I have been in a part of the country where Chagnon is strongly vindicated, and Sahlins is held up as a villain that has systematically destroyed anthropology. If these peers were any more in the know, they would (unjustly) accuse Terrence Turner of the same, since he blanketied the netwaves with messages to engage in the AAA meeting that occurred with the publication of Darkness to register our opinions, being an evangelist for the survival of the Kayapo, and not using them for personal aggrandizement. But they don’t know, they just read the Times Book Review.
What I know from field observations of this new-old ilk defending Chagnon is that they have close personal relationships with him, or want to portray themselves as such to steal a little of his limelight; they embrace a Darwinian pseudo-science steeped in racist and sexist tripe of evolutionary psychology (and this by no means is meant to suggest all Darwinian and genetic approaches are bad, there are people slaving in the lab doing good science, which is different than armchair Darwinians who promote certain ideas because it appeals to their warped notions of common sense); and they had poor potential reproductive success until they were professors, not being too popular with potential mates and using their status later to gain genetic traction by snagging undergrads that were a generation or more their juniors, in a field (anthropology) with something like 1000 jobs nationwide and production of Ph.D.s that exceeds that carrying capacity frequently, and where social, and not genetic Darwinism is rampant. They continually rehash a vulgar account of Chagnon and his critics with little attachment to the truth that simply vindicates a worldview they want to promote, and that they created and noisily defend to justify their own existence. The upshot of this should be a study of “Darkness in Academia” on the shit that many anthropologists pull under the guise of such unaddressed mission statement bylines as “an important part of the anthropology mission is to apply anthropological concepts to the resolution of important social, cultural, and environmental problems of our times.” The real mission is to secure status, make money, fawn on superiors to smooth the way to advancement, and destroy all perceived disagreement no matter how innocuous. They are gradually dismantling the anthropological project wherever they can, and couch it in such doublespeak as “democritization of science,” which means you don’t need to know the literature or history of the discipline to bluster on about your personal and unfounded opinion. I wholly support Sahlins’ withdrawal from the National Academy. True anthropologists may have to carry on an intellectual and social guerilla war outside official organs of academia in order to save it from the miscreants (denouncing them to senators who have veto power on public funding as constituents rather than members of the loyal opposition, etc.), the anti-pologists like Chagnon whose exciting and graphic comments about viciousness and snotty noses have now warped the public’s understanding of anthropology is and should be. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
