"Native informants" in Jared Diamond and elsewhere

Historian Daniel Immerwahr
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fdp%2FB07D6MGV9Y%2Fref%3Ddp-kindle-redirect%3F_encoding%3DUTF8%26btkr%3D1&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cbfc3cb03f3f64233be8908d6eff101b0%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636960216243366723&amp;sdata=ojRVsyy%2B%2Bu39dQv12kChlXaGihoDgJRbrgwQgGKvWrk%3D&amp;reserved=0>
just
posted on Twitter about the "native informant" Jared Diamond featured in
his book, *Guns Germs and Steel
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FGuns%2C_Germs%2C_and_Steel&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cbfc3cb03f3f64233be8908d6eff101b0%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636960216243366723&amp;sdata=9P4RegKpKL44uEnZEAzUaOdgTVrGDYsZa3qrqMeIXHE%3D&amp;reserved=0>*, which was so
popular in 2000.  He also links to his review
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewrepublic.com%2Farticle%2F154142%2Fjared-diamond-upheaval-book-review&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cbfc3cb03f3f64233be8908d6eff101b0%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636960216243366723&amp;sdata=0VrKYqx8p5NZHchuHYryRW9LaVcj2X%2BrJz2ae3OT8jg%3D&amp;reserved=0>
of Diamond's new book.  I copy below, and also attach Immerwahr's
tweet-thread, which has photos as well as text.

The question, "who is a native informant and how can I rely on him or her,"
is getting increased attention.  Alex Haley, author of *Roots,
*apparently relied
on a local griot <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FGriot&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cbfc3cb03f3f64233be8908d6eff101b0%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636960216243366723&amp;sdata=nZ7wGK6ugZ5QH6pW0mSLRxrP8zMvfni3NMkU2xN%2FEfo%3D&amp;reserved=0>, or pretend griot.
We now seem to know that Squanto <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSquanto&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cbfc3cb03f3f64233be8908d6eff101b0%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636960216243366723&amp;sdata=cLBPtORTXMKqkQJZ3wiKHwBaESHaHYeRjPokDIfU5g8%3D&amp;reserved=0>,
famed for helping the Massachusetts settlers with agriculture and other
matters, had been to England three times between 1614 and 1620 and was not
plucked out the wild by the settlers.  Ruth Benedict's "native source" in
depicting the "Japanese mentality" in *Chrysanthemum and the Sword *(funded
by US govt in WWII) was apparently a fascinating man named Robert Hashima,
who'd been born in the USA
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapjjf.org%2F-C.-Douglas-Lummis%2F2474%2Farticle.html&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cbfc3cb03f3f64233be8908d6eff101b0%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636960216243366723&amp;sdata=pU7eWy4h0ED01ABQQyd6Yn2G%2FEMCnj9VwYwvNOVvTHM%3D&amp;reserved=0>.  (Note for
classicists: it was Benedict's book that gave E.R. Dodds the concepts of
"shame culture" and "guilt culture.")

In short, "native informants" may well not be the "man in the street" of
Benedict's idealized picture.  That doesn't mean, don't use them, but it
seems crucial to be aware that they're very often more than what settlers /
interlopers / ethnographers suppose they are.

Best,

Dan

Daniel Immerwahr @dimmerwahr


While researching Jared Diamond’s new book, one thing I found startled me.
Guns, Germs, and Steel starts when Diamond happening on man named Yali, who
had “never been outside New Guinea,” on the beach. Yali’s question
—why do whites have so much?—is what launches the book. 1/

It’s easy, seeing some of the images Diamond includes of New Guineans (his
first one is below) and reading his talk of “modern ‘Stone Age’ peoples,”
to assume Yali to be a random lowlander, innocent of the ways of the wider
world. 2/
Actually, Yali was famous. The scholar Peter Lawrence remarked (years
before Diamond met Yali) that Yali was always winning the hearts of
Europeans as that “exceptional native” who was “well spoken” and
“scrupulously clean” without “ever being impertinent.” 3/
Europeans loved Yali because he knew their ways. He’d worked in a hotel,
he’d served on the colonial police force, he’d been in an intelligence unit
in the Australian army, he’d spent time on a U.S. submarine. He was a war
hero. 4/

But he’d also become disillusioned with colonial rule and had played an
ambivalent but leading role in an insurgent cargo cult movement and had
spent nearly 6 years in prison, on the discomfiting charge of “inciting
rape.” 5/

Yali appears in a BUNCH of books about Papua New Guinea that were published
before Diamond met him. He’s got an entry in the Australian Dictionary of
Biography. 6/

https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fadb.anu.edu.au%2Fbiography%2Fyali-12084&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cbfc3cb03f3f64233be8908d6eff101b0%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636960216243366723&amp;sdata=jvVM62OB2lsoAZ8qygB8Q4dHDrIEKtrLUMh5mLGyalU%3D&amp;reserved=0

To me, this illustrates the limits of Diamond’s worldview. It’s all nations
in isolation. Meeting Yali, one of the most interesting figures in the
country, he presents him as a random native. Yali the anti-imperialist just
doesn’t fit. 7/

I talk about not only Yali, but how this pertain's to Diamond's larger
project in Guns, Germs, and Steel and his latest book, Upheaval, in my
review for New Republic. A classic study of cargo cults, about half of
which is specifically about Yali and his movement, is Peter Lawrence's Road
Belong Cargo. It came out 8 years before Diamond met Yali, 30 before Guns,
Germs, and Steel. I hope Diamond read it, but I see no mention of it in GGS.
A classic study of cargo cults, about half of which is specifically about
Yali and his movement, is Peter Lawrence's Road Belong Cargo. It came out 8
years before Diamond met Yali, 30 before Guns, Germs, and Steel. I hope
Diamond read it, but I see no mention of it in GGS.
Update: @Grahambrose has alerted to to ANOTHER example! One of Diamond's
photos is of an unnamed "Aboriginal Tasmanian woman." Oh, but she has a
name, Truganini, and a painful history. There were songs and ships named
for her, all before Diamond's book. And plays and novels.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truganini

And Kevin Tucker says that the unnamed Khoisan woman Diamond depicts [was
also ] a known quantity




*More on Benedict, a wonderful person and scholar. I wrote this some time
ago and have not checked the details:*

Ruth Benedict's book on Japanese culture, mentioned in the subject line, is
known to many of us as the source of E.R. Dodds' comments on shame and
guilt culture in *The Greeks and the Irrational*.   Benedict's book has
been criticized in the past, e.g. by Clifford Geertz, but there's now a new
(or, revised) discussion of it by C. Douglas Lummis, "Ruth Benedict's
Obituary for Japanese Culture" in JapanFocus.  Lummis has taught in Japan
for some time, and notes that he's not only read the Japanese critiques of
Benedict but has met with one of her sources.  So folks may want to look at
it:

https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.japanfocus.org%2Fproducts%2Fdetails%2F2474https%3A%2F%2Fapjjf.org%2F-C.-Douglas-Lummis%2F2474%2Farticle.html&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cbfc3cb03f3f64233be8908d6eff101b0%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636960216243366723&amp;sdata=NqS1g6U4Z9wlDz3WxSy%2FnjSIaw4P7fU5%2F7pYFFuDezM%3D&amp;reserved=0
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.japanfocus.org%2Fproducts%2Fdetails%2F2474&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7Cbfc3cb03f3f64233be8908d6eff101b0%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636960216243366723&amp;sdata=QpTefQRXfY0%2FWQNYjp%2BiSDb%2B4qpF9ZwOZjnw3UykRdA%3D&amp;reserved=0>


I had not known until reading this piece that Benedict's work, despite its
flaws, it's been influential in Japan:  '...virtually the entire discourse
of that branch of Japanese studies called Nihonjinron has been carried out
within the framework established by Benedict’s book. The debate launched
among Japanese scholars over “shame culture” vs. “guilt culture” spilled
over into lay society so that the two terms have become established as
expressions in ordinary Japanese language. Her book gave birth, in both
English-language and Japanese-language Japan studies, to an endless supply
of binary “x culture vs. y culture” tools for blunt-instrument social
analysis.'