A Critique of the Western Notions of Progress from an Anthropological Essay

A Critique of the western Notions of Progress from an Anthropological Perspective - Essay Example westernmostern nations had colonized vast atomic number 18as of the globe and had begun to exploit their resources in a systematic fashion. Old subsistence level bring in in agriculture was replaced by labor saving machinery, and mass production of all kinds of consumer goods. Goods became cheaper, and life, for those in the West at least, was made easier. This point of view treated all of the earths problems as matters which could be solved by mankinds ingenuity. In recent years this nonion that humans are moving in a positive direction, improving their lives as they move from caveman status, to hunter gathering, to country and now to industrialization has been challenged. Jared Diamond (1994) reports these notions are widely assumed to be true but not proven. The theory that agriculture clears food surpluses, which allow people more leisure time, and thus the space to create cult ural advances is just a theory, for example, and there are other possible interpretations of human history all over the long term. Diamond cites the resolve of anthropologists with modern hunter-gatherer tribes as evidence that this lifestyle is precisely not subordinate to the agricultural lifestyle these people (= Kalahari bushmen) have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neihbors (Diamond 1994, 106)