1. How do we study culture?
The mystery of the Fore.

2. Researchers are biased
Psychologists (events, activities, customs)
Sociologists (relationships, interactions)
Anthropologists (artifacts, rituals, behaviours)
Physicians (biological processes, survival)

3. Papua New Guinea

4. Goroka, Eastern Highlands
Papua New Guinea

5. The Fore tribe of Goroka
New Guinea, was, and is, a land of 700 tribes, a refuge of stone age cultures in mysterious, cloud-draped mountain rain forest.

6. cannibalism: act of a human feeding on human flesh
Village traditions honored close relatives -- even kuru victims -- by eating them -- after death.
The Fore

7. The Sad Tale of Kuru: the mystery disease
The Fore lived undisturbed until 1930
In 1930 Australian gold miners trekked the region
In 1940, a mysterious disease afflicted the Fore called the “Kuru” or “trembling disease”
Nervous system: trembling, paralysis of facial muscles, brain damage

8. Your task as a cultural detective
It’s 1950, your task is to solve the mystery of the kuru and how the spread of the disease could have been stopped
Cultural perceptions of the Fore, doctors, anthropologists and others are described as you read
Develop an organizer outlining the assumptions make by each of these groups

9. Doctors assumptions
Convinced that kuru was a virus transmitted to the village women during the preparation of bodies for the funeral ritual
This involved symbolic gestures of eating imaginary bodies
Doctors assumed that the women were actually eating the bodies at this time and would contract the disease
Concluded that contaminated water supply and cannibalism cause the outbreak of kuru

10. Anthropologists assumptions
observed that Fore men did not interact a lot with the women and children
Link between the disease and the funeral rituals performed on the bodies
Agreed with doctors that kuru was a virus affecting the brain
Disagreed with doctors about the origin; they concluded that it was carried in by the Australian gold miners, that were immune to it
Disease had spread to epidemic proportions through cannibalism

11. The Fore’s cultural perceptions
Fore males told Anthropologists that the women were to blame, and the women refused to talk
The Fore felt insulted because doctors and Anthropologists told them that their village water was dirty, and that their customs and behaviours were unhealthy
The Fore stopped co-operating and became suspicious when they saw doctors performing autopsies, eating and laughing around the same table were the dead bodies lay. Searching for invisible viruses.

12. The Fore’s assumptions
The Fore suspected that the doctors were using some magic on the women and children to make them sick.
The Fore concluded that the Australians gold miners had brought the disease via evil spirits
They also concluded that it was spread by the mysterious rituals of the doctors and the anthropologists

13. Cultural misunderstandings
Doctors assumed the Fore were cannibalizing the dead kuru victims and contracting the disease
Fact: the Fore were not stupid, they did not eat infected bodies and had stopped the practise in order to stem the sickness
Anthropologists believed the male stories that women were to blame “they are maneaters”
Fact: the Fore often told lies about each other and were also suspicious about the foreigners

14. Cultural misunderstandings
The Fore suspected that the doctors were cannibals because they observed them eating and laughing in the same hut where the dead bodies lay.
Fact: the doctors were performing autopsies
The doctors and anthropologists thought that cannibalism was a primitive and unhealthy practise
Fact: the Fore believed that an autopsie was just as horrific as cannibalism was to the doctors and anthropologists

15. The solution to the kuru mystery
Not cannibalism as a practise (ended in 1970)
Not dirty water
Not what it suggests in your textbook because your book was published in 1994, and I have found a more recent revised report published in 2004
Solution: the silent women were actually eating the brains of the infected dead and feeding them to their children passing on the virus. Transmitted by genetic mutations.

16. Remember? (Solution)
Remember? The women were reluctant to talk about their customs, and they pretended that they were not eating the dead bodies with the anthropologists observing the sacred ritual
The tribal women thought they had to protect their customs, and that the foreigners were to blame for the arrival of the disease.

17. Modern Science
The effects on the Fore were devastating, wiping out whole villages at the height of the disease. Kuru is caused by a prion and serves as a prototype for a group of prion diseases (scrapie in sheep, transmissible mink spongiform encephalopathy, bovine spongiform encephalopathy [BSE] or mad cow disease). It reached epidemic proportions by entering the Fore food chain. In humans, other prion diseases, including familial Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome, and fatal familial insomnia, are transmitted by genetic mutations.

18. Follow-up
In what ways does the kuru mystery change your perception about the attitudes and behaviours of people who have cultures different from your own?
To be ethnocentric is to believe in the superiority of one’s culture over other culture’s. Explain how both the foreigners and the Fore were being ethnocentric.
Have you observed ethnocentric attitudes in Canadian society? Explain.