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Title: The Forest People by Colin Turnbull ISBN: 0-671-64099-2 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 02 July, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.9 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A successful failure
Comment: This ethnography of the Mbuti Pygmy of Africa's Ituri forest is, as Dr. Burton puts it, a successful failure. One cannot deny that it is a fabulously romantic piece, and a refreshing look at a people that have suffered from exploitation and the image of being hopelessly primitive. The late Dr. Turnbull uses reflexivity and a particularly observant eye to capturehis subjects in time and offer up this portrait to his readers. However, it is this same romanticism that makes the account just a bit too novel-like and not all that satisfying from a modern anthropological point of view. The reader cannot help feeling that Turnbull's idyllic forest world in which Pygmys are good guys and Bantu villagers are bad guys is somehow retrogressive. The goal of modern ethnography is to recognize the anthropologist's effect on the target society, and to incorporate that into the book, while at the same time drawing back from their world and asking, will this society read this book and say, "hmmm, that's surely us"? In that sense, Turnbull fails, but as an exciting piece, the book's appeal is undeniable.
Rating: 5
Summary: true magic
Comment: This book is like making a real trip into the Ituri rainforest- or more exactly into the lives of some of the most remarkable people you will ever meet. The Bambuti become so real for us in part because of Turnbull's narative skill, but more, I think, because they themselves are so real, such wonderful humans. This, we want to believe, is what our species is really like, the way we were meant to be.
Like all gathering- hunting people, the Bambuti are on intimate terms with mother nature. For them this means their beloved forest, which is a benign, nurturing, and protective mother. People who live outside the forest are scared to go near it. But the the Bambuti who are its children are completely happy there.
What makes this book such a joy to read is that besides being so lovable, the Bambuti are very funny. Their humor is infectious and irresistable.
Forever after reading The Forest People, everytime you think about the people you met there, and you will think about them, you can't help smiling.
What could be better, especially the way the world is now, than to find a book that makes you really feel good about being a human, proud and happy to be living on the same planet as these wonderful people.
Rating: 3
Summary: A good story with a few flaws
Comment: I really liked this book. I had to read it for class, but i would recomend it to anyone. It was quick and easy to read. It was a good and sympathetic portrayal of these hunter gatherer peoples and it left me with a lot of respect for them and for the author.
There were only a couple of little things I would have changed about the book. I felt like a little too much had been edited out in some spots and the author was a little over sentamental at times. For my purposes i would have liked a little more of a scientific approach to some things, but it does make a very good story overall.
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Title: Mountain People by Colin Turnbull ISBN: 0671640984 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 02 July, 1987 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Applying Cultural Anthropology: An Introductory Reader by Aaron Podolefsky, Peter Brown ISBN: 0072564253 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages Pub. Date: 03 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.80 |
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Title: The Harmless People by ELIZABETH MARSHALL THOMAS ISBN: 067972446X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 23 October, 1989 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Yanomamo by Napoleon A. Chagnon ISBN: 0155053272 Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Pub. Date: 15 November, 1996 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: In Search of Respect : Selling Crack in El Barrio by Philippe Bourgois ISBN: 0521017114 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 23 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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