> This discussion seems to be based on a caricature of
> pre-modern & non-Western cultures as stable, pristine,
> internally homogeneous, independent units disconnected
> from each other. (There's a really good book called
> Exotics at Home by Micaela di Leonardo on this topic.)
> - -Angie
>
If that's what you think I respectfully submit you haven't been reading the thread attentively.
The points addressed largely concern the relative merits of hunting and gathering versus agriculture, paralleled with a discussion of the extent to which modern 'primitive' peoples deliberately avoid contact with civilisation (not with 'each other').
Like I've said before, we are just trying to kill off certain stereotypes of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle (e.g that it doesn't provide sufficient food).
We have not been putting forth New Age versions of such societies as paradise (no one has contended there is no war, no disease, no patriarchy ...) - although in so far as paradise is a place with little work, and such material wants as there are are satisfied, it's maybe not that much of a mischaracterization.
The article you posted smells something like a right-wing rant - American academia as under seige from all those left-wing revisionists ...
Eric Leher