Remote but in contact with history and the world

摘要

Sauter et al. (1) begin with the premise that the Himba withwhom they worked in Kaokoland, northwestern Namibia, lived inisolation “with no exposure to other cultural groups throughmedia or personal contact.” The authors have not adequatelysituated their informants in a historical or anthropological context.Had they done so, they would have seen how unlikely itis that the people with whom they worked had “not been exposedto the affective signals of individuals from cultural groupsother than their own” (1).