I used brutality merely in its descriptive sense and perhaps I need to re-enforce what I said earlier - such tensions arise more intensely in societies under stress (we are not seeing a glimpse of pre-contact aboriginal life in this story).
Imagine within a few months 7 out of every 10 people had died (young old, male female) in a society bound by personal kin relations (whole subgroups simply disappeared). Add to this invaders who straddle a penisular, frighten off game, interrupt cermonies, deny access to important resources and disrupt fishing. It would be as if HG Wells' martian invasion had occured. All of this happened in less than two years, while the smallpox swept across the continent for years afterwards, amongst p[eople who had never even heard of the invasion. This is the context of Abaroo and Benelong's stories.
What I was trying to show was that by understanding the real differences in culture, history and economy, even the fairly scarce evidence of Tench's book can render a lot of evidence about people who are not literate and do not leave their voices in the historical record. Further that by understanding these differences we get a better view of ourselves as we are faced with placing assumed points of view in historical context which show the social nature of such assumptions (history is an act of self-criticism).
What does this mean in terms of Abaroo's species-being, I am unsure, but I believe she was far more conscious of her prupose and the effects of her action on her fellow kin, than any of the Europeans she confronted were of theirs. Her world view, despite its spiritualisms was soundly based on conscious human relations, her labour was not alienated, her person a clear and acknolwedged part of the whole. This is the common heritage of so-called primitives - they know who they are, they understand how they relate to their kin and where they stand in that relation and likewise with their land and its resources. It is not scientific and perhaps not rational, in the formal sense, but it is knowledge denied to modern people which we feel as longing to become something other than what we are.
Is it equal? - well obviously not, scientific understanding (true science that is not quasi-science) is far superior. Are they less rational? - not by one iota. Is their existence richer? - yes it is and this is why aspects are clung to despite every pressure to become "european". Would I trade my place in the world for pre-contact aboriginal life? I could not even imagine it and I would fail miserably to be happy in it.
History is not a smorgas board, we don't get to pick bits we like and pass over the ones we don't, nor is it about ideal types and grand logics. To properly understand it we need all our intellectual resources and we must expect things to be different from what we expect.
As for: "Benalong fulfilling a social role that is part of a successful long-term tribal survival strategy and, say, the behavior of the Guatemalan army" I cannot imagine the basis for such a comparison.
I suggest in this instance that we have been talking at cross purposes, and perhaps I have in this reply been too brusk, but as stated the gulf between our approaches seems remarkably wide, I do not even know how properly to approach it.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia
--- Message Received --- From: Brad DeLong <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 18:17:20 -0800 Subject: Re: Pre-historic human societies (Grant Lee)
>What do we make of such casual brutality? It sounds obscene that
>someone might be killed for such a minor social problem, but of
>course in these small desert bands this was no minor problem, it
>threatened collective existence. Those that took the decision were
>the elders, though discussion had been widespread - does this equate
>to the dominance of the elders who merely for the sake of an easy
>existence would kill this young man? Or was it simply one of the few
>options open to them - as I think was the case.
I would say that hunter-gatherer bands in which the elders were not "brutal" were unlikely to survive--so that it wasn't for the sake of an easy existence, but for the sake of any existence at all. Or perhaps the right way to say it is that the structure imposed on society enforces brutality...
It's hard. On the one hand you don't want to minimize the fact that Abaroo does not seem to be realizing her species-being. On the other hand, there is a qualitative difference that you don't want to minimize between Benalong fulfilling a social role that is part of a successful long-term tribal survival strategy and, say, the behavior of the Guatemalan army...
Brad DeLong