Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science, and Survival in the Congo Book

Everyone loves this book; reviews are through the roof. Me? Hated it. I was looking forward to a good read about adventurous field biology, and it delivered that, but at the expense of decency and respect for the Congolese on whose help her fieldwork depends.

Jackson describes some of the Congolese people she gets to know as stupid and "intellectually lazy" (237), even one (Lise) who is a co-author of one of her scientific articles! She criticizes her other assistant, Ange, for not being able to identify "the most obvious specimens. (237). I'd love to get her in a class on the history of science and to teach her that different cultures have different ways of seeing; what is "obvious" to her may not be to him.

More appallingly, she constantly derides traditional Congolese snakebite medicines as "useless 'traditional medicines'" (182). I'm not arguing that they cure victims of venomous snakebite, and yes, I'm sure there is a lot of misinformation about curing snakebite (some of which she describes). But Jackson's attitude belies her insensitivity to non-Western folkways and her own ignorance of the fact that surely some non-Western remedies work. Again, I'd like to get her in a history of medicine course to teach her that people in other cultures (and of other times) are and were not stupid. Instead of trying to gain insight into non-Western cures, she becomes "annoyed at having [her] expertise questioned" (199) and, in one particularly awful account, explains elementary physiology in a derogatory tone to someone who turns out to be a surgeon!

Early on I kept thinking that surely her bias was exaggerated in the beginning of the book in order to provide contrast to new insights revealed later in the narrative. But even when she gets bitten (maybe) by a cobra, she never even entertains getting local help, and in the resolution of the incident she remains stoically heroic.

Although I respect Jackson as a herpetologist, her account exposes some of the worst of the imperialist attitude of Western science.