin M., (1978). Rethinking the Ik: A Functional Non-Social System. In "Extinction and Survival in Human Populations", edited by Charles D. Laughlin, Jr., and Ivan A. Brady, pp 49-75. Columbia University Press, New York. ------------------------------------------------------------
morphy@chamber.cco.caltech.edu (Jones Maxime Murphy) (09/19/90)
[I've edited out most of the included text as there isn't much of a reason to include all of the original article. Please, everyone, it makes our job a lot easier if you quote only what you need to in order to track a reference. Also, the subject of this is drifting a bit from the charter of the newsgroup so I've set followups to talk.politics.misc. -MHN] travis@houston.cs.columbia.edu (Travis Lee Winfrey) writes: >Well, to offer a new subject, I found the following short >description in a book called "The Collapse of Complex Societies" >(full reference at end). I have little to add to it, other than >to note that I think of examples like this whenever I hear people >discuss the "natural urge to marry" or whatever acculturated >trait they think instinctual to humans. > > Due to drought and disruption by national boundaries of the >traditional cycle of movement, the Ik live in such a food- and water- >scarce environment that there is absolutely no advantage to >reciprocity and social sharing. The Ik, in consequence, display >almost nothing of what could be considered social organization. This seems kind of obvious, but I have to ask it anyway. Why are people doing anthropological observations when they should be helping people feed themselves? From the above ovservations, infant mortality must be astronomically high, and life expectancy must be abysmal. Doing "research" in this tragic situation is at best callous, and at worst inhuman and irresponsible.