The Prime Directive

Anthropologists wrestle with the "Prime Directive" every time they enter the field. As the Enterprise landing on a Strange New World, how much interference in the local culture does one engage?

Sometimes one can, off hand, deter a group from a harmful or unnecessary practice, but most times, one touch is enough to cause mayhem. In the old story of throwing the virgin into the volcano to prevent eruption; how does the anthropologist react?

Doing nothing? Speaking against it? Rescuing the damsel in distress? Suggesting the eruption is going to be too powerful for a virgin and needs the most powerful man in the village?

There is no answer. If the virgin goes into the volcano and it still erupts... if the virgin is spared, and there is an eruption...or if the anthropologist winds up being the sacrifice....?

Further, an anthropologist is not a social engineer. He or she has not been sent to organise society, to dispense western mores, but to observe and recommend. The "fresh pair of eyes" has often been useful to governments and non-governmental agencies, in understanding why something does not work.

In Jamaica, for example, there were prison riots for three days when condoms were introduced. Jamaica is, and is proud to be, the most homophobic nation on Earth. The insinuation that condoms would be necessary in an all male prison with no conjugal visits, was totally unacceptable.

The better method was to give a lecture to inmates who would be released within in the year, and dispatch a young and nervous female heath care worker along with the enormous visual aid, to show the population how to properly use a condom.

The reaction to this was amusement, and by simply leaving condoms behind for appropriation, skirted the issue of whether or not homosexuality was being practiced in the prison. To attempt to alter the opinions of Jamaicans in re homosexuality leads to an uproar, would and has caused greater antagonism than previously.

The push of various homosexual organizations, many which have American funding, resulted in society responding in greater shows of opprobrium. Any anthropologist worth his or her degree would have been able to advise that advocating an unpopular position concretises opposition.

In Nigeria, the idea that polio vaccines caused sterility, arising however it did, resulted in a public rejection, and subsequently, an outbreak of what had been a cured disease. The after the fact acceptance of the vaccine is no comfort to those who are now crippled by polio, and proves the failure of ignoring a culture or subculture's view of an event. A fresh pair of eyes ought have been dispatched the moment the first opinion that the vaccine causes sterility was uttered.

The anthropologist, seeing the culture as a whole and as 'other' would have been able to gauge the power of the sentiment, and the government would have been able to implement less costly methods of compliance. Unfortunately, this was not done. Currently, attempts are being made in East Africa to end the practice of female circumcision by using Islamic clerics to condemn it. By working within the culture, change might be more acceptable than passing a law to forbid it.

Other methods, perhaps giving a cow to uncircumcised females as long as they remain uncircumcised, would be of some value, especially by linking it with a girl remaining unmarried until she is sixteen, when the cow would be gifted. Building the practice of uncircumcised virgins receiving a cow on their sixteenth birthday could be built into the culture, but it must be done with the compliance of the leadership of each village, so as not to threaten power bases. Threatening power bases has always caused the defeat of a programme's application. Just as stopping the virgin from being thrown into the volcano is an affront to the leadership which believes it would stop the eruption.

One must be careful to uphold the Prime Directive and seek methods of having change, when necessary, come from within. But it must grow from within the culture, not be enforced from without.