Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2018. xiv, 209 pp. (B&W photos.) US$25.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-226-57024-2.
Danilyn Rutherford’s book Living in the Stone Age contains two main arguments; foremost is her analysis of the state-building process in Netherlands New Guinea, mirroring the subtitle of the book, “Reflections on the Origins of a Colonial Fantasy.” In the final two chapters, however, Rutherford shifts focus to a dissolution of the marriage between anthropology and its so-called “savage slot.”
In the introduction to the volume, Rutherford focuses on the almost indelible link between Papua and the Stone Age. As a classification—humans living at the most primitive level of technology and culture—it predates the colonial period in Papua. Presently, this link still surfaces in the Papuan/Indonesian conflict, and in the developing sales pitch for cultural tourism. Rutherford provides a brief sketch of the main aspects of Papua’s colonial and postcolonial history. Her focus in the book is on the Wissel Lakes (Central Highlands) and its population: the Me, Moni, and Dani. The main protagonists in her argument are two civil servants, Jean Victor de Bruijn and Jan van Eechoud, both prominent in the exploration and pacification of the area. Despite a variety of co-actors in this drama, and occasional contrasts with similar encounters in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, the focus is narrow, while the stage-setting is ideal: the Wissel Lakes area was one of the last to be “opened up”; chronologically, we speak of only twenty-five years’ duration. And adventure figures large: “New Guinea … a ‘virgin land,’ where … paupers would be reborn as real men …” (16).
In four chapters Rutherford envisages the state building in the Wissel Lakes through the eyes of De Bruijn and Van Eechoud, using (auto)biographical texts (Lloyd Rhys, Jungle Pimpernel: The Story of a District Officer in Central Netherlands New Guinea, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1947; J.P.K. van Eechoud, Met Kapmes en Kompas door Nieuw-Guinea, Amsterdam: De Boer, 1953). Rutherford’s approach results in “thick description” using anecdotal sketches of their encounters. A disadvantage is that these texts only take us until 1955, where we lose track of further developments. Chapter 1, “Hospitality and the Highlands,” sketches how the Papuans initially “[hospitably] ended up having to deal with guests who refused to leave” (43). De Bruijn initially sets out to be an insistent, but good guest. Though he was convinced of the positive reaction of the Papuans, Rutherford points out that local leaders equally profited from the situation. In fact, both sides exploited the possibilities provided by their encounters.
In chapter 2, “Sympathetic State Building,” Rutherford approaches De Bruijn’s actions in terms of Hume’s use of sympathy as an instrument of state building (David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by D.G.C. Macnabb, Cleveland: Meridan, 1962 [1738]). While Rutherford shows both sides becoming closer, there is friction. Where De Bruijn and Van Eechoud depict the Papuans as dependent, primitive, subjects, Papuan guides and local leaders use their administrative contacts for personal prestige. Thus, they enhance their position within their own networks without becoming the required conduit for Dutch state building.
That this caveat becomes increasingly apparent to the Dutch, i.e. De Bruijn and Van Eechoud, is shown in the subsequent chapters, “Technological Passions” and “Technological Performances.” The hierarchical perception of the Dutch civilizing the Papuans clashed with daily reality. Rutherford’s focus on sympathy as instrument for state building shows it to be a double-edged knife. The Papuans appreciated the Dutch but had no interest in the state. Here, technology served a purpose. The Dutch possessed gadgets that amazed (and frightened) the Papuans: guns, radios, planes, gramophones. Yet, because familiarity breeds contempt, this was a race against time as the anecdotes show. Nevertheless, with the Dutch investing in the image they created and acted upon, the Papuan’s role as “Stone Age Man” became increasingly set in stone itself.
In the final two chapters of the book, the argument takes a turn. So far, Rutherford has only occasionally hinted at the similarity of sympathy as instrument for state building to the empiricism of anthropology. We can perceive De Bruijn and Van Eechoud as ethnographers and the Wissel Lakes’ population as their savage slot. Ironically, this was how the Dutch colonial administration throughout the 1950s used its district officers. Seemingly, Rutherford goes off on a tangent by focusing in the fifth chapter on the work of Leopold Pospisil among the Me (Kapauku). Pospisil in his search for the universality of law, seems unlike the average ethnographer. Yet, choosing the most egalitarian society he could find and working exclusively in the local language, he was nevertheless empiricist in his approach. Key to realizing sympathy were Pospisil’s houseboys. They provided him with a useable network of informants. Similarly, the houseboys (and the big men in their network) profited by the opportunities provided by the outside world.
In the final chapter, “The Ethics of a Kinky Empiricism,” Rutherford brings all these strands together. Ethnography, like state building, does not just function because of sympathy. Rutherford adds two further concepts Hume discerns: circumstance and inference. Sympathy brings people together in a universe shaped by circumstance. Inference allows us to predict future events from past events. The closer we can get to the way our informants live, the better our inferences—our ethnographic description—will be. Why, then, “kinky” empiricism? As Rutherford points out, we must be able to step out of our involvement in sympathy and answer the question that what we write down is for their good, not just ours.
The so-called savage slot becomes in the final analysis unnecessary. As anthropologists we can study the efficacy of a factory working floor as well as Pospisil studied the Kapauku. Similarly, the Papuans need not live in the Stone Age to be made part of the Dutch colonial system, but their depiction as such helped the process along.
In writing all this down I have increasingly come to appreciate Rutherford’s book, although I still find the focus on De Bruijn and Van Eechoud too narrow. I would be very interested in a further exploration of how the Me, Moni, and Dani profited from the way they were incorporated into a state (and later absorbed into the more brutal reality of Indonesian exploitation). I find the secondary argument on anthropological empiricism superfluous, but it helps in understanding the fullness and subtlety of Rutherford’s argument. Any good book like this one leaves the reader wishing to explore further (and perhaps hope for a sequel).
Sjoerd R. Jaarsma
Papua Heritage Foundation, Utrecht