Play Book Tag discussion

I didn't really connect with this book. The main characters' relationship felt strange to me, and I had trouble grasping it. This made the story seem to move too slowly for my liking. Sometimes, I found myself more interested in the events happening in the tribes they lived with.

However, despite not enjoying the story much, there was one idea that caught my attention and stuck with me. Andrew said: “It occurred to me that the Dobu sounded a lot like him: his paranoid streak, his dark humor, his distrust of pleasure, his secrecy. I couldn’t help questioning the research. When only one person is the expert on a particular people, do we learn more about the people or the anthropologist when we read the analysis?” I believe it's often our own personalities that shape our views of others, rather than giving us an objective understanding of them. This made me wonder how many stereotypes are created this way, through one person's perspective on a diverse group.

That is an interesting observation, Diana. I'm sure some stereotypes have originated in this manner. I would hope newer scientific methods would help to avoid it, but people are people so we can never fully take out the subjective.

@Diana - that struck me as well. How can something so based on individual observation ever remove the subjective? I don't think it is possible.

In fact, as a lawyer I have seen time and again the same event, the same conversation, the same court appearance is remembered differently by every single person in attendance. Not on all points, but in some important way.

Diana wrote: "I didn't really connect with this book. The main characters' relationship felt strange to me, and I had trouble grasping it. This made the story seem to move too slowly for my liking. Sometimes, I ..."

That’s a great observation, and this is what I love about books that show interactions between people in different cultures. When we can see how easy it is for a character to misinterpret others, we might be more aware of when we do it ourselves. In the example you cited, it also shows that we often recognize our own faults in other people.

I think the author was also making a sly reference to Margaret Mead’s book about the sexual freedom of young people in the Samoan Islands. Critics thought she saw what she wanted to see. (She had fairly liberal attitudes, and romantic relationships in her own life.) She might have inadvertently rewarded the teens for talking about their sex lives, leading them to make things up, to tell her what she wanted to hear.

NancyJ wrote: "She might have inadvertently rewarded the teens for talking about their sex lives, leading them to make things up, to tell her what she wanted to hear."

Oh, that's very interesting, Nancy. I don't know much about her but saw a lot of comments about her liberal views. And your suggestion sounds very possible to be true.

Margaret Mead and her methods and published results particularly went through a period of strenuous criticism and debunking in the 1980s by anthropologists allegedly getting proof that those in the tribe she interviewed made things up. Also that since she wrote and published for the general public and not professional journals (coincidentally making a lot of money for the time), she should not be treated as a serious academic researcher. Since it was men who launched the attack, I have often wondered how much misogyny and professional jealousy came into play then because Margaret Mead up to then was the Gold Standard. What is even more interesting is that the alleged proofs discrediting Mead's research have since been challenged and mostly discredited. Mead's research integrity has been somewhat restored, though qualified that her own liberal views colored her interpretations but not sufficiently to discredit them. Currently the belief is only one or two teenagers of the many she interviewed exaggerated, not enough to throw out all her work. She had a long and storied career as an anthropologist, after all.

I find these sorts of academic arguments rather interesting because the core issue is whether there is an objective truth that can be established from study that is not and cannot be solely objective. Careers rise and fall based on new 'research' or 'analysis' that is no more objective.

Theresa wrote: "Careers rise and fall based on new 'research' or 'analysis' that is no more objective.."

Yes, Theresa, I totally agree with you here. This paradox is a sad truth.