Entry Ten

Blog - Chapter 9

This chapter is called “The World of the Village”, and that is basically what it is about. It is about the villagers, what the Pygmies do in the village, and the relationships the Pygmies have with a number of villagers. There is a lot about cognition and expression in this chapter, mostly because worlds of the villagers and the Pygmies are so different.

The villager’s attitude towards the Pygmies/Forest

·         “The attitude of all these villagers to the forest was the same… They tried to ignore the world around them, because for them the forest was hostile, something to be feared and fought. Even after cutting it down there was the constant labor required to keep it from growing back. It was filled with evil spirits that cursed the soil so that although it would bear gigantic mahogany trees it would produce only the most meager fruits for the villagers.” This quote reflects the conceptions of the villagers, which in turn is influenced by biology, experience and culture. The villagers do not know the forest, so it is much easier to be afraid of it. They live in clearings so they depend on the forest but do not live in it, so when things do not go their way it is easier to view the forest as evil and full of spirits. (171)

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       The villagers’ view of the Pygmies reflects the fact that our brains are wired to view things through our past experiences, which influences what we value. The villagers used to be plain dwellers and were tied to land. They buried their ancestors in certain places and those places became sacred, but they could have no such bond with the land here.  “While the only place the villager could call home was the temporary, sun scorched clearing which he had cut for himself, and in which he would live a few years at most, to the Pygmy the whole forest was home…The village people were envious of the Pygmies, though they tried to look down on them. They were compelled to respect the Pygmies by the fact of their own belief in the mystical bond between a people and the land of its ancestors. They had no such bond. Just as they were afraid of the spirits of the forest, so they were secretly afraid of the Pygmies” (172).

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     “But even the most benevolent of them regard the Pygmies much as the Pygmies regard them in turn—as a kind of convenience. I know of only one villager who was almost accepted by the Pygmies as one of themselves. That was Kaweki, the fisherman (177)…” The Pygmies regarded Kaweki as a friend and valued him as more than a villager because of his cognition, because his value for the Forest was higher than that of the usual villager. “In the evenings the Pygmies sang songs they would ordinarily never have sung in the presence of a villager. But Kaweki was a lover of the forest and to the Pygmies that was all that mattered…… the Pygmies responded by singing a song of the molimo, just as they would have done for one of their own people—a song of praise and thanks to the forest for saving one is its children, even if he was a villager.” This quote reflects that that Pygmy value for the forest stretches beyond their individual culture. Anyone who loves the forest is accepted and is one of them.

Brief Paragraph:

This chapter shows the value of Particularism of cultural relativism. In order to compare the worldviews and cultures of the villagers and Pygmies, we must understand of both cultures, taking into account their historical background and adaptation. This in turn necessitates evaluating each culture in its own cultural context. Without this, the cultures cannot be compared.