The Emperor's New Suit In The Garden Of Eden, and Other Wild Guesses or, Why Can't Napoleon Chagnon
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The Emperor's New Suit In The Garden Of Eden, and Other Wild Guesses or, Why Can't Napoleon Chagnon Prove Anything?
Saturday, 21 September 2013 09:33 By Stephen Corry, Truthout | Book Review
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/18795-the-emperors-new-suit-in-the-garden-of-eden-and-other-wild-guesses-or-why-cant-napoleon-chagnon-prove-anything
Napoleon Chagnon's latest book, Noble Savages is a synopsis of his work with the Yanomami Indians of Amazonia, (a group of approximately 20,000 indigenous people who live in some 200 to 250 villages in the rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil) and is intended for nonspecialists. This anthropologist is key to the recent revival of the "Brutal Savage" myth. He contends that he holds the scientific truth, saying that his critics, especially those who have worked with the same Indians, downplay their violence. Corry shows how Chagnon makes unsupported claims, quotes from dubious sources, misrepresents his own data and contradicts himself. Corry points out how close Chagnon was to United States officials and how his promulgation of the "Brutal Savage" underscores that of fundamentalist missionaries. Corry argues that Chagnon's characterizations are unscientific and dangerous.
The sermon of both Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker - that "warfare" is "chronic" in most tribal societies, as well as prehistoric ones, and that it diminished with the arrival of the state - relies in good part on Napoleon Chagnon and his ideas about the Yanomami. He is the most controversial anthropologist in America, and had he spent his life doing something other than promoting his studies of this Amazon tribe (which he calls ‘Yanomamö'), it's difficult to imagine that Diamond or Pinker would have nearly as much traction with their "Brutal Savage" myth.
In that sense, Chagnon's new popular book, sarcastically entitled Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes - the Yanomamö and the Anthropologists, can be taken as one part of a trilogy, together with Diamond and Pinker. Although it hit the bookstores the most recently of the three authors' works - and is clearly intended as a retrospective score-settling with his many critics - ..........
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