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>There is not much coercion. The women gather berries and the men hunt. Are you sure about this, or are you treating a "noble savage" fantasy as if it were fac

>There is not much coercion. The women gather berries and the men hunt. Are you sure about this, or are you treating a "noble savage" fantasy as if it were fact? I've read some early settler accounts of Australian Aboriginals, and they would beat the living shit out of the lower-status members of their society (especially women) on a regular basis. Sometimes the beatings would be followed up with rape, and the perpetrators would get away with it Scot free because they were high-status.

VictorPath 5y ago
> Australian Aboriginals, and they would beat the living shit out of the lower-status members of their society As I said, there are societies where women gather berries and men hunt. There aren't really "lower status members" of those societies. Including the Aboriginal Australians who lived this way. As the book Dark Emu shows, some Aboriginals lived as hunter-gatherers, some as farmers. The aboriginal farmers did not live this way, and certainly may have had lower status members who were mistreated. I should point out some people have qualms over portions of Dark Emu, but generally not over this. Even a critic of this point like Ian Keen admits there was some form of farming by some Aboriginals.
mikem170 5y ago
Modern society has problems with violence and sex crimes against women, too.
- chmod600 5y ago
  The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker makes a compelling case that violence (including rape) are dramatically lower in modern societies all around the world.
  - mikem170 5y ago
    I'd buy that. I just didn't know that it was relevant or comparable to modern state backing of the rentier rich. wasn't sure how to judge such a comparison. I know that modern governemnts will send uniformed guys with guns if you mess with a rich persons property. But I wondered if aborigines beat low status members and women for economic reasons, or for mating reasons, or for something else?
    - AussieWog93 5y ago
      >But I wondered if aborigines beat low status members and women for economic reasons, or for mating reasons, or for something else? I'm not sure if you're Aussie, but please understand that problems like domestic violence and incest/rape still exist in Aboriginal communities to a large extent. There are also an army of "nice" middle class, urban white people performing the most mind-bending mental gymnastics possible to shift the blame away from the perpetrators and onto white society in general (who, to be fair, brutally mistreated the Aboriginal population for the better part of two centuries during a colonial campaign of conquest). To me, within that context, the more interesting question is not whether or not there were economic/mating pressures on aboriginal populations that lead to the brutal behviour, but why a middle-class 21st century professional is looking to excuse it.
      - mikem170 5y ago
        Ah, I wasn't thinking about any of that stuff. I was thinking of whether small economies could exist without economic coercion backed by violence, where this thread started. The Yanamamo were mentioned as a group that doesn't do that, the men and women carry about their work without the need for coercion. You replied that there's violence against low-status members in Aborigines communities, and wondered if the Yanamamo really were non-violent. I don't know that it's relevant that the Aborigines are violent. Nor, I admit in hindsight, was my reply about modern people also being violent. I intuited that your comment was irrelevant, but didn't do a good job of putting that into words. The question was whether the proverbial dishes could get done without violence, and if the Yanamamo do it then the answer is "yes", it is possible, regardless of whatever Aborigines or modern people do. I don't think that white guilt over the treatment of Aborigines is relevant to that question, either. I'm a bit familiar with the Yanamamo. I had a class that focused on them specifically. I know that they have graduations of violence, mostly to do with mating, which can boil over between villages, but I don't remember there being any economic coercion, men and women do their different jobs without any punishment/violence that I can recall. (A discussion like this could morph into the idea of "women's work", asking why do the Yanamamo men hunt and the women work. But societies using money have the same concept of women's work, so that would be a separate conversation form money vs no-money societies.) Until someone shows me different, I think the the Yanamamo comment is right, based on my knowledge of them they don't use economic coercion that I know of to proverbially get the dishes washed.

VictorPath 5y ago

> Australian Aboriginals, and they would beat the living shit out of the lower-status members of their society As I said, there are societies where women gather berries and men hunt. There aren't really "lower status members" of those societies. Including the Aboriginal Australians who lived this way. As the book Dark Emu shows, some Aboriginals lived as hunter-gatherers, some as farmers. The aboriginal farmers did not live this way, and certainly may have had lower status members who were mistreated. I should point out some people have qualms over portions of Dark Emu, but generally not over this. Even a critic of this point like Ian Keen admits there was some form of farming by some Aboriginals.

mikem170 5y ago

Modern society has problems with violence and sex crimes against women, too.

chmod600 5y ago
The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker makes a compelling case that violence (including rape) are dramatically lower in modern societies all around the world.
- mikem170 5y ago
  I'd buy that. I just didn't know that it was relevant or comparable to modern state backing of the rentier rich. wasn't sure how to judge such a comparison. I know that modern governemnts will send uniformed guys with guns if you mess with a rich persons property. But I wondered if aborigines beat low status members and women for economic reasons, or for mating reasons, or for something else?
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >But I wondered if aborigines beat low status members and women for economic reasons, or for mating reasons, or for something else? I'm not sure if you're Aussie, but please understand that problems like domestic violence and incest/rape still exist in Aboriginal communities to a large extent. There are also an army of "nice" middle class, urban white people performing the most mind-bending mental gymnastics possible to shift the blame away from the perpetrators and onto white society in general (who, to be fair, brutally mistreated the Aboriginal population for the better part of two centuries during a colonial campaign of conquest). To me, within that context, the more interesting question is not whether or not there were economic/mating pressures on aboriginal populations that lead to the brutal behviour, but why a middle-class 21st century professional is looking to excuse it.
    - mikem170 5y ago
      Ah, I wasn't thinking about any of that stuff. I was thinking of whether small economies could exist without economic coercion backed by violence, where this thread started. The Yanamamo were mentioned as a group that doesn't do that, the men and women carry about their work without the need for coercion. You replied that there's violence against low-status members in Aborigines communities, and wondered if the Yanamamo really were non-violent. I don't know that it's relevant that the Aborigines are violent. Nor, I admit in hindsight, was my reply about modern people also being violent. I intuited that your comment was irrelevant, but didn't do a good job of putting that into words. The question was whether the proverbial dishes could get done without violence, and if the Yanamamo do it then the answer is "yes", it is possible, regardless of whatever Aborigines or modern people do. I don't think that white guilt over the treatment of Aborigines is relevant to that question, either. I'm a bit familiar with the Yanamamo. I had a class that focused on them specifically. I know that they have graduations of violence, mostly to do with mating, which can boil over between villages, but I don't remember there being any economic coercion, men and women do their different jobs without any punishment/violence that I can recall. (A discussion like this could morph into the idea of "women's work", asking why do the Yanamamo men hunt and the women work. But societies using money have the same concept of women's work, so that would be a separate conversation form money vs no-money societies.) Until someone shows me different, I think the the Yanamamo comment is right, based on my knowledge of them they don't use economic coercion that I know of to proverbially get the dishes washed.