'Narcissus in the Bush': Methods, Analysis, and Ethics in Napoleon Chagnon's 'Studying the Yanomamö' (1974) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Early contacts with Yanomami: an ignored and little appreciated history of ethnographic reports
Archivio per l'antropologia e la etnologia, 2023
In 1968, Napoleon Chagnon published his influential book Yanomamö: The Fierce People. Later, this book and Chagnon's other publications were widely criticized. However, even his critics frequently describe Chagnon's research as the first serious anthropological study of these Amazon rainforest people. This categorization, even if it is almost universally repeated up until this day, is far from reality. A vast and highly significant amount of information was already gathered and published on Yanomami before Chagnon even thought about starting his field research. Yet, these publications remain largely unknown, ignored, dismissed or underappreciated, perhaps partly because most were not in English. Here we review articles, scientific papers and books published before 1968, a literature essential for understanding the torturous path of anthropological studies portraying the Yanomami and reassessing Chagnon's place in the history of Anthropology.
In 1968, Napoleon Chagnon published his best-selling ethnography The Fierce People , which established the Yanomami as a violent people in the public eye for decades to come. Indeed, in 1976, Time described the Yanomami as a " rather horrifying " culture which can only be described in terms of animal behaviour akin to baboons [Time 1976: 37], and over the coming decades, horror films like Canibal Holocausto would continue to fuel public imagination, declaring the Yanomami people as lovers of sadistic orgies [Ramos 1987: 296]. These examples mark but fragments in a convoluted puzzle, and at its centre lies one of anthropology's most divisive debates, the Fierce People controversy. The controversy began with Chagnon's book, and later with his infamous Science article, where he presented the argument that the Yanomami who kill the most do so out of evolutionary reasons to gain reproductive advantage. The arguments of this debate extend beyond the Yanomami, to general treatment of Amerindian groups and the public's interpretation of their " violent " behaviour.
History Explanation and War among the Yanomami a Response to Chagnons Noble Savages
Why do people make war? Is it in human nature? Publication of Napoleon Chagnon's Noble Savages resurrects old arguments, largely displaced in recent times by study of larger scale political violence, and sidelined by more contemporary theoretical currents. This shift ceded the human nature issue to a variety of biologistic approaches, for which Chagnon's image of the Orinoco-Mavaca Yanomamo is foundational. Chagnon proposes that war is driven by reproductive competition, with men fighting over women, revenge, and status, among a 'Stone Age' people living as they had for countless generations, in a tribal world untouched by larger history or the world system. This paper challenges each of those claims, and offers alternatives that provide a very different view of Yanomami warfare, and why men fight wars.
The Ethnobotany of the Yanomami Indians
Ethnobotany Research & Applications, 2003
Another of the accused was a most distinguished Venezuelan scientist Dr Marcel Roche. The journal Science recently, and most appropriately, published a defense of Roche signed by nine prominent Venezuelan scientists, who were all at one time staff members of the ...