Joanna
Leigh Meyers wrote:
> It doesn't take a trained anthropologist to know when
> scientific research methods are blown down the tube.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> " noting that he is not a trained
> anthropologist and thus is ill-equipped to challenge Chagnon's
> established
> thesis on Yanomami violence. But few have stepped forward to defend
> Chagnon's research methods. Even more serious than Chagnon's ``checkbook
> anthropology,'' which rewarded cooperative Yanomami with everything from
> fishhooks to outboard motors, was his method for tracing the group's
> lineage: Tierney says he paid people to tell him the names of their dead
> ancestors, a revelation that is taboo in Yanomami culture. If that
> failed,
> he approached rival communities to get the information, aggravating
> tension.
> Far from being a quiet observer, Chagnon was a dominant presence:
> Villagers
> say he would descend into communities, God-like and armed with a shotgun,
> via helicopters that sometimes blew the roofs off buildings."
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: Gregory.L To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Sent: Monday, September 27, 2004 5:56 PM
> Subject: [lbo-talk] sick perversions
>
>
> Michael Dawson quoted:
> "All observers who have ever been in contact with [the Yanomamo] agree
> that
> they are one of the most aggressive, warlike, and male-oriented
> societies in
> the world..."
> Marvin Harris, _Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture_,
> Vintage Books, 1974.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ------------------
> The study of the Yanomamo is such a can of worms that hate to open it
> further but it should be noted that Chagnon's work was faulty, at
> best, and
> unethical at worst:
>
> Tierney became interested in Latin American culture in 1968, when
> anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon published Yanomamo: The Fierce People.
> Giving graphic details of the Indians' hallucinogenic drug use,
> warfare, and
> women-stealing raids on other villages, Chagnon argued that violent
> Yanomami
> men had more female partners and more offspring, and thus became
> dominant in
> their communities. His book became a classic in anthropological
> literature,
> selling over 1 million copies, more than Margaret Mead's legendary
> Coming of
> Age in Samoa. Chagnon became a larger-than-life figure to a generation of
> anthropologists.
> But after spending 11 years researching his story on the Yanomami in the
> field, Tierney, initially an admirer, came to loathe Chagnon's practices.
> Tierney's not the first critic: Over the years, a number of
> anthropologists
> have cast doubt on Chagnon's thesis that the Yanomami are particularly
> fierce. (Indeed, Chagnon removed his subtitle The Fierce People from
> later
> editions.) But Tierney offers painstaking research--including hundreds of
> interviews with missionaries, anthropologists, and the Yanomami
> themselves--presenting difficult-to-refute evidence that Chagnon and
> others
> misrepresented the nature of the indigenous group to suit their own
> agenda.
> Tierney's calculations indicate Chagnon may have vastly overstated the
> ``violence quotient'' of some villages by failing to count all of the
> men.
> Chagnon, now retired from the University of California Santa Barbara,
> says
> Tierney's accusations are ``preposterous.'' His supporters have posted
> point-by-point rebuttals of Tierney's conclusions on the Internet
> (www.anth.ucsb.edu/chagnon.html ), noting that he is not a trained
> anthropologist and thus is ill-equipped to challenge Chagnon's
> established
> thesis on Yanomami violence. But few have stepped forward to defend
> Chagnon's research methods. Even more serious than Chagnon's ``checkbook
> anthropology,'' which rewarded cooperative Yanomami with everything from
> fishhooks to outboard motors, was his method for tracing the group's
> lineage: Tierney says he paid people to tell him the names of their dead
> ancestors, a revelation that is taboo in Yanomami culture. If that
> failed,
> he approached rival communities to get the information, aggravating
> tension.
> Far from being a quiet observer, Chagnon was a dominant presence:
> Villagers
> say he would descend into communities, God-like and armed with a shotgun,
> via helicopters that sometimes blew the roofs off buildings.
> (From: a review of
> Atrocities in the Amazon?
> DARKNESS IN EL DORADO:
> How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon By Patrick Tierney
> http://forests.org/archive/brazil/atamhows.htm)
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> --
> There are, I believe, examples and arguments to be made for a wide
> variety
> of practices, social structures and relationships within human history
> and
> prehistory, and the animal kingdom. Giving primacy to any one is true
> religious mysticism. Or ideology.
>
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