Analyzing a Culture

Researchers investigate and analyze according to their particular discipline.  Psychologists are concerned with how individuals within a culture interpret events, activities, and cus­toms.  Sociologists are concerned with the relationships and interactions between indi­viduals.  Anthropologists explore artifacts and ritualistic behaviors to determine what these dynamics reveal about a culture.  Physicians investigate reasons for ill health.  Different researchers encountered a mysterious disease when visiting the Fore.

The Fore live in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, a country in the South Pacif­ic. They lived there not knowing of the outside world, and isolated on some of the island's mountainous interior until 1930, when Aus­tralian miners trekked into the region in search of gold.  This marked the Fore's first encounter with Western foreigners.  They live a simple agrarian lifestyle.  There is no electricity of running water, and there are no hospitals.  Their culture is a complex one, encompass­ing religion, education, social behaviour, currency, trade, and medicine.

In 1940, a mysterious and deadly dis­ease suddenly afflicted the Fore.  It was called kuru, which meant “trembling dis­ease," and it affected the nervous system.  The symptoms included uncontrollable trembling, paralysis of facial muscles and limbs, and brain damage.  Death occurred within one year of the first symptoms.

Imagine it is 1950-twenty years after the first contact between the Fore and the Aus­tralian miners.  You must solve the mystery surrounding the causes of kuru and how the spread of the disease could have been stopped.  The cultural perceptions of doc­tors, anthropologists, and the Fore are de­scribed below.  Read these carefully to dis­cover the attitudes and behaviours each group perceived to be the key to this mys­terious disease.  As you read, develop an orga­nizer outlining the assumptions made by each group.

Medical doctors from North Amerca were flown in by the government of Papua New Guinea to diagnose the disease and treat toe Fore.  The doctors understood little about the Fore’s culture, but they were willing to accept the Fore’s ideas as long as they made sense to them.

This area of Papua New Guinea had no modern medical technology or laboratory facilities.  Transporting medical specimens to foreign facilities for testing was almost impossible.  Since many of the Fore were dying, it was important to diagnose the dis­ease quickly.  Thus the doctors tried to solve the Kuru mystery based on the symptoms and what they perceived to be observable facts.

     During their investigation, the doctors discovered other characteristics of the dis­ease-it affected mainly women and chil­dren, it damaged the nervous system, and it had an incubation period of up to twenty years.  Clues as to the cause of the disease gradually emerged.  The symptoms were recognized as a form of blood poisoning caused by traces of metals in the water sup­ply.  The Papua New Guinea government tested the water, however, and determined that it was safe for human consumption.

As the doctors' research continued, evi­dence appeared to link Kuru with the close contact between the dead victims of the disease and the women and children of the village.  The doctors were convinced that kuru was a virus that was being transmitted to the village women during their prepara­tion of bodies for the funeral ritual.  This in­volved the symbolic gesture of eating im nary bodies.  But the doctors believed that the women must actually be eating the bod­ies of the kuru victims and in so doing were contracting the disease themselves.  Thus the doctors attributed the kuru mystery to cont­aminated water and cannibalism.

     Anthropologists from Europe and the Unit­ed States were studying the village life of the Fore.  They discovered that the men were often away hunting, but when they were in the village they socialized together.  They rarely interacted with the women or children, however.  They observed that sometimes the Fore men and women told lies about each other when they felt threat­ened or powerless.

     Important events such as weddings and funerals brought the entire community together.  Each ceremony had elaborate cus­toms.  The women and children prepared for these events and performed the rituals.  The anthropologists suspected there was a link between kuru and the funeral rituals performed on the bodies of those who had died from the disease.  After consulting with the doctors, they agreed that kuru was a virus affecting the brain.  Yet the anthropol­ogists disagreed with the doctors about the origins of the disease.  They concluded that kuru resulted from contact with the Aus­tralians who carried the disease but were immune to it themselves.  The anthropolo­gists concluded that the disease was the re­sult of outside contact and it had spread to epidemic proportions through cannibalism.

   When the Australians came to their village in the 1930s, the Fore thought they looked like the ghosts of their dead ancestors.  They believed they possessed evil spirits that could attack and kill their people.

At first, the Fore males told the anthro­pologists that the Fore females were to blame for the kuru disease.  This was be­cause the Fore men and women often told lies about each other.  Fore women, on the other hand, were reluctant and inhibited about talking openly to the foreigners about their customs.  A female anthropolo­gist who observed the funeral ritual, how­ever, noted that the women washed the body of the deceased.  They then performed a ritualistic play in which they pretended to cat parts of the body in order to obtain power from the spirits.

As the doctors and the anthropologists continued their investigations, the Fore be­gan to realize that neither group under­stood them.  They were insulted by accusa­tions that the village water was dirty.  They were angry that so many questions were be­ing asked about their customs and behaviour.  Consequently, the Fore refused to communicate or co-operate with the doc­tors and anthropologists.

The Fore were suspicious of the doctors because they took the dead kuru victims into their huts to perform autopsies.  The Fore witnessed the doctors eating and laughing around the same table where the bodies had been autopsied.  The doctors told the Fore that they were searching for invisible viruses that might be making the people sick.  The Fore thought the doctors were being ridiculous, but they did not tell them so.

The Fore began to suspect that the doc­tors had used some kind of magic on the village women and children to make them sick.  They had heard through other people of the valley that the doctors had come to their villages and practised bizarre rituals, such as draining people's blood into bags to take home with them.  They believed that if these people went away, the kuru would also go away.  Thus the Fore believed that the kuru disease originated with the evil spirits brought to their village by the Australians and that it was spread by the mysterious rit­uals of the doctors and the anthropologists.

What is your solution to the kuru mystery?

The doctors assumed that the Fore were cannibalizing the dead kuru victims, which resulted in them contracting the disease.  The anth ' ropologists believed the Fore males' stories about the female 'man­eaters." Even though in twenty years of field work they had never seen anyone practise cannibalism, they agreed with the doctors.  The Fore suspected that the doc­tors were canni 'bals because they observed' them eating in the same hut as they had performed the autopsies.  To the Fore, an autopsy was as horrific as cannibalism was to the doctors and anthropologists.  The Fore did not believe in medical science and did not accept the medical explanations about a virus causing the deadly epidemic.

You can see that there are aspects of truth in all points of view.  It was the basic distrust of each group towards the other that led to destructive accusations and re­sulted in no real cure for kuru at that time.

For many, the mystery surrounding the kuru disease has never been satisfactorily re­solved.  One group of researchers theorized that kuru was similar to a European disease known as Cruzfeld-jacobs syndrome.  They speculated that a similar virus was transmit­ted to the Fore by the early European ex­plorers through simple hand-to-hand con­tact.

The probable solution is that the Fore got the sickness kuru through the handling of contaminated bodies.  Kuru was easily transmitted to the women and children since there was neither running water or antiseptics.