90 Before Agriculture
others on that mind, according to the deep beliefs and social conventions of hunt-
ing peoples, are more destructive than instructive. The mind has the capacity to
learn, and, left to develop on its own, it will do so.
The place of thinking in Inuit ideas of psychological development, and the
related ways in which the word isuma is used, offer many clues about Inuit society.
Parents identify children with respected elders, trust children to know what they
need, do not seek to manipulate who children are or what children say they want.
This way of treating children tends to secure confidence and mental health. And
Inuit child raising is inseparable from many aspects of interpersonal behaviour.
Adults respect one another as separate but equal. This is the basis for cooperation –
by respecting individual skills, judgements and knowledge, the strengths of the
economy and the social order are shared. Isuma is the notion that underlies and
unites many of these features of Inuit life, for it affirms that in crucial ways the
development of isuma is independent of social manipulation and control. Embed-
ded in this use of the word for mind is a view of mind itself.
The work of Chomsky and Pinker and the Inuit use of isuma reveal the same
truth: there is some logical and physiological antecedent to the cultural specifics of
learning. In the hunter-gatherer reliance on individual egalitarianism lies the free-
dom for everyone to be themselves, and a confidence that the integrity of society –
the respect that hunter-gatherers show to one another as well as to the natural
world around them – will achieve the best results for both individuals and the
group. The egalitarian individualism of hunter-gatherers is of a piece with a com-
pelling theory of mind.
12
The linguistic theories of Noam Chomsky have been closely associated with the
school of thought, or the theory of thought itself, known as structuralism. Structur-
alist theory originates with ideas about grammar and its relation to the structure of
the mind, and it relies on the view that grammar has at its heart a logical principle
akin to the law of excluded middle, the principle that nothing can be both X and not
X at the same time. The merits of this approach to grammar may well be inseparable
from the insights of Chomsky and others into universal grammar. But anthropology
made structuralism its own with a series of assertions about a seemingly fundamental
dichotomy between culture and nature. Beginning with these ideas as a way of look-
ing at ritual and myth – seeing rituals and myths as expressing or mediating the need
for humans to establish their cultures in defiance of nature – structuralist anthropol-
ogy then proceeded to explore many other kinds of dichotomies, some of which
resonated with the culture : nature paradigm. Man : woman. Dark : light. Raw :
cooked. Upstream : downstream. Sky : earth. Sun : moon. Human : animal.
The anthropologist who made the most elaborate play with pairs of opposites,
and who originated the claim to see in them a clue to the nature of the human