User talk:Kerim Friedman
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— Trilobite (Talk) 10:59, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
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[edit] Racial difference
I saw you've deleted the photo comparing features of Han and Bunun on the Taiwanese aborigine article. Not quite sure what "idealized 19th century view of racial differences" is but you've diminished the article. Please provide an alternative illustration of the differences between the two races or consider replacing the image. Thanks! jk 21:44, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Jeremy, See my response here.
kerim 17:04, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Hello, Kerim. You are quite right about the fact that most of the native the Taiwanese people carries the aborigine blood, either plan tribe or highlanders. I am very impressed by your knowledge on this topic. I actually also wondered what to do with the photo whcih you removed. Do you think if it is okay for me to place your reasoning in the talk page of Taiwanese aborigine just for archiving? Mababa 04:03, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Mababa: Feel free to include the discussion in the talk page. I already added a link to the discussion myself - but not the actual text.
kerim 05:58, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Excellent!
Very nicely put. I have a set of photos from a short visit in 1989 and was looking for some way to contribute. I do think there is a place for a photo comparison between "typical" Han and Taiwan aborigine people.
Your reasoning is very well presented here. I'm continually impressed with the quality of the work done at Wikipedia. I always thought it would be wonderful to live with the Bunun for a year. You're so lucky. Let's keep in touch.
I see this was your first contribution to the article. Please consider fleshing it out!
Jeremy: I don't believe that there is anything "typical" that isn't a stereotype. I would be very offended if someone had a picture of me and labeled it "a typical Jew"! Moreover, as I said in my comments, it is inaccurate. Most people could not pick out the Aborigines from the Taiwanese in the pictures from my fieldwork. I was actually living in an Amis village, but there was also a Bunun village nearby that I frequented. I plan to contribute more when I have time!
kerim 05:58, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Of kind words and a question
Kerim, many sincere thanks for the kind words on "talk Taiwanese aborigines."
I have a question: I really really wonder about the list of "unrecognized" peoples. I would like to verify that these peoples still exist... and even better, whether they have petitioned for recognition. I'm going to start googling now, but if you happen to know anyone who would know this, I think it would be very useful info.
Thanks again Ling.Nut 17:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Thugs
Hi Kerim
Thanks for your note on the Thuggee talk page, which I try to monitor even though I've sworn off actually contributing to the article.
I've had a look at your blog post and have to wonder if you've actually had a chance to read my book? If you have, I'm rather puzzled as to why you present my point of view as being that of a believer in the old colonialist view of Thugs as members of a religious cult. In fact the book features a whole chapter which discusses the issue and concludes there's absolutely no evidence that Thugs were anything other than especially unpleasant and ruthless robbers, whose worship of Kali was entirely typical of Indian criminals of that period.
The meaning of my subtitle is a subtle one: that the "true story" is that there was no cult. Sadly, the fact that the chapter discussing religious beliefs falls starts on page 219 of the book has fooled more than one lazy reviewer who's not bothered to read that far into assuming my views are of the old-fashioned sort.
In fact I spent three years doing primary research in the archives in the UK and India perfectly aware of the revisionist perspective and on the lookout for evidence for and against the reality of Thuggee. Again, if you've read my book you'll know there are lengthy discussions of the reliability of the evidence presented at the various trials.
In case you haven't, my position is this:
[i] The alleged modus operandi of the Thug gangs - invariably seeking to murder their victims before robbing them - is highly distinctive and apparently unique. As such it should be possible to distnguish alleged Thugs from other sorts of criminals, and Thug crimes from other robberies
[ii] Close reading of thousands and thousands of pages of the MS material in London and Delhi shows that the British used "approvers" to exhume a minimum of 1,100 corpses from spots identified by the informants, which has to imply they had knowledge of at least that number of murders
[iii] While Sleeman's legal processes were far from displaying modern concern for the rights of the accused, he and his associates did go to considerable lengths to separate informants at the time of their arrest and cross-check their stories. No one was executed on the word of a single informant. I don't say no alleged Thugs were innocent - almost certainly some innocent men were executed - and I do feel standards of evidence clearly became considerably more lax when new laws were passed in the mid 1830s to make it easier to convict alleged Thugs who were only peripheral members of their gangs. However, it would be wrong to suggest that the East India Company was uniquely biased or racist in the way it organised its trials. In fact many accused murderers in the US, UK and independent Indian states experienced trials that were at least as weighted in favour of the prosecution in the 1830s. This too is clearly laid out in my book
[iv] In some cases, though certainly not all, there was a good deal of corroborative evidence in the shape of recovered loot, and even the testimony of survivors, which suggests at least some approver testimony was pretty reliable
[v] Roy and other revisionists have, so far as I can tell from their writings, not bothered to consult primary sources to check or verify any of this; their writings are based on secondary material, which is much less satisfactory.
In short, I agree almost entirely with Wagner, whose views I note you cite with approval, and who believes in the existence of Thuggee as a distinct form of crime, but not as a religious cult of any sort.
If you've read my book I'm rather surprised that you misrepresent my views so badly. If you haven't then I do think it might be an idea to pick it up!
All of this said, I do think it would be an idea for the article to be rewritten to include a section setting out the arguments in the dispute between Roy and Wagner, say. (Wagner is actually pretty critical of Roy, certainly much more so than he has been of me.) I think the debate breaks down more as one between historians and anthropologists, which means it's certainly an interesting one.
Best
Mike Mikedash (talk) 12:33, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Dear Mike,
Thanks for your reply. I am posting it -in full- below my blog post, with a reply.
Cheers,
