Pauline Wiessner’s Engaged Anthropology and a Penetrating Vignette of Technological Infrastructure’s Uneven Global Advance ─ Small Lessons for the Developed World

© 2010 Peter Free

 

22 September 2010

 

Science published a profile of Pauline (Polly) Wiessner that demonstrates a life of anthropological curiosity and human service

 

Writer Michael Balter brilliantly seized on a Polly Wiessner anecdote that illustrates:

 

(a) modernity’s uneven global advance,

 

(b) what “engaged” anthropology is,

 

(c) how third world networking operates outside the developed world’s sense of time,

 

and

 

(d) that access to cutting edge technology does not equate to the provision of economy-supporting infrastructure.

 

Wiessner’s revealing anecdote

 

In 2003, Wiessner, living in Salt Lake City, received a satellite telephone call from Kalahari Bushmen (the “San”), whom she had studied in Namibia:

 

They told her that they had just called the famous musician Yo-Yo Ma about an offer he had made when he toured the Kalahari a decade earlier. Ma had apparently agreed to buy shoes for their soccer team.  Now the Bushmen wanted to draw outlines of their feet, send them to Wiessner in Salt Lake City, and have her buy the shoes and send the bill to Ma. . . .

 

She simply agreed, realizing that the Bushmen were using borrowed modern technology to expand their traditional social networks across the globe. . . .

 

As it happened, the Bushmen, lacking postal services, had no way to get the drawings to her, and the shoes were never purchased.

 

 

© 2010 Michael Balter, Anthropologist Brings Worlds Together, Science 329(5993): 743-745 (13 August 2010)

 

 

Wiessner’s insight regarding anthropology

 

“All the research I’ve done has been as part of a team.  Many people feel this is something different than science.  But if you are returning something to the people you work with, and working on their problems, you find out more and you go deeper.”

 

 

© 2010 Michael Balter, Anthropologist Brings Worlds Together, Science 329(5993): 743-745 (13 August 2010) (quoting Pauline Wiessner)

 

The lessons of Michael Balter’s article?

 

Human interactions are unavoidable when studying human beings in proximity.

 

One arguably can and should be humane and helpful.

 

Given the opportunity, supposedly “backward” people can run with allegedly more “advanced” people.

 

Whom you know matters.

 

Some scientists are more paradigmatic than others.