Sorry for the delay, I’ve been driving around CT all week teaching classes and kind of forgot to respond to this.
@Qingu You do a great job of distracting, but I’ll bring it back quickly. My point was that the characterisations you made of foraging peoples is false, and presented some fact-based, heavily researched, and heavily annotated articles by a friend who happens to also have training in cultural anthropology. You’re right at least in part about the lack of acceptance of Godesky’s conclusions by the anthropological community, which is primarily out of trepidation. But the underlying premises, the characterisations of foraging peoples as egalitarian, leisure-enjoying, and largely peaceful is commonly accepted. And as he points out, instances of highly violent foraging societies are almost always “exceptions that prove the rule”.
I decided after thinking of a lot of smart stuff to say in this thread that I wouldn’t bother beyond this. You’ve made up your decision despite contrary evidence, so nothing I say will make a damn difference. Forget my education in and out of institutional settings, forget the mountainous piles of ethnographic data. Forget the fact that the roots of Western White feminism comes from indigenous peoples in the Americas more than any other source, and that perceptions of indigenous people as sexist was almost entirely based on the most supremely ironic colonial propaganda I’ve yet seen. Your mind won’t be changed, and I can see that from your previous posts.
Plus, I get paid to teach this stuff most of the time, and nobody is paying me here. Fuck that, I’ll spend my time educating people who will actually listen and give a damn.
@mattbrowne I’ve noted you’re a fan of using straw man arguments, but that one surprised even me. Not even a bit of accounting for the role of historical colonialism or economic neo-colonialism? For shame.