racial worlds

[marycatelli]

Advice for a writer -- read primary source, read primary source, read primary source.  Warning for a writer -- it will give you persepctive on modern days things.  And very few will be the people who will be able to fathom it because it's not visible from their vantage point.

For instance, many discussions of race in speculative fiction start with the assumption -- never, of course, laid on the table -- that the racial categories of modern day society are like the law of gravity. 

Reading even Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard perhaps can clear up the notion, but then, I actually noticed the racial effects far better after I had been primed by reading about the racial science of their times.  (The very, very, very best racial science of their times.)

The classic mix of elves, dwarves, etc. could help:  groups that used to classify themselves all as different races often band together when face with people very much more different than themselves.  It can, however, take a while.  It took several centuries for the Indians to think of themselves as all "red" as opposed to "white" -- whom they generally split up at first.

And you seldom get the terminology that divides the world up into us, the real people/tribe/nationality, and them, everyone else, who get lumped together into one word.

Comments

[marycatelli]

There are these little things called "babies." Which have a certain importance in keeping society going.

When push comes to shove, there are rock-bottom, objective constraints on sex.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

I would put sexually-transmitted diseases in the same absolutist category as babies. However, I do notice that many societies and sub-groups seem to play very fast and loose with how they handle either one of those.
The militias in places like Darfur and the Congo, do not act in "typical ways". Under similar circumstances, many groups will adopt the children of hostile tribes and raise them as their own, while enslaving the older girls and women.

[marycatelli]

But then, the militias are in a grossly abnormal situation. Not unprecedented, but abnormal. Historically you had to have enough people raising food to prevent total famine.