https://www.overlawyered.com/2009/04/well-in-our-culture-we-take-a-man-at-his-word/ Chronicling the high cost of our legal system Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:40:40 +0000 hourly 1 https://www.overlawyered.com/2009/04/well-in-our-culture-we-take-a-man-at-his-word/comment-page-1/#comment-47607 Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:40:40 +0000 http://overlawyered.com/?p=10831#comment-47607 Yep… I remember finding a book in the University of Florida’s library about the Sicilian fishermen from Gloucester, Mass. I happen to be from there, and most of the interviewees in the book were my relatives. When I opened the book and started reading what they had told this Ph.D. student, I realized that they were all screwing with him.

]]> https://www.overlawyered.com/2009/04/well-in-our-culture-we-take-a-man-at-his-word/comment-page-1/#comment-47600 Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:16:18 +0000 http://overlawyered.com/?p=10831#comment-47600 You would think that anthropologists would have learned by now not to take the natives stories at face value. I remember taking an anthropology course in college many years ago. The course discussed Margaret Mead’s work on the sexual mores of the natives in the Pacific islands. There was only one problem. The natives had made it all up. It is obvious that the real rubes are the “sophisticated” Westerners who believe the stories told by those “simple” natives who would not even know how to lie. I bet the natives got a good laugh every evening recounting to their friends the fact that this credulous woman fell for their stories hook, line and sinker.

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