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Author Rutherford, Danilyn, author

Title Living in the Stone Age : reflections on the origins of a colonial fantasy / Danilyn Rutherford
Published Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Introduction: living in the Stone Age -- Part I: Sympathy and its discontents: a colonial encounter. Hospitality in the highlands ; Sympathetic state-building -- Part 2: Vulnerability and fantasies of mastery. Technological passions ; Technological performances -- Part 3: Lessons for a new anthropology. Sympathy and the savage slot ; The ethics of kinky empiricism
Summary In 1961, John F. Kennedy referred to the Papuans as "living, as it were, in the Stone Age." For the most part, politicians and scholars have since learned not to call people "primitive," but when it comes to the Papuans, the Stone-Age stain persists and for decades has been used to justify denying their basic rights. Why has this fantasy held such a tight grip on the imagination of journalists, policy-makers, and the public at large? Living in the Stone Age answers this question by following the adventures of officials sent to the New Guinea highlands in the 1930s to establish a foothold for Dutch colonialism. These officials became deeply dependent on the good graces of their would-be Papuan subjects, who were their hosts, guides, and, in some cases, friends. Danilyn Rutherford shows how, to preserve their sense of racial superiority, these officials imagined that they were traveling in the Stone Age--a parallel reality where their own impotence was a reasonable response to otherworldly conditions rather than a sign of ignorance or weakness. Thus, Rutherford shows, was born a colonialist ideology. Living in the Stone Age is a call to write the history of colonialism differently, as a tale of weakness not strength. It will change the way readers think about cultural contact, colonial fantasies of domination, and the role of anthropology in the postcolonial world
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Papuans -- Public opinion
Dutch -- Indonesia -- Attitudes
Papuans -- Indonesia -- Papua Barat -- Attitudes
Stereotypes (Social psychology) -- Indonesia -- Papua Barat
Dutch -- Colonization -- Indonesia -- Papua Barat
Anthropology -- Methodology.
HISTORY -- Oceania.
Anthropology -- Methodology
Colonization
Dutch -- Attitudes
Ethnic relations
Netherlandish colonies
Stereotypes (Social psychology)
Papua Barat (Indonesia) -- Ethnic relations
Papua (Indonesia) -- History -- 20th century
Papua Barat (Indonesia) -- Colonization
Netherlands -- Colonies -- Asia
Netherlands -- Colonies.
Asia
Indonesia
Indonesia -- Papua
Indonesia -- Papua Barat
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780226570389
022657038X