In this series, we'll talk about some of the dirty tricks some academics employ to support the view that war is intrinsic to human nature. It's a complex debate, with reasonable people on both sides. But the outrageous techniques used by some of the pro-war folks (whom we refer to as neo-Hobbesians in our book) suggest their case is far weaker than they'd have us believe. Our previous post on "Bonobo War" is relevant to this discussion as well.
With the publication of Yanomamo: The Fierce People in 1968, Napoleon Chagnon became an academic rock star and his book would certainly have led Rolling Stone’s Best-selling Anthropology Books, had such a list existed. Now in its fifth edition, the book is still the all-time best-seller in anthropology, with millions of copies sold to university students alone. By now, Chagnon’s books and films have formed an important part of the education of several generations of anthropologists, many of whom have swallowed his claims to have demonstrated once and for all the inherent ferocity of Homo sapiens.
But Chagnon’s research should be approached with caution, as he appears to have employed some downright dubious techniques, conflating, for example, common murder with war in his statistics. But more importantly, Chagnon fails to account for the effects of his own disruptive, rather Hemmingway-esque presence among the people he studied. According to Patrick Tierney, author of Darkness in El Dorado, “The wars that made Chagnon and the Yanomami famous – the ones he wrote about with such relish in The Fierce People – began on November 14, 1964, the same day the anthropologist arrived with his shotguns, outboard motor, and a canoe full of steel goods to give away.” Tierney cites Chagnon’s own doctoral thesis, showing that in the thirteen years prior to his arrival, no Namowei (a large branch of the Yanomami) had been killed in warfare. But during his thirteen month residence among them, ten Yanomami died in a conflict between the Namowei and the Patanowa-teri (another branch).
Coincidence?
Kenneth Good, an anthropologist who first went to live with the Yanomami as one of Chagnon’s graduate students, subsequently stayed with them for twelve years. He described Chagnon as "a hit-and-run anthropologist who comes into villages with armloads of machetes to purchase cooperation for his research. Unfortunately,” says Good, “he creates conflict and division wherever he goes."
Part of Chagnon’s disruptiveness no-doubt resulted from his blustery, macho self-conception, but his research goals may have been a bigger problem, because they required him to collect genealogical information from the Yanomami. This is a tricky proposition, to say the least, given that the Yanomami are loathe to speak names out loud, considering it disrespectful. Naming the dead would be even worse -- requiring them to break the strongest taboo in their culture. According to Juan Finkers, who lived among the Yanomami for twenty-five years, “To name the dead, among the Yanomami, is a grave insult, a motive of division, fights, and wars.”
But Chagnon was determined to get those genealogies. He circumvented his hosts’ taboo by playing one village against another. In his own account, he wrote of his cleverness: “I began taking advantage of local arguments and animosities in selecting my informants.… traveling to other villages to check the genealogies, picking villages that were on strained terms with the people about whom I wanted information. I would then return to my base camp and check with local informants the accuracy of the new information. If the informants became angry when I mentioned the new names I acquired from the unfriendly group, I was almost certain that the information was accurate.… I occasionally hit a name that put the informant into a rage, such as that of a dead brother or sister that other informants had not reported.”
So to recap:
- Our hero swash-buckles his way into Yanomami lands with machetes, axes, and shotguns he uses to ingratiate himself with a few select groups, thereby severely disrupting balances of power with the groups who don’t receive his heavenly booty.
- He detects and aggravates pre-existing tensions between communities by goading them to disrespect each other’s honored ancestors and dead intimates.
- To further enflame the situation, Chagnon then reports the offense he’s provoked, using the rage he thereby generates to confirm the validity of his genealogical data.
- Having inflicted and generously salted the wounds, Chagnon then sallies forth to seduce the world’s imagination with tales of derring-do among the vicious heathens.
The word anthro has entered the vocabulary of the Yanomami. It signifies “a powerful nonhuman with deeply disturbed tendencies and wild eccentricities.” Since 1995, the anthro who made them famous has been banned from returning to the lands of the Yanomami.
