Strange Things

The Senator is thrilled that he was invited to lecture at the Pitt Rivers Museum - connected to Anthropology - although he is quite positive Pitt Rivers was probably an old white man who liked to collect exotic things and put them on display. This is the problem with anthropology. Its largely a cultural phenomenon of the West: we go out to "study" the "other" and then, if at all pragmatic, try to analyze our own culture in relation to said "other."

Of course, in regards to my own studies, I'm partial to this thing I am calling "reverse exchange" - where we enter other worlds as active learners (laying as many assumptions to rest as possible) and taking wisdom/knowledge back to our own culture. The second aspect of reverse exchange is inviting people of other cultures to come into our own and provide us with external observations to improve our way of life and system. We honor them as Teachers.

[Dr. Leroy Farma is confused. He thinks biomedicine is superior to all other medicines and thus only the West, with its technological innovations, has things to teach the world. He thinks that we merely have to find out how to communicate with other cultures and then they will adapt biomedicine and doctors will save the world].

HA! Even Professor Oxford, with his staunch Britishness and history of white men collecting and conquering the other, is beginning to understand that there is more to healing than medicine.