Studying indigenous groups: the case of Yanomam

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Studying indigenous groups the case of Yanomamö

• 18.2.2004

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Readings

• Chagnon (1983) Yanomamö Warfare. (in Yanomamö
  The Fierce People)
• Tierney (2000) Napoleonic Wars. (in Darkness in
  El Dorado How Scientists and Journalists
  Devastated the Amazon)

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Discussion topics

• Presentations
• Chagnon 1968. Yanomamö The Fierce People.
• Tierney, P. 2000. Darkness in El Dorado How
  Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon.
  
• Discussions
• Video Yanomami homecoming

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Anthropology wars

• Robert Redfield vs Oscar Lewis
• Tepoztlan
• Margaret Mead vs Derek Freeman
• Samoa
• Marshall Sahlins vs Gananath Obeyesekere
• Captain Cook and Hawaii
• Napoleon Chagnon vs Patrick Tierney
• Yanomamö

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Presentations

• Chagnon 1968. Yanomamö The Fierce People.
• Tierney 2000. Darkness in El Dorado How
  Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon.
  

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Discussion topics

• What could be the problems of studying indigenous
  cultures? Focus on fieldwork ethics.
• Mens lives are a competition for women to
  maximise their offspring. Discuss.
• Are yanomamös more fierce than other societies,
  i.e. is aggressiveness culturally conditioned or
  universal?

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Impact of studies I

• I Impact on indigenous people
• Upsetting the social systems
• Accusations against Chagnon
• Diamond Guns, Germs, and Steel The Fates of
  Human Societies (1999)
• More research and tourism
• Violent vs noble savage?
• Time Magazine review of Chagnon's work
• "Beastly or Manly?" (1976)
• Picked up by Brazil's military junta
• To justify expropriation of yanomamö lands
• Yanomamös as noble savage
• Yanomani Homecoming

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Impact of studies

• II Impact on anthropology as a discipline
• Clashes within academia
• Chagnon vs South American anthropologists
• Chagnon vs Terence Turner Leslie Sponsel
• AAA in San Francisco in 2000
• The image of anthropology
• Is Anthropology Evil?
• Rumble in the Jungle
• Macho anthropology
• Anthropology on Trial

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Franz Boas

• 15 months on Baffin Island
• 500 pages of letters never sent to Marie
  Krackowizer
• December 16, north of Pangnirtung.
• My dear sweetheart Do you know how I pass these
  long evenings? I have a copy of Kant with me,
  which I am studying, so that I shall not be so
  completely uneducated when I return. Life here
  really makes one dull and stupid. I have to
  blush when I remember that during our meal
  tonight I thought how good a pudding with plum
  sauce would taste. But you have no idea what an
  effect privations and hunger, real hunger, have
  on a person. Maybe Mr. Kant is a good antidote!
  The contrast is almost unbelievable when I
  remember that a year ago I was in a society and
  observed all the rules of good taste, and tonight
  I sit in this snow hut with Wilhelm and an Eskimo
  eating a piece of raw, frozen seal meat which had
  first to be hacked up with an axe, and greedily
  gulping my coffee. Is that not as great a
  contradiction as one can think of? (Cole 1983
  29).

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Bronislaw Malinowski

• Trobriand Islands (1914-18)
• A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (1967)
• Tuesday, 4.24.
• Last night and this morning looked in vain for
  fellows for my boat. This drives me to a state of
  white rage and hatred for bronze-colored skin,
  combined with depression, a desire to sit down
  and cry, and a furious longing to get out of
  this. For all that, I decide to resist and work
  today - business as usual, despite everything.
  (Malinowski 1967 261)

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New trends

• Since 1980s
• Decolonization of anthropology
• Dewesternization of anthropology
• Stydying up (Nader)
• Urban anthropology
• Anthropology at home
• Anthropology of organizations
• Speaking out
• action anthropology
• Applied anthropology
• Medical anthropology
• Development studies
• Introspection
• Anthropology of anthropology (Clifford)

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Competition for women

• Chagnon
• female infanticide gt shortage of women gt warfare
• "Life Histories, Blood Revenge, and Warfare in a
  Tribal Population" (Science, 1988)
• Men who had killed vs nonkillers
• gt twice as many wives
• gt three times as many offspring
• Praised by sociobiologists
• Edward Wilson, Richard Dawkins
• Dawkins
• The Selfish Gene (1990)
• males will do almost anything to pass on the
  greatest number of genes

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Competition for protein

• Marvin Harris
• Cultural materialism (Divale, Rappaport etc)
• Protein thesis
• Social behaviour determined by maximization of
  proteins in diet
• Cannibalism and the Aztec
• Sacred cow in India
• Warfare among the Yanomamös
• Fight over game animals and meat
• Cows, pigs, wars and witches the riddles of
  culture (1974)
• "A Cultural Materialist Theory of Band and
  Village Warfare The Yanomamo Test (1984)
• Animal capture and Yanomamö warfare retrospect
  and new evidence(1984)
• The Yanomamö and the Causes of War in Band and
  Village Societies (1979)
• Chagnon
• Protein abundance not shortage
• Critique of monocausal explanations

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Violence I

• 1) what counts as violence in different cultures?
• Heelas (1982)
• differences in conceptualisation of violence
  among the Yanomamö and the Europeans
• Riches (1986)
• our understanding of violence inadequate for
  other cultures
• violence often invisibly enacted (e.g.
  witchcraft and sorcery)

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Violence II

• 2) Is violence universal?
• A1 violence as an innate property of humans
  and/or social relations
• sociobiology
• Lorentz, Morris, Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Konner
• Psychology
• Freud, Bettelheim
• Sociology / Political science
• Hobbes, Marx, Simmel
• Anthropology
• Conflict as an integral part of social relations
  (1950s - )
• Co-operation as an integral part of social
  relations (1970s - )

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Violence III

• Political anthropology (1950s)
• Gluckman and the Manchester School
• Leach, Fortes
• Anthropological interest in
• State
• Power
• Social change
• Against static functionalist approaches
• gt Conflict as
• normal
• explains stability
• gt Anthropological interest in aggression and
  violence

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Anthropology of violence IV

• A2 violence is not an innate culturally
  universal
• "anthropology of peace and non-violence
• Montagu (1976 1978)
• Howell and Willis (1989)
• Societies at peace anthropological perspectives
• Sponsel and Gregor (1994)
• The anthropology of peace and non-violence
• peace
• a rational and active construction of
  co-operating human beings
• not a residual and passive category of human
  behaviour

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Anthropology of violence V

• Ethnographic evidence
• Emphasis on violence
• Wallace and Hoebel 1952 the Comanche
• Bohannan 1967 the Tiv
• Chagnon 1968 - the Yanomamö
• Heald 1989 the Gisu
• Emphasis on non-violence
• Turnbull (1961) - the Ituri
• Thomas (1958) - the Kalahari Bushmen
• Robarchek (1989) - the Semai
• Briggs (1970) - the Inuit
• Paddock (1975) Nader (1977, 1990) Fry (1992)
  the Zapotec

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Video Yanomami Homecoming

• The story of Yarima and Kenneth Good
• National Geographic filming crew
• New Jersey vs the jungle
• Yarima
• Noble savage
• Cinderela Rebelde
• Times (London)
• The Stone Age bride who had exchanged her
  paradise in New Jersey for the rain forest.