On the other hand, the "review" in today's NYT science section is really nothing but a celebration of Chagnon's viewpoint.
On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 11:20 AM, Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > What a pleasant surprise. It got ripped to shreds in the right-leaning > NY Times book review section. It must really be awful! > > NY Times Sunday Book Review February 15, 2013 > Tribal Warfare > By ELIZABETH POVINELLI > > NOBLE SAVAGES > > My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes — the Yanomamö and the Anthropologists > By Napoleon A. Chagnon > Illustrated. 531 pp. Simon & Schuster. $32.50. > > As I read “Noble Savages,” Napoleon A. Chagnon’s memoir of his years > among the Yanomamö, an isolated Amazonian tribe, I started hearing Linda > Ronstadt’s cover of “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me,” first as a low background > hum that grew louder and more insistent across the book’s 500-plus pages. > > For the uninitiated, Chagnon is an American anthropologist whose 1968 > book “Yanomamö: The Fierce People,” which argued that “primitive” people > didn’t live in the peaceable societies Rousseau had imagined but instead > fought bitterly, put him at the center of several long-running > controversies. In “Darkness in El Dorado” (2000), the writer Patrick > Tierney claimed that Chagnon and his research partner, the geneticist > James V. Neel, exacerbated the 1968 measles epidemic among the Yanomamö; > and that Chagnon aggravated the violence he claimed was endemic by > distributing machetes and guns as payment to his informants. > > The American Anthropological Association convened a special task force > to look into the accusations. Its two-volume report concluded that > while Chagnon may have misrepresented the Yanomamö, no evidence backed > up the measles allegations. The committee was split over whether Neel’s > fervor for observing the “differential fitness of headmen and other > members of the Yanomami population” through vaccine reactions > constituted the use of the Yanomamö as a Tuskegee-like experimental > population. > > Heavy charges, grave deliberations, fraught conclusions: what better > context for a meditation on how truth is produced in the social > sciences? But while “Noble Savages” — a lively and paranoid romp through > the thick jungles of the Amazon and the thicker tangles of academic and > religious intrigue — might generate more publicity for Chagnon, I doubt > it will do his reputation much good. > > Portraying himself as an innocent caught between two dangerous tribes, > Chagnon spares no perceived enemy, including, it seems, the people on > whose backs he built his career. Perhaps it’s politically correct to > wonder whether the book would have benefited from opening with a serious > reflection on the extensive suffering and substantial death toll among > the Yanomamö in the wake of the measles outbreak, whether or not Chagnon > bore any responsibility for it. Does their pain and grief matter less > even if we believe, as he seems to, that they were brutal Neolithic > remnants in a land that time forgot? For him, the “burly, naked, sweaty, > hideous” Yanomamö stink and produce enormous amounts of “dark green > snot.” They keep “vicious, underfed growling dogs,” engage in brutal > “club fights” and — God forbid! — defecate in the bush. By the time the > reader makes it to the sections on the Yanomamö’s political > organization, migration patterns and sexual practices, the slant of the > argument is evident: given their hideous society, understanding the real > disaster that struck these people matters less than rehabilitating > Chagnon’s soiled image. > > But the problems bedeviling “Noble Savages” are not the stinking > “primitives” or the politically correct academy, but the book’s > Manichaean rhetorical structure, simplistic representation of the > discipline and questionable syllogisms. This final problem is especially > acute given that Chagnon contends that cultural anthropology lacks a > rigorous evidence-based scientific outlook. In “Noble Savages,” the good > guys and bad guys are easy to discern. Marxists and cultural > anthropologists are, by definition, bad. Rousseau was wrong and is bad. > Hobbes got it right and is good. “Sinister” Salesian Catholic > missionaries have been out to get Chagnon ever since he refused their > request to murder one of their own, who fathered a child with a local > woman, and for revealing that they were distributing shotguns among the > tribe. (When Chagnon handed out guns, he suggests, he inconvenienced > himself, not the Yanomamö.) The Yanomamö are a deceitful, stubborn and > murderous people. “Real” scientists are always good, and Chagnon is > eager to convince us he is a real scientist, exploding myths and > speaking truth to power. Yet his arguments in this book rely on slippery > qualifications, dubious presumptions and nonreplicable claims. Chagnon’s > findings can’t be tested since, as he takes pains to remind us, most > contemporary Yanomamö are now “acculturated,” their “wild” eyes dimmed. > > Obviously one doesn’t have to be among “Stone Age warriors” to be > mortally threatened, attacked by bugs or lack a proper coffee maker. But > you cannot experience Chagnon’s fantastic journey to the heart of > darkness unless you believe, as he does, that you are peering across > eons of time. Ditto with his core set of rhetorical syllogisms: (a) > Neolithic man was a Hobbesian creature brutally competing for Darwinian > reproductive advantage; (b) the Yanomamö are Neolithic men who desire > women; therefore, (c) the Yanomamö are competing for reproductive > advantage. But paying attention to desire and sexuality need not entail > a theoretical paradigm of reproductive fitness. A different set of > presuppositions would lead you elsewhere. > > And what of these “primitives,” who “duck-waddled in closer and wiggled > in to have their feel” of their first white man? Leave aside the > contrasting comparative data from other societies: we discover midway > through the memoir that a “jungle grapevine” had long ago sent very > accurate portraits of him to far distant groups. Surely bush telegraphs > also conveyed word of what was likely to occur when white men showed up > with guns and machetes. And yet, perhaps knowing this all too well, the > Yanomamö look after Chagnon when he is stranded or in need. Like most > people, the Yanomamö seem to combine forms of care with those of violence. > > 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. > > Elizabeth Povinelli is a professor of anthropology and gender studies at > Columbia University. She is the author, most recently, of “Economies of > Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism.” > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
