..for them it is a good world" (Turnbull 14). And although small in stature, Turnbull writes, they are able to kill elephants single-handed with only a short handled spear and blend so well with the forest foliage that one could pass right by without noticing them.
Turnbull relates the BaMbuti customs, such as marriage rites, rituals and celebrations.
His accounts of these people rings a magically encounter. Turnbull is so taken by the forest people that he writes in poetic prose rather than anthropological language filled with statistics and dry observations. By detailing observations in such colorful style and with such humor, he brings these remote...
This means that modernization has no place in the lives of most Africans, primarily because they have learned to survive and live despite the inconveniences that forest life presents. From this realization, readers are shown how development is interpreted from the point-of-view of those who have remarkably survived early forms of living, such as the life of hunting-gathering that the forest people have known ever since they have become
On the other hand, this return to a people made largely more recognized by Turnbull's first ethnography does suggest something about the ethnography itself where anthropological purpose is concerned. Namely, the degree to which the people of the Mbuti tribes may have been exposed to the larger intersection with the modern world as a result of Turnbull's first work is illustrative of the way that research can actually interfere
It is thought that the forest imbues the semen of a married man with its own vital essence. In this way, Mosko argues, the children born of married unions are products of "the joyful intermingling of several simultaneous influences of mother, father, and forest" (899). The forest is not only the source of the individual's sense of identity, but also defines the communal sense of identity as well. Bands see
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