I haven't yet read Jonathan Gregson's book, but from your review ("Kingdoms in cloud-cuckooland", #15) it is apparent that Gregson exhibits the same pretentiousness of authors who have not overgrown the Orientalist traditions of their anthropologist forebears while dealing with Third World subjects. Making fun of the attire, accents, or food habits of "natives" has always exposed this genre of Western-centric worldviews.

A Nepali journalist going to Britain and observing that British judges looked like "lost rams on a cliff" would be the classic antidote to this. The problem with parachutists is that they never stay around long enough to understand the nuances of local life, and show sensitivity towards the subject.

They are in fact no different than early explorers who wrote disparagingly about forest-dwelling savages who walked around naked, as if wearing trousers and ties would have made them 'civilised'.

Dr E Ehrlich
via Internet