Does Scarcity Lead to Selfishness? - Anthropology News
The Ik of northern Uganda have been characterized as greedy and mean, a people whose culture of selfishness developed in response to chronic scarcity. But the relationship between hardship and human generosity is far more complex.
Article begins The Ik of northern Uganda have been characterized as greedy and mean, a people whose culture of selfishness developed in response to chronic scarcity. But the relationship between hardship and human generosity is far more complex. Few ethnographies are as controversial as The Mountain People , Colin Turnbull’s 1972 description of a marginalized African society in a state of anomie. Turnbull’s subjects, the Ik, eke out a living with a mixture of foraging and horticulture in a small mountainous region of northern Uganda. Turnbull reported shocking behaviors, including the desertio
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