Napoleon
Alphonseau Chagnon
(August 27, 1938 – September 21, 2019) was an American anthropologist,
professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri in Columbia and member
of the National Academy of Sciences. Chagnon was known for his long-term ethnographic
field work among the Yanomamö, a society of indigenous tribal Amazonians, in
which he used an evolutionary approach to understand social behavior in terms
of genetic relatedness. His work centered on the analysis of violence among
tribal peoples, and, using socio-biological analyses, he advanced the argument
that violence among the Yanomami is fueled by an evolutionary process in which
successful warriors have more offspring. His 1967 ethnography Yanomamö: The
Fierce People became a bestseller and is frequently assigned in
introductory anthropology courses.
Admirers
described him as a pioneer of scientific anthropology. Chagnon was called the
"most controversial anthropologist" in the United States in a New
York Times Magazine profile preceding the publication of Chagnon's most
recent book, Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes—the Yanomamö
and the Anthropologists, a scientific memoir.
Career
Chagnon
was best known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, indigenous
Amazonians who live in the border area between Venezuela and Brazil. Working
primarily in the headwaters of the upper Siapa and upper Mavaca Rivers in
Venezuela, he conducted fieldwork from the mid-1960s until the latter half of
the 1990s. According to Chagnon, when he arrived he realised that the theories
he had been taught during his training had shortcomings, because contrary to
what they predicted, raiding and fighting, often over women, was endemic. Due
to his constantly asking questions, Chagnon was nicknamed "pesky bee"
by the Yanomamö. A major focus of his research was the collection of genealogies
of the residents of the villages that he visited, and from these he would
analyze patterns of relatedness, marriage patterns, cooperation, and settlement
pattern histories. The degree of kinship was seen by Chagnon as important for
the forming of alliances in social interactions, including conflict.
Chagnon's
methods of analysis are widely seen as having been influenced by sociobiology. As Chagnon described it, Yanomamö society
produced fierceness, because that behavior furthered male reproductive success.
The genealogies showed that men who killed had more wives and children than men
who did not kill. At the level of the villages, the war-like populations
expanded at the expense of their neighbors. Chagnon's positing of a link
between reproductive success and violence cast doubt on the sociocultural
perspective that cultures are constructed from human experience. An enduring
controversy over Chagnon's work has been described as a microcosm of the
conflict between biological and sociocultural anthropology.
Chagnon's
ethnography, Yanomamö: The Fierce People, was published in 1968 and ran
to several editions, selling nearly a million copies,. It is commonly used as a
text in university-level introductory anthropology classes, making it one of
the bestselling anthropological texts of all time. Chagnon was also a pioneer
in the field of visual anthropology. He collaborated with ethnographic filmmaker
Tim Asch and produced a series of more than twenty ethnographic films
documenting Yanomamö life. The ethnographic film The Ax Fight, showing a
fight among two Yanomami groups and analyzing it as it relates to kinship
networks, is considered a classic in ethnographic film making.
In
2012 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Marshall Sahlins, who
was a major critic of Chagnon, resigned from the Academy and cited Chagnon's
induction as a reason.
On
21st September 2019, Chagnon died at the age of 81.
Anthropological Critiques of his Work
Chagnon's
work with the Yanomamö was widely criticized by other anthropologists.
Anthropologists critiqued both aspects of his research methods as well as the
theoretical approach, and the interpretations and conclusions he drew from his
data. Most controversial was his claim that Yanomamö society is particularly
violent, and his claim that this feature of their culture is grounded in
biological differences that are the result of natural selection.
The
anthropologist Brian Ferguson argued that Yanomamö culture is not particularly
violent, and that the violence that does exist is largely a result of
socio-political reconfigurations of their society under the influence of
colonization. Bruce Albert rejected the statistical basis for his claims that
more violent Yanomamö men have more children. Others questioned the ethics
inherent in painting an ethnic group as violent savages, pointing out that his
Chagnon's depiction of the Yanomamö as such breaks with anthropology's
traditional ethics of trying to describe foreign societies sympathetically, and
argued that his depictions resulted in increased hostility and racism against
the Yanomamö by settlers and colonists in the area. However, it is noted that
Albert “cannot demonstrate a direct connection between Chagnon’s writings and
the government’s Indian policy” and that the idea that scientists should
suppress unflattering information about their subjects is troubling and
supports the idea that nonviolence is a prerequisite for protecting the
Yanomamö.
The
anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, one of Chagnon's graduate teachers, criticized
Chagnon's
methods, pointing out that Chagnon acknowledged engaging in behavior
that was disagreeable to his informants by not participating in food-sharing
obligations. Sahlins claimed that Chagnon's trade of steel weaponry for blood
samples and genealogical information amounted to
"participant-instigation" which encouraged economic competition and
violence. Lastly, Sahlins argued that Chagnon's publications, which contend
that violent Yanomamö men are conferred with reproductive advantages, made
false assumptions in designating killers and omit other variables that explain
reproductive success. In 2013, Sahlins resigned from the National Academy of
Sciences, in part in protest of Chagnon's election to the body. Other
researchers of the Yanomamö such as Brian Ferguson argued that Chagnon himself
contributed to escalating violence among the Yanomamö by offering machetes, axes,
and shotguns to selected groups to elicit their cooperation. Chagnon charged
local Salesian priests with supplying guns to the Yanomamö who then used them
to kill each other.
In
his autobiography, Chagnon stated that most criticisms of his work were based
on a postmodern and antiscientific ideology that arose within anthropology, in
which careful study of isolated tribes was replaced in many cases by explicit
political advocacy that denied less pleasant aspects of the Yanomamö culture,
such as warfare, domestic violence, and infanticide. Chagnon also stated that
his beliefs about sociobiology and kin selection were misinterpreted and
misunderstood, similarly due to a rejection of scientific and biological
explanations for culture within anthropology.
As
a result of the controversy and the alleged unethical practices with the
Yanomami, Chagnon was officially barred from studying the Yanomami and from
reentering their country in Venezuela.
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Yanomamo: The Fierce People by Napoleon Chagnon
Amazon Review by John Engelman. February
4, 2017
5 Stars
When Napoleon A. Chagnon researched and
wrote Yanomamo: The Fierce People, from 1964 to 1977, the Yanomamo were an
American Indian tribe that lived in the Amazon rain forest, mainly in Venezuela
and Brazil. The Yanamamo consisted of about 10,000 people.
Economically they were Neolithic. Most of their calories came from primitive agriculture, although all of their meat came from hunting. Politically they were closer to a Paleolithic culture. The tribe was not united under a single leadership. The political unit was the village. There were about 125 villages. These villages averaged about 75 members. The range was from 40 to 250 inhabitants. Although the Yanomamo in the villages spoke the same language, the villages were often at war.
If the population in a village got too small the men would be killed, and the women and children would be carried off. If it got too large there would be a growing number of conflicts between the men, and the village would divide. Villagers liked to establish alliances with nearby villages. However, these alliances were unstable. If men in one village thought it was in their interest to raid a presumed ally, they often would.
Conflicts within a village were usually over women. When men raided another village they tried to abduct women. The Yanomamo did not like to confront long odds and desperate situations. If a single Yonomamo man in a raiding party was killed, the raid was considered to have been a failure. Nevertheless, a high percentage of men died violently, perhaps one fourth during the course of their lives. In 1988 Dr. Chagnon wrote an article in Science magazine that said that a Yanomamo man who killed other men in war averaged three times as many children as a man who had not killed enemies in war.
Although the Yanomamo men lived more violent lives than inner city gang members, they do not look muscular. I wonder how one would do in a physical fitness test that emphasized strength. I wonder how one would perform against an American of the same weight who was a trained boxer or mixed martial arts fighter, or an untrained but experienced street fighter.
Dr. Chagnon was introduced to the members of one village in 1964 by a Christian missionary. He was accepted into the village, but he was not inducted into it. Thus, he was not expected to engage in fights for dominance or in raids on other villages. He learned the Yanomamo language in a reasonable amount of time.
The Yanomamo share the incest taboo with nearly all humans, because it is instinctive. When children are born of closely related parents, harmful recessive genes often pair off, causing congenital deformities. Leaders of the village, and noted hunters and warriors often had more than wife. A man with more than one wife liked to marry sisters. This too is instinctive, and common among cultures that practice polygamy. Women have genetic stakes in the children of their sisters, so arguments between sisters are less common than arguments between fellow wives of the same man who are not related.
Virginity does not seem to be prized, but a Yanomamo man will kill a man who has an affair with his wife.
Yanomamo: The Fierce People sold over one million copies, and made Napoleon A. Chagnon one of the most famous anthropologists in the world. Nevertheless, many anthropologists reacted negatively to him and his book, and even questioned his honesty. This was because they wanted to believe that war is a recent vice, rather than a long time practice that has affected human evolution.
The raids practiced by Yanomamo men are similar to raids Jane Goodall and others have observewd among chimpanzees. Because chimpanzees are our closest relative, this kind of behavior is many millions of year old.
In his book War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, Lawrence H. Kelley argued that written accounts of tribal peoples by literate observers, as well as fossil remains of prehistoric humans indicate that prior to the advent of civilization a much higher percentage of men were killed in war than have died that way since, even during the twentieth century with two world wars.
https://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126
Peter Frost, a Canadian anthropologist, has argued that a tribal existence breeds men for violence, while civilization breeds men for obedience to the law. This is because during most of history the criminal justice systems of civilized countries have killed criminals before they had the opportunity to have children who would inherit their crime genes. This explains why races that have practiced civilization for thousands of years have lower crime rates than races that have been recently introduced to civilization.
A pessimistic appraisal of human nature does not mean that we must accept evil. It does indicate that there is often wisdom in tradition and that as an abstract ideal freedom should be viewed skeptically.
The Paleolithic era existed for about two and a half million years. It has affected the evolution of human nature more than the five thousand years or so of civilization. By studying people like the Yanomamo we can learn about our ancestors, and consequently ourselves.
Economically they were Neolithic. Most of their calories came from primitive agriculture, although all of their meat came from hunting. Politically they were closer to a Paleolithic culture. The tribe was not united under a single leadership. The political unit was the village. There were about 125 villages. These villages averaged about 75 members. The range was from 40 to 250 inhabitants. Although the Yanomamo in the villages spoke the same language, the villages were often at war.
If the population in a village got too small the men would be killed, and the women and children would be carried off. If it got too large there would be a growing number of conflicts between the men, and the village would divide. Villagers liked to establish alliances with nearby villages. However, these alliances were unstable. If men in one village thought it was in their interest to raid a presumed ally, they often would.
Conflicts within a village were usually over women. When men raided another village they tried to abduct women. The Yanomamo did not like to confront long odds and desperate situations. If a single Yonomamo man in a raiding party was killed, the raid was considered to have been a failure. Nevertheless, a high percentage of men died violently, perhaps one fourth during the course of their lives. In 1988 Dr. Chagnon wrote an article in Science magazine that said that a Yanomamo man who killed other men in war averaged three times as many children as a man who had not killed enemies in war.
Although the Yanomamo men lived more violent lives than inner city gang members, they do not look muscular. I wonder how one would do in a physical fitness test that emphasized strength. I wonder how one would perform against an American of the same weight who was a trained boxer or mixed martial arts fighter, or an untrained but experienced street fighter.
Dr. Chagnon was introduced to the members of one village in 1964 by a Christian missionary. He was accepted into the village, but he was not inducted into it. Thus, he was not expected to engage in fights for dominance or in raids on other villages. He learned the Yanomamo language in a reasonable amount of time.
The Yanomamo share the incest taboo with nearly all humans, because it is instinctive. When children are born of closely related parents, harmful recessive genes often pair off, causing congenital deformities. Leaders of the village, and noted hunters and warriors often had more than wife. A man with more than one wife liked to marry sisters. This too is instinctive, and common among cultures that practice polygamy. Women have genetic stakes in the children of their sisters, so arguments between sisters are less common than arguments between fellow wives of the same man who are not related.
Virginity does not seem to be prized, but a Yanomamo man will kill a man who has an affair with his wife.
Yanomamo: The Fierce People sold over one million copies, and made Napoleon A. Chagnon one of the most famous anthropologists in the world. Nevertheless, many anthropologists reacted negatively to him and his book, and even questioned his honesty. This was because they wanted to believe that war is a recent vice, rather than a long time practice that has affected human evolution.
The raids practiced by Yanomamo men are similar to raids Jane Goodall and others have observewd among chimpanzees. Because chimpanzees are our closest relative, this kind of behavior is many millions of year old.
In his book War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, Lawrence H. Kelley argued that written accounts of tribal peoples by literate observers, as well as fossil remains of prehistoric humans indicate that prior to the advent of civilization a much higher percentage of men were killed in war than have died that way since, even during the twentieth century with two world wars.
https://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126
Peter Frost, a Canadian anthropologist, has argued that a tribal existence breeds men for violence, while civilization breeds men for obedience to the law. This is because during most of history the criminal justice systems of civilized countries have killed criminals before they had the opportunity to have children who would inherit their crime genes. This explains why races that have practiced civilization for thousands of years have lower crime rates than races that have been recently introduced to civilization.
A pessimistic appraisal of human nature does not mean that we must accept evil. It does indicate that there is often wisdom in tradition and that as an abstract ideal freedom should be viewed skeptically.
The Paleolithic era existed for about two and a half million years. It has affected the evolution of human nature more than the five thousand years or so of civilization. By studying people like the Yanomamo we can learn about our ancestors, and consequently ourselves.
https://www.amazon.com/Yanomamo-fierce-people-Napoleon-Chagnon/dp/0030710707/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=NAPOLEON+CHAGNON&qid=1569996870&s=books&sr=1-3
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For a long and thorough review of the
mind war over anthropology that Chagnon fell into, see:
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