Last week in Anthropology Today, researcher Stuart Kirsch chimed in on a similar topic.  He wrote about a contested piece from the April 21, 2008 issue of The New Yorker. In the story, “Vengeance Is Ours: What can tribal societies tell us about our need to get even?,” Jared Diamond profiles a Papua New Guinea highlander who avenged his uncle’s murder and felt content afterward. Diamond contrasts the highlander with Diamond’s own father-in-law, who in 1945 turned the killer of his mother, sister, and niece over to police in Poland but regretted it the rest of his life.

Diamond draws distinctions between state societies which administer justice, and non-state societies, in which individuals execute justice themselves. The article ran under the “Annals of Anthropology” heading, which gave some anthropologists hives.

The subject of Diamond’s story has filed a multimillion-dollar libel suit, protesting what he says are fabricated quotes. In addition, StinkyJournalism.org has gone after Diamond in a series of essays, including one by media ethicist Valerie Alia (“Media, Misrepresentation, and Indigenous People”).

Kirsch’s anthropological work in New Guinea includes helping indigenous people deal with multinational corporations. His editorial “Moral dilemmas and ethical controversies” first takes issue with some of Diamond’s critics. Then he writes:

But I have my own criticism of Diamond’s essay. I disagree with his use of a single anecdote from New Guinea to generalize about everyone from New Guinea, and by implication all members of non-state societies.

Kirsch goes on to say that Diamond “fails to demonstrate that this particular man’s experiences are generalizable.” And he recounts more anecdotes from Papua New Guinea and elsewhere that demonstrate public renunciation of violence or revenge.

Anthropologist Alex Golub, who was one of the experts used by New Yorker fact-checkers, makes another good point over at SavageMinds.org:

At root, the problem—and it is not a fatal flaw, just a problem—with Diamond’s article is that it teaches us that Other Ways Of Life Have Something To Offer Us, but the only way it can do so is by making Papua New Guineans appear more Other to us than they really are.

Without any idea how the libel suit will play out in the long run, journalists can still use Diamond’s battle as a cautionary tale. Choosing a single cultural representative as a protagonist for your story—especially when cultural mores are central to your concept—can be risky. And you might want to think twice about whether or not you’re overemphasizing the exotic when you spin stories about other cultures, at home or abroad.

Adichie describes her own middle-class family’s servant in Nigeria and how her mother consistently characterized his family by its poverty. She felt pity for him, but then was surprised to discover one day that his mother made beautiful baskets. It had never occurred to her that they would be capable of making anything.

She extends the parallel to literature (that it is a Western phenomenon), to her American college roommate’s expectations about her (that she wouldn’t be able to speak English and would listen to tribal music) and her own mistaken impression of Mexicans (whom she had known of primarily through reading stories about illegal immigration).

She notes how impressionable and vulnerable we can be in the face of a story, and suggests that hearing only the dominant narrative cannot help but generate stereotypes.

Adichie’s words might find particular relevance for narrative reporters using the power of storytelling to portray another place or culture. And they bring to mind a comment that National Geographic reporter Tom O’Neill recently made in an interview on why he sometimes chooses not to focus on a single character in his narrative stories:

My experience from reading stories about one character is that they’re compelling, but sometimes they feel depopulated if the story is dealing with bigger issues. Of course it’s the skill of the writer to bring in the bigger issues. But if you’re doing something in Indonesia, and you find one person, the reader can feel like they didn’t get a sense of the larger experience.

The danger of the single story in narrative journalism doesn’t just involve whether to follow one subject or three; it can also rear its head in the portrayal of an entire country. In his Narrative Matters essay from this year, novelist Alexander McCall Smith writes about wondering how much of the AIDS crisis to include in his The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which he knew might help frame readers’ impressions of Botswana and Africa:

For me, as a novelist whose books—not as part of any concerted plan on my part—have been viewed as an introduction to a previously not very well-known country, the issue has been this: what should I say about AIDS? What role should AIDS play in a fictional account of the life of a country in the throes of the illness? Is writing about Botswana without mentioning the AIDS pandemic like writing about London during the Blitz without mentioning the fact that bombs were going off?

Ultimately, of course, no novelist or reporter can assume responsibility for fully representing a people or culture through a single story or even a series. But Adiche’s words might recommend that we know enough history to be aware of what came before, and not to simply reinforce the story that’s already out there.

“The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue,” says Adichie, “but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”