Well, not exactly, but this interview ("Where Gifts and Stories Are Crucial to Survival") with Pauline Wiessner, an anthropologist at the University of Utah, is not to be missed. She talks about how the !Kung (click your tongue to say it or listen to Miriam Makeba sing "The Click Song") maintain social connections across distance and time--and how here in the non-!Kung world we imitate them via social conveniences like Facebook.
First point is that distance is no impediment to intimacy if we are willing to keep those we care about close in our hearts through gifts. Reinforces the truth that many of the most generous people are those with ostensibly the least to give.
Second point is the story-telling. By talking about those who are "away," the !Kung keep them in the conversation. Facebook, Wiessner says, is a contemporary example of how we keep those not in view front and center in a different way.
"People who use it [Facebook] say it keeps memories of distant friends alive and it sometimes brings long-lost relationships back home. We
all know of people who’ve been 'friended' by old pals from college and
former neighbors they’ve lost touch with. When they see pictures of
them and read 'sharings' from their Facebook partners, they are
reminded of their presence in their lives."
Here are the opening few paragraphs of Claudia Dreifus's enlightening interview with Wiessner. You have to read it. Make sure you go to the end too where one of the !Kung snags a satellite phone and calls Wiessner in Utah, asking her to buy some soccer shoes for their team, which an American documentary filmmaker had promised to send a few years earlier but never had.
Q. ONE OF THE GROUPS YOU STUDY, THE !KUNG PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN AFRICA’S KALAHARI DESERT, ARE NATIVE TO ONE OF THE MOST UNFORGIVING CORNERS OF THE PLANET. HOW DO THEY SURVIVE IN A PLACE OF FREQUENT DROUGHTS, FLOODS AND FAMINE?
A. They have an intricate system of banking their social relationships and calling on them when times get rough. The system is maintained through gift-giving, storytelling and visiting. It works like insurance does in our culture.
I first arrived in the Kalahari in the early 1970s, when the !Kung were still primarily hunter-gatherers. My question then was: how do people without meat on the hoof, grain in the larder and money in the bank survive hard times?
When I was there for about a year, some answers came. There was a heavy rain. The desert plants died and the wild game dispersed. As people grew hungrier, they began telling vivid stories about loved ones who lived as far as 200 kilometers away. They spoke about how they much missed them. Soon people were busily crafting beautiful objects — gifts. Finally, when push came to shove, 150 !Kung began trekking to the encampments of the people they’d been remembering. There they stayed until conditions in their home area improved.
What I’d witnessed was a structured system at play. The Bushmen used the storytelling to keep feelings for distant persons alive. The gifts are their way of telling the receiver, “I’ve held you in my heart.” Over the years, I saw this repeated many, many times. It would turn out that the !Kung spent as much as three months a year visiting “exchange partners,” and this was the key to their survival.