The Forest People

Rating:
Summary: A successful failure
Review: 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:
Summary: The Realm of Nature
Review: This was a fantastic book. I had to read it for my Ethnology class and fell in love with the MaButi Pygmies. Turnbull does a great job of explaining the lives of the "forest people." His few years with the Pygmies is portrayed in this book. It is enchanting and amusing. I would recommend it to anyone.