keep the existence of their thoughts and feelings to themselves. “The capacity for mind-reading and for being mind-read is all very well,” he wrote. “But human individuals even in the closest knit cooperative groups are still usually to some degree in competition. So there must certainly be times when individuals do not want to be a completely open book to others.” 25
A great deal of the shielding needed for personal activities is achieved by psychological escape, that is, with behavioral signals rather than structural barriers. Earlier we looked at Nurit-Bird’s account of psychological shelter offered by the Naiken people of India. In a later paper she described the way that they “sit scattered, staring in different directions,” displaying a reticence that protects them from direct encounters with others. Since they live openly, reticence provides relief against what Nurit-Bird called “involuntary intimacy.”
The averted gaze has always been an effective way of isolating oneself from others, and it continues to be today, especially when people are crowded into small places such as elevators and ATM kiosks. We may suppose this signal worked overtime in the case of anthropologist Jean Briggs, who, as we saw, lived with an Eskimo family in an open-space igloo or tent. Briggs quickly discovered that all her normally private (physiological) activitieswould have to be carried out in front of these potential observers. Yet this scrupulously polite family of six never really looked at Briggs, nor did she watch them when they engaged in intimate personal and family activities.
Similar observations were made by Paul Fejos, an anthropologist who studied the Yagua people of northeastern Peru in the early 1940s. All the families of a clan, which ranged from twenty-five to fifty members, lived communally in one large house.” Fejos noted that although there were no partitions, members could achieve privacy at any time simply by turning away. “No one in the house, Fejos wrote, “will look upon, or observe, one who is in private facing the wall, no matter how urgently he may wish to talk to him.” 26
This sort of civil inattention is rather different from structural privacy. For one thing, one’s associates cooperate. Their ability to attend is not, as with physical enclosure, removed from them unilaterally. The privacy achieved by these individuals is
requested
—directly or, more often, indirectly—and freely
conferred
. In open living arrangements, others retain the ability to detect an abuse of privacy, and to restore scrutiny at any time.
They know what it is they are not watching
.
These benign concessions by a group carry rather different implications than unilateral withdrawal by an individual. This is especially true where the individual cannot be trusted, and in face to face societies there are few ways that one can earn trust. If we are eating a pig, one Samoan woman said, we give it to other families because they can see into our house and they know that we are eating it. It may be impossible for a man to know who can be trusted and who cannot, wrote the jurist Charles Fried, “unless he has a right to act without constant surveillance so that he knows he can betray the trust.” 27
We thus find eavesdropping and trust in odd juxtaposition. In today’s closed societies, eavesdropping is precipitated by distrust, but in the open societies of the past, eavesdropping—then an easy thing to do—rendered trust unnecessary.
Growing pains
Eavesdropping works well with tiny groups, which may be responsible for the fact that small-scale societies may be able to get by without police or courts. 28 But as groups enlarge, it becomes more and more difficult to “keep tabs on… the alliances and maneuverings of others,” as Berkeley anthropologist George Foster put it, and under the circumstances it is easy to imagine that these activities “may be prejudicial to oneself.” 29 But why is it difficult to
A great deal of the shielding needed for personal activities is achieved by psychological escape, that is, with behavioral signals rather than structural barriers. Earlier we looked at Nurit-Bird’s account of psychological shelter offered by the Naiken people of India. In a later paper she described the way that they “sit scattered, staring in different directions,” displaying a reticence that protects them from direct encounters with others. Since they live openly, reticence provides relief against what Nurit-Bird called “involuntary intimacy.”
The averted gaze has always been an effective way of isolating oneself from others, and it continues to be today, especially when people are crowded into small places such as elevators and ATM kiosks. We may suppose this signal worked overtime in the case of anthropologist Jean Briggs, who, as we saw, lived with an Eskimo family in an open-space igloo or tent. Briggs quickly discovered that all her normally private (physiological) activitieswould have to be carried out in front of these potential observers. Yet this scrupulously polite family of six never really looked at Briggs, nor did she watch them when they engaged in intimate personal and family activities.
Similar observations were made by Paul Fejos, an anthropologist who studied the Yagua people of northeastern Peru in the early 1940s. All the families of a clan, which ranged from twenty-five to fifty members, lived communally in one large house.” Fejos noted that although there were no partitions, members could achieve privacy at any time simply by turning away. “No one in the house, Fejos wrote, “will look upon, or observe, one who is in private facing the wall, no matter how urgently he may wish to talk to him.” 26
This sort of civil inattention is rather different from structural privacy. For one thing, one’s associates cooperate. Their ability to attend is not, as with physical enclosure, removed from them unilaterally. The privacy achieved by these individuals is
requested
—directly or, more often, indirectly—and freely
conferred
. In open living arrangements, others retain the ability to detect an abuse of privacy, and to restore scrutiny at any time.
They know what it is they are not watching
.
These benign concessions by a group carry rather different implications than unilateral withdrawal by an individual. This is especially true where the individual cannot be trusted, and in face to face societies there are few ways that one can earn trust. If we are eating a pig, one Samoan woman said, we give it to other families because they can see into our house and they know that we are eating it. It may be impossible for a man to know who can be trusted and who cannot, wrote the jurist Charles Fried, “unless he has a right to act without constant surveillance so that he knows he can betray the trust.” 27
We thus find eavesdropping and trust in odd juxtaposition. In today’s closed societies, eavesdropping is precipitated by distrust, but in the open societies of the past, eavesdropping—then an easy thing to do—rendered trust unnecessary.
Growing pains
Eavesdropping works well with tiny groups, which may be responsible for the fact that small-scale societies may be able to get by without police or courts. 28 But as groups enlarge, it becomes more and more difficult to “keep tabs on… the alliances and maneuverings of others,” as Berkeley anthropologist George Foster put it, and under the circumstances it is easy to imagine that these activities “may be prejudicial to oneself.” 29 But why is it difficult to
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