THE WAYS OF SAVAGES
Savage Civilisation. By Tom Harrisson. (Gollancz. 16s.) Naven. By Gregory Bateson. (Cambridge University Press. ISS.) RECENTLY there has been a recrudescence of interest in the native peoples of the Western Pacific, stimulated by the ex- plorations of Mr. Hides and the Messrs. Leahey, by the adventurous collections of Lord Moyne, by the piquant research of Dr. Margaret Mead. To the literature of this area the present two books are notable contributions. Both are the work of zoologists who have found mono interest in the study of the human animal ; both deal with bizarre customs and little-known people, the one with cannibals in the New Hebrides, the other with head-hunters in New Guinea. But otherwise they differ radically, in material, style and outlook. Mr. Harrisson is fundamentally an artist, with something of the historian thrown in ; Mr. Bateson is a scientist.
Mr. Harrisson's main theme is the vitality of a primitive culture' and the harm which white civilisation has done with its mixture of commercialism and proselytisation. He is not the first nor will he be the last to fall under the native spell. Where his . book is different from most is that he does not sentimentalise,.....be_writes with -a -sting, and he describes the ways of people with whom he really has lived, and not merely pretended to live. This living among natives is no mean feat. It demands not only a dispassionate attitude towards dirt; nakedness and cruelty, but a stomach literally as well as figuratiiely strong—baked yams and breadfruit are good, but need more than the ordinary European's digestion for them to be*continued diet. Add to this the swarming flies and mosquitoes, tropical ulcers, and the prospect of being killed by blackwater or a gun, and it will be realised what the author endured to come by his appreciation of native values. Most of his 'treatment of his material is vivid and impression- istic.i his description of the native dances, for example, is magnificently alive: And among much else that is good to meet he hai an appreciation "Of the beauty and pattern of detail in piimitie conversation that knows no literature. Perhaps the most delightful episode in the book is that of the irruption of the Hollywood touch—provided by Douglas Fairbanks—:which foUnd to its bewilderment a people who could not be bought into doing a thing that did not amuse them. This gives the perfect relief to the note of tragedy which generally prevails.
But in such a book, written strongly and without quali- fication, there are- inevitable weaknesses. It leaves one with the feeling .that much of the interpretation of native custom, as distinct from the record of it, is second-hand—derived, as acknowledged, from Deacon and Layard. If an anthropologist were to be critical he would observe that on the author's own showing he wrote not a note while in Malekula—yet memory is notoriously unreliable. He would doubt if the Melanesians are widely considered as the lowest people in the world ; if the Polynesians .. really had a sextant (of coconut, anyway) ; if the New Hebrides megaliths are Polynesian generation-
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records. " Current theory of Pacific culture growth is very unsatisfactory indeed, but it is not made less so by dogmatic assumption.- And the author's criticism is more than a decade out of date when he accuses anthropology of laying no stress on correct approach to the daily life of the people, and cites only •Levy-Brula and Rivers as the unhappy examples. The names of Malinowski, Fortune, Evans-Pritchard or Hogbin might have occurred to him at once as those of men who have really lived among natives.
The best part of the book is the analysis of European contact. " Carelessly we obliterate what we do not under-
stand." Out of a well-documented review of the literature, reinforced by his own experiences, Mr. Harrisson has pro- duced a most telling criticism, of which the indictment of the inefficiency of the Condominium Government is not the least part.
In contrast to this brightly assured, aggressive, essentially straightforward work stands the cautious, self-analytical,
thematically complicated book of Mr. Bateson. Like Mr. Harrisson, he has a flair for neologism—but where the former speaks of " uncalico " and " civgunization " the latter is concerned with " ethos," " eidos " and " schismogenesis." The book is an attempt to describe the emotional tone of the life of the Iatmul tribe, head-hunters, sorcerers, debaters-and ritualists, by starting from the analysis of an institution known as naven. Naven is a kind of ceremonial congratulation offered to a person by his or her mother's brother when he or she has done something significant for the first time—caught a fish, cooked a sago pancake, made a canoe—or something important in itself—as killing a man. For such congratula- tion the nephew or niece has to pay, in the shells which are the valuables of that area. The outstanding feature of the ceremonies is the dressing of men in women:s .Clothing and of women in the clothing of men. These people have no social classes, no differences of rank, but there is a strongly marked contrast between the life of the men and that of--the women. The former are occupied with the more spectacular, dramatic affairs of life, the latter with the more dull and uninteresting details of gardening, cooking and the care of children. But in naven they get their periodical chMce of fun, and they seize it with vim. Wearing male oh-Laments, with painted faces—ordinarily a male privilege in that society— they swagger about, rattling the men's lime sticks which they have borrowed. The apex of their self-assertion is the license they have to thrash certain of their menfolk.
The author examines this custom from all angles—kinship, economic reciprocity, religious belief and personal tempera- ment—and relates it to the prevailing standardised types' of behaviour which the society prefers. The result.is adexc.eed- ingly interesting and stimulating book. The readeemay think the exposition laboured at times, and the terms unnecessarily complex. But there is good meat in it for any social scientist, and the ordinary man will find in it a picturesque account of
some aspects of New Guinea native life. _
ICAYMOND FIRTH. ICAYMOND FIRTH.
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