ABSTRACT
Yali, a true primitive and as noble a savage as one might hope to meet, is still, seeking to penetrate the secret of cargo. Marvin Harris life’s ambition is to understand why some societies are rich beyond measure, with motorcycles and matches, tinned meats and wrist-watches, rice in bags and steel tools, whereas he and his fellow tribespeople are deprived of all these things. He had reached the conclusion that these were surely the places the cargo is kept. One day he heard about a ‘World’ Bank in Washington. With a name like that, this clearly had to be the most important, richest and most powerful bank of all. ‘The Bank’s word for cargo is “development”. The long rite of passage, which is the gateway and the path to development, they call “structural adjustment”. Yali was clearly on the right track and we suggested that we should henceforward work together, a proposal he welcomed with enthusiasm.
