Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The protagonist is worried. His friend's leg is gangrenous and they are high in the Andes. They ride slowly in the direction of a distant hospital. Within two hours they meet, by chance, an English doctor who is also, by chance, an anthropologist. After amputating the leg he talks: “Savage societies are simply civilized societies with the lid off. We can learn to understand them fairly easily. And when we've learnt to understand savages, we've learnt, as we discover, to understand the civilized. And that's not all. Savages are usually hostile and suspicious. The anthropologist has got to learn to overcome that hostility and suspicion. And when he's learnt that, he's learnt the whole secret of politics.” “Which is …?” “That if you treat other people well, they'll treat you well.” “You're a bit optimistic, aren't you?” “No. In the long run,” said ( the now one-legged ) Mark impatiently, “we shall all be dead. What about the short run?” “You've got to take a risk.” “But Europeans aren't like your Sunday-school savages. It'll be an enormous risk.” “Possibly. But always smaller than the risk you run by treating people badly and goading them into a war. Besides, they're not worse than savages. They've just been badly handled — need a bit of anthropology, that's all.” ( Huxley 1936 : 581) Most of our themes are already here: the value of cross-cultural comparison to illluminate our understanding ... log in or subscribe to read full text