Before you do anything else, if you’ve ever heard of anthropology, Noble Savages, or Napoleon Chagnon, take a moment to click and read these two articles:
Meet Joe Science by Jonathan Marks
Sociobalderdash, and the Yanomami? Part II by Ken Weiss
Not even finished with an Anthropology on Jared Diamond – The World Until Yesterday and now Napoleon Chagnon splashes in with Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes–the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists.
The posts above are must reads on the issues. I’ve gathered more reviews below. The crucial point here is the one thing anthropology has learned in its past 100 years as an academic discipline: that contemporary peoples cannot be seen as pristine windows onto a primitive past or distillations of human nature. Especially not a group of people practicing slash-and-burn horticulture with steel axes.
Sociobalderdash, and the Yanomami? Part II, Ken Weiss
To repeat: Much more important is the degree to which observations today can be credibly extrapolated into the past, from one part of the world to all of humanity’s patrimony. All of this ado over Nap’s work is irrelevant to that question: Even were his descriptions indisputably 100% accurate, they don’t contribute to the greater legitimate debate about the nature of our evolution. Yanomami culture today, in the Amazon, says nothing about our African past 200,000 years ago. One way to see the colorful charivari that has always surrounded Dr Chagnon has to do with the knowledge of his nature, not just the nature of his knowledge.
The Mermaid’s Tale, 19 February 2013
Meet Joe Science, Jonathan Marks
Nicholas Wade starts off, “What were our early ancestors really like…?” – a good question, but one to which Napoleon Chagnon’s work is irrelevant. Bad start, though, because it means that even now, neither Chagnon nor Wade apparently understands what the Yanomamo actually tell us about anything. . . . Neither of the pieces puffing up Chagnon, and publicizing his hatred of his colleagues, even acknowledges the existence of alternative interpretations of Chagnon’s work. The problem, simply put, is that Chagnon’s statistics were rubbish, because he neglected to include the children of killers who had themselves been killed.
Anthropomics, 19 February 2013
Tribal Warfare: ‘Noble Savages,’ by Napoleon A. Chagnon, Elizabeth Povinelli
No doubt facing public accusations of large-scale wrongdoing must be harrowing. But “Noble Savages” starts by backing out of one tragedy only to end in another. It is less an exposé of truth than an act of revenge. If your belief in your culture’s superiority is founded on thinking of other societies as prehistoric time capsules, then you will enjoy this book. If not, say a requiem for the trees and make an offering to the pulp mill.
New York Times – Sunday Book Review, 15 February 2013
Science, Advocacy and Anthropology, Monica Heller Leith Mullings, Ed Liebow and Alan Goodman
The more general point is that at the very core of our discipline are commitments to the best of science and the best of advocacy. Advocacy suggests at minimum an ethical position to try to protect and better the lives of the individuals we work with, in particular those who are without access to power. Science stands for prediction (based on current understanding), followed by systematic observation and analysis and then, usually, revised understanding. But there is something more: we recognize that science is a practice that is undertaken in a social context, and as such it can be limited by the social hierarchies of its time, creating burdens and benefits, winners and losers. To have this awareness is not ‘anti-science.’ Indeed, it offers the sort of tough love of science that all responsible scientists ought to share. And every time the debate about ‘science’ versus ‘advocacy’ re-emerges, we cannot but hope that our discipline’s lengthy track record of critically embracing science can show that the debate itself is based on false premises. We’d love to put an end to the futility of the science versus advocacy version of “Whack a mole” so we can focus on quality anthropological work for the public good.
American Anthropological Association Blog, 17 February 2013
Indiana Jones is to Anthropology as Fred Flintstone is to Neolithic Life, President Leith Mullings, American Anthropological Association
To the Editor,
While we recognize that the figure of Indiana Jones is attractive, it is about as useful for understanding anthropology as Fred Flintstone is for understanding life in the Neolithic. Your article perpetuates an outdated and narrow stereotype of our profession. The 11,000 members of the American Anthropological Association alone actually spend their time doing a vast array of things. Today’s anthropologists can be found in such diverse endeavors as leading the World Bank, designing health care for areas devastated by disaster, or researching the causes of the 2008 recession or the deaths of 100 boys in a defunct reform school in Florida. The representation of a field paralyzed by debates about ‘science, ’ vs. ‘advocacy ’ is similarly inaccurate, given the non-polarized ways most anthropologists today understand ‘science’, ‘advocacy’ and the nature of the field. The article also misses one of Napoleon Chagnon’s lasting legacies to our field: the reminder to engage in constant reflection about anthropological ethics. The American Anthropological Association recently did just that, releasing its new Statement on Ethics: Principles of Professional Responsibility in October 2012. Finally, we consider lively debate neither dangerous nor self-serving: it is a key to knowledge.
American Anthropological Association Blog, 19 February 2013
The New York Times on Chagnon, Ryan Anderson
I heard various takes on Chagnon throughout my anthropological training. I read his book about the “Yanomamo” in some of my very first classes at community college, and then as the years went on I heard about the debates, the fights, the controversies. When I first heard his name I had no idea he was such a controversial figure. But then, a lot of thing that I first heard about in my early anthropology courses became a bit more “complicated” along the way. It’s interesting to me that this author calls Chagnon the best-known living anthropologist. Maybe he is. I guess it depends on who you ask though–and where you ask.
Savage Minds, 19 February 2013
Sex, Lies, and Separating Science From Ideology, Alice Dreger
I spent about a year researching the Chagnon-Tierney controversy, so I know from my conversations with Chagnon that, on more than one occasion, Margaret Mead rose to personally help Chagnon in his work–most notably when she vocally objected to attempts to ban a session on sociobiology at the AAA meeting that Chagnon had organized. How painful that their reputations have both had to face authors who wove not only false stories about them, but false stories so well supplied with pseudo-documentation that reasonable people believed them. The two cases raise a question I often find myself pondering: How do you effectively face a critic who amply footnotes what amounts to a fantasy?
This piece by Alice Dreger is mostly about the smearing of Margaret Mead and how that is now documented as itself a smear. I include it because it has been so often missed by many of these reviews.
The Atlantic, 15 February 2013
Book Review: Noble Savages, Fierce Controversies, Charles C. Mann
Prior to 1492, these researchers say, this portion of central Amazonia was a prosperous, cosmopolitan, multiethnic network of big villages, fed by fish from the great river and reliant upon a multitude of forest products. When that network was thrown into turmoil by the arrival of European slavers and European diseases, the Yanomamö and many other groups fled into the hinterlands, where they now reside. If this is correct, these people are not “pure” or “pristine”; they are dispossessed. And their existence in small bands is reflective not of humankind’s ancient past but of a shattered society that has preserved its liberty by retreat. It would be risky to base conclusions about the evolution of society on the study of posses of refugees, perhaps especially those who have survived both a holocaust and a diaspora.
Note: Unfortunately Mann saves this very important critique for the end of his review.
Wall Street Journal, 15 February 2013
The Weird Irony at the Heart of the Napoleon Chagnon Affair, John Horgan
Napoleon Chagnon reiterated this view when I interviewed him for “The New Social Darwinists,” a critique of evolutionary psychology published in Scientific American in October 1995. He said he was disturbed at the degree to which some sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists downplayed the role of culture in human behavior. I said he sounded like Stephen Jay Gould, a vehement critic of genetic explanations of human behavior. I meant to goad Chagnon with the comparison, but he embraced it. “Steve Gould and I probably agree on a lot of things,” Chagnon said.
Cross-Check: Critical views of science in the news, 18 February 2013
Chagnon Speaks: Publishes Noble Savages, Debra Lattanzi
After a decade of bad press, I’m pleased that Napoleon Chagnon’s decided to tell his own story. I’m buying the book and encourage you to do the same. It’s not often that an academic survives the type of smear campaign that Chagnon suffered. It’s time we all heard his story.
Living Ethnography, 13 February 2013
Noble Savages – Interview with Napoleon Chagnon, Serena Golden
Napoleon Chagnon may well be the most famous and most infamous anthropologist alive. Famous for the years he spent conducting fieldwork among the Yanomamö, a large and isolated native tribe in Venezuela and Brazil, and his extensive writings on their kinship structures, marriages, warfare, and more (most notably his 1968 work Yanomamö: The Fierce People, which sold close to a million copies in numerous editions and which for decades was routinely assigned in introductory anthropology courses).
Inside Higher Ed, 18 February 2013
An Anthropologist, Once Accused of Genocide, Tells His Story at Last, Tom Bartlett
Mr. Chagnon is, in other words, not easily cowed. He offers multiple examples of this fortitude in his new book, Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes—the Yanomamö and the Anthropologists (Simon & Schuster), including when a tiger leans over his hammock and when a leopard stalks him silently on a long hike. He does not run screaming from the jungle to the anaconda-free comforts of civilization. He toughs it out. It’s not until Page 452 that he really shows weakness, admitting that he tried and failed for years to write his life story. Those early drafts were too depressing, he admits, and he was too emotional.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 February 2013
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