What do the different groups (locals, tourists) think and feel? What are the applicable structural factors* that shape the way the locals and the tourists interact and create the drama you see unfolding?

What do the different groups (locals, tourists) think and feel? What are the
applicable structural factors* that shape the way the locals and the tourists
interact and create the drama you see unfolding?

Released in 1988. The setting is the southern coast of Papua New Guinea (on the same
continental shelf with Australia in the South Pacific). The producer, Dennis O’Rourke, evidently
secured the permission of one or more tour operators to have a film crew tag along with groups
of European and American tourists on package tour outings (I suspect that one of these packages was
marketed as “Cannibal Tours”). The tourists would board a boat with sleeping compartments and a
galley, which would make several stops along the coast and outlying islands, the final
destination being the Sepik River. Small motorboats would take them up the river to the
traditional native villages.
In preparation for writing your written responses, you’ll want to view the video through your newly
acquired Anthropological lenses. You’ve met several “traditional societies” in what are now “Third
World” states. You’ll want to look for the uneven relations that are evident in the interactions between
the locals and the tourists. In a sense, the unevenness you see here on the ‘micro’ level reflects the
unevenness we find on the ‘macro’ level throughout the Modern World System. The aspects given in
the rubric on the following page will constitute the criteria by which your essay will be evaluated.
Minimum length: 500 words (there is no maximum).
The purpose of this written exam is to give you the opportunity to demonstrate to me how well
you’ve begun to grasp how an anthropologist might go about viewing the world.
So before you begin to write, you might re-consult Durrenberger and Erem readings, Power
Points, and videos to refresh yourself on anthropological vocabulary, whose use will help
your overall grade, and on the several aspects given in the rubric below.
Write on each of the eight prescribed topics given on the following page.
Like the Research Assignment, a rubric based on these topics will be installed in the Turn It In.
I’ll be grading you on your anthropological analysis of the video—demonstrating your grasp
of, what else, an anthropological perspective.
Sepik R.
The Kalwelka (Ongka’s Big Moka)
The Dani
(Dead
Birds)
Guide to Prepare You for the Written Exam on Cannibal Tours
[THE LIST of issues for discussion in your paper/the rubric by which your submission
will be graded:]
STRUCTURAL FACTORS (15% each).
1. What do the different groups (locals, tourists) think and feel? What are the
applicable structural factors* that shape the way the locals and the tourists
interact and create the drama you see unfolding? (*large forces such as the global economy,
social organization, political organization, even mass media, etc—these shape our cultural ‘reads’ and resulting
behaviors)
2. You’ll observe that the tourists are able to come to someone else’s place and feel
that they are in control. a) How does an anthropologist explain this, and b) Identify
the one brief scene in the film in which a group of tourists suddenly find themselves
not in control—how do they react?
3. Describe and explain some behaviors you see exhibited during the interactions
between tourists and locals that illustrate this that you can use in your explanation.
ECONOMIC FACTORS (15% each).
4. What are some economic factors (within a capitalist-market economy) that
make the locals, on balance, ‘losers’ in this relationship?
5. Uneven economic relations: Why can tourists expect to pay “2nd price” or even
“3rd price” for their souvenirs, when the locals can’t do that when they buy a tee
shirt and jeans at the store in the nearest town?
6. What would you guess is the financial nature of the arrangement between the tour
operators and the locals? In other words, what’s the “cut of the action” that the
operators hand over to the locals? And why do you think that?
IDEOLOGICAL FACTORS (based on the set of assumptions about the way the world works that justify the status quo) (5%).
7. What are the people in the film thinking?!? And why are they thinking that?
• The tourists—how does their referencing of the assumptions that are fed by the
ideology attached to a capitalistic-Market economy make it possible for them to act
as they do? Cite examples from the film.
• The locals—some who still reference the assumptions fed by the ideology attached
to a traditional Reciprocal-redistributive economy (cite at least one example).
But also notice that there are other locals who have at least partly figured out how
to work the [imposed] Market economy to some advantage (cite at least one
example).
THE IRONY (5%).
8. Finally: I think that I detect an ironic meaning that O’Rourke probably intended
when he gave this film the title Cannibal Tours. State what that ironic meaning
probably is….

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