In 1961, John F. Kennedy referred to the Papuans as "living, as it were,
in the Stone Age." For the most part, politicians and scholars have
since learned not to call people "primitive," but when it comes to the
Papuans, the Stone-Age stain persists and for decades has been used to
justify denying their basic rights. Why has this fantasy held such a
tight grip on the imagination of journalists, policy-makers, and the
public at large?
Living in the Stone Age answers this question by following the
adventures of officials sent to the New Guinea highlands in the 1930s to
establish a foothold for Dutch colonialism. These officials became
deeply dependent on the good graces of their would-be Papuan subjects,
who were their hosts, guides, and, in some cases, friends. Danilyn
Rutherford shows how, to preserve their sense of racial superiority,
these officials imagined that they were traveling in the Stone Age--a
parallel reality where their own impotence was a reasonable response to
otherworldly conditions rather than a sign of ignorance or weakness.
Thus, Rutherford shows, was born a colonialist ideology.
Living in the Stone Age is a call to write the history of colonialism
differently, as a tale of weakness not strength. It will change the way
readers think about cultural contact, colonial fantasies of domination,
and the role of anthropology in the postcolonial world.
