The World until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?

Abstract

The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? By Jared Diamond New York: Penguin Group, 2012. Vii + 499pp. Tables, figures, further readings, index, and illustration credits. $23.59, (cloth) ISBN 978-0-670-02481-0; $16.20, (paper) ISBN 978-1-101-60600-1.In his most recent book, Jared Diamond offers a series of lessons gleaned from decades of field research in spatially and culturally disparate indigenous communities . Through a comparison of modern states and traditional societies, Diamond presents a variety of lessons for the individual and the modern state Instead of comparing traditional and state-centered societies through a rational, cultural, or spatial approach, this text utilizes a more comprehensive method that includes all of these aspects . Using this comprehensive comparative method, Diamond elucidates several ethnographic-based conceptions of and lessons about everything from danger, to the treatment of children and the elderly, language, food, dispute resolution, and religion . The significance of this book lies in the vast wealth of anthropologic research and information about how traditional societies interact with their local landscape The lessons provided may be useful for some, but Diamond's take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards changing individual and state perceptions toward the previously-mentioned issues undermines his perceived emphasis on the significance of the information impartedEconomic anthropologists and historical geographers may find Diamond's discussion of traditional forms of trade and subsequent implications for the contemporary global economy interesting Relationships between societies are categorized in four distinct ways: defending boundaries, sharing resources, making war, and trading. Looking at the link between trade, goods, social networks, and class, Diamond identifies two critical similarities between traditional and modern state trade: the gathering of items to confer status, and in some cases, the exchange of some type of currency. For this purpose, Diamond attempts to organize a list of the following items commonly traded in the traditional societies he studies: "necessities" (raw materials and manufactured items), "gray," and "luxury" categories (68-69) . His chart separates items that are immediately useful for survival and daily life from an intermediate category and luxury category The intermediate level comprises items that are both useful and impart some amount of status that make them valuable beyond their utility Luxuries or decorative items, meanwhile, are those that are not immediately useful for survival This three-part typology is useful in cataloguing items of trade, but also in identifying levels of socio-economic class, allowing one to make comparisons with market economies . Despite the usefulness of this typology in organizing goods and their socio-economic implications, Diamond argues that it is unreasonable to categorize items of trade by relegating them to luxury or functional statuses because these definitions are often relative and culturally-specific. …