Comments
of Paige West
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Barnard
College
I
have been amazed by what I have seen in New
York City in the week following this disaster.
One thing that I have observed is a phenomenon
that is explained very well by the people I
work with, as an anthropologist, in the rural
mountains of Papua New Guinea.
When
people travel to far away places, places that
are quite different from their homes, they tend
to seek out other people that they imagine are
like themselves. Whenever I travel in Melanesia
I am amazed by encounters with other Americans
where in the span of 20 minutes they will have
told me all about their lives and I will have
told them all about mine. I am stunned sometimes
by sitting around a table full of Americans
who don't know each other at all but who are
having dinner and laughing and talking without
barriers or suspicion. I'm not talking about
nationalism or Xenophobia here. This is different.
It is similar to what anthropologists have called
a "community of sentiment," which means people
coming together because of shared social bonds,
feelings, and history. But that anthropological
explanation does not really do it justice.
In
New Guinea there is a phenomenon that is termed
"Wontok" in Melanesian Pidgin. Wontok
is literally translated as "one language" but
it means much more than that. A Wontok
is sometimes someone who speaks the same language
as you, but it is also someone with whom you
share a set of social obligations.
If your Wontok needs something you will
do everything in your power to provide her with
it. If your Wontok is hungry you will
feed her. If your Wontok is injured you
will find her medical care. If your Wontok
needs to build a new house you will help her.
If your Wontok is sad you will comfort
her. While you can be born into a Wontok
system, that is not always the case. You can
marry into the system. You can live with people
in the system and become one of them. If you
become a part of the social world of the system
you are a part of it. After years of working
in New Guinea now, I am a Wontok to the
Unavisa Gimi. So are my husband, my mother,
my grandmother, and my best friends.
Although
I just started teaching at Barnard two weeks
ago, I have been a New Yorker for a while now
and in the past week I have been touched and
amazed by all of my Wontoks here. And
again, this is not Nationalism I am talking
about. It is the simple yet infinitely complex
realization that we are connected in social
ways that are sometimes beyond our comprehension.
What I want for all of us is for us to retain
the understanding that we are all Wontoks
in the days and weeks and months and years to
come. That is a tall order, but I think we can
do it. I think that we have to, to live sanely
and socially in what has become an insane and
unpredictable world.
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