Democracy, custom and the Melanesian Way

By Susan Merrell, http://www.pngecho.com/ Is there a democratic Papua New Guinean nation – or is it merely an arbitrary state built on a shaky, crumbling foundation of disparate traditional customs and the ‘Melanesian Way’? Has the system of government become a hybrid of concepts that fail to work on any level – a bastardization of both […]

Tribal Democracy (Tribal jirga, Afghanistan)

By Bilal AhmedPosted on 18 November 2013Posted in Asia, Politics I was speaking to my mother about democracy, expressing wariness about European models, which many Pakistanis associate with the Soviet-inspired experiments of the Afghan Communist era. I mentioned the jirga, as a way of envisioning direct democracy, in South Asian vernacular. She found it appealing. “That’s like the old days, […]

The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond – review

Should we look to traditional societies to help us tweak our lives? Wade Davis takes issue with the whole idea Source: https://www.theguardian.com/ Anthropology was born of an evolutionary model by which 19th-century men such as Lewis Henry Morgan and Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest”, envisioned societies as stages in a linear […]

The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond: review

Tom Payne is riveted by a thought-provoking study of peoples from New Guinea to the Kalahari Desert, which asks what we can learn from such societies. By Tom Payne 7:00AM GMT 08 Jan 2013 Parents: when your child cries in the night, should you pick him up and let him snuggle in your bed? Or, like […]

The Slave Mentality

June 15, 2010, By Kevin Jackson When slavery is implemented by force, it is certainly a despicable institution. But is it any less despicable when the slaves are there by choice?The interesting point about slavery is that whether it’s forced or voluntary, the master is responsible for the slaves. The master feeds, clothes, and cares for […]