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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

The more things change

by

20131110

Er­rol Fa­bi­en sug­gest­ed on Mon­day that we have lost the bar by which we mea­sure gov­ern­ments and politi­cians. It's a sen­si­ble state­ment most might ac­cept as a mat­ter of fact, but is it so sim­ple as loss?

One of the things an­thro­pol­o­gists are trained to do is com­pare dif­fer­ent so­ci­eties and cul­tures. We call this "eth­nol­o­gy." Some might think com­par­isons ne­ces­si­tate a sort of league ta­ble of bet­ter or worse so­ci­eties, like the hap­pi­ness and cor­rup­tion in­dex­es or GDP fig­ures pro­duced. Those sort of hi­er­ar­chi­cal mea­sure­ments, how­ev­er, tell us very lit­tle about chang­ing so­cio­cul­tur­al val­ues and con­ven­tions.

A bet­ter form of cul­tur­al com­par­i­son elim­i­nates hi­er­ar­chy and tries to pro­duce em­pa­thy. Em­pa­thy is the ef­fort of imag­in­ing and try­ing to un­der­stand be­ing in some­one else's shoes. It is a hall­mark of good eth­no­log­i­cal stud­ies.

An­thro­pol­o­gists don't just do eth­nol­o­gy of so­ci­eties in the present; we al­so make these com­par­isons his­tor­i­cal­ly. For ex­am­ple, you can rep­re­sent the ideas, val­ues and cul­ture be­hind mea­sur­ing the suc­cess or fail­ure of a gov­ern­ment in the past, with the ideas, val­ues and cul­tures of mea­sur­ing suc­cess or fail­ure in the present.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers


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