Napoleon Chagnon

Napoleon Chagnon
Born (1938-08-27) August 27, 1938[1]
Port Austin, Michigan
Nationality American
Institutions
Alma mater University of Michigan (B.A., M.A., Ph.D.)
Thesis Yanomamö Warfare, Social Organization and Marriage Alliances[2] (1966)
Doctoral advisor Leslie White
Known for Reproductive theory of violence, ethnography of Yanomamö
Influences Meyer Fortes, Sewall Wright, E.O. Wilson

Napoleon Alphonseau Chagnon (/ˈʃæɡnən/ SHAG-nən;[3] born August 27, 1938) is an American anthropologist, professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri in Columbia and member of the National Academy of Sciences.[4] Chagnon is known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, a society of indigenous tribal Amazonians, in which he used an evolutionary approach to understand social behavior in terms of genetic relatedness. His work has centered around the analysis of violence among tribal peoples, and, using socio-biological analyses, he has advanced the argument that among the Yanomami violence is fueled by an evolutionary process in which successful warriors have more offspring. His 1967 ethnography Yanomamö: The Fierce People has become a bestseller and is frequently assigned in introductory anthropology courses.

Admirers have him as having been a pioneer of scientific anthropology. Chagnon has been called the "most controversial anthropologist" in the United States in a New York Times Magazine profile preceding the publication of Chagnon's most recent book, Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes—the Yanomamö and the Anthropologists, a scientific memoir.[5]

Early life and education

Chagnon was born in Port Austin, Michigan and was the second of twelve children.[5][6] After enrolling at the Michigan College of Mining and Technology in 1957, he transferred to the University of Michigan after his freshman year and there received a bachelor's degree in 1961, an M.A. in 1963, and a Ph.D. in 1966 under the tutelage of Leslie White.[7][6] Based on seventeen months of fieldwork begun in 1964, Chagnon's thesis examined the relationship between kinship and the social organization of Yanomamö villages.[2][6]

Career

Chagnon is best known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, a society of indigenous tribal Amazonians that live in the border area between Venezuela and Brazil.[8] Working primarily in the headwaters of the upper Siapa and upper Mavaca Rivers in Venezuela, he conducted fieldwork from the mid-1960s until the latter half of the 1990s. According to Chagnon, when he arrived he realised that the theories he had been taught during his training had shortcomings, because contrary to what they predicted, raiding and fighting, often over women, was endemic. Due to his constantly asking questions, Chagnon was nicknamed "pesky bee" by the Yanomamö. A major focus of his research was the collection of genealogies of the residents of the villages that he visited, and from these he would analyze patterns of relatedness, marriage patterns, cooperation, and settlement pattern histories. The degree of kinship was seen by Chagnon as important for the forming of alliances in social interactions, including conflict.

Chagnon's methods of analysis are widely seen as having been influenced by sociobiology.[5][6] As Chagnon described it, Yanomamö society produced fierceness, because that behavior furthered male reproductive success. The genealogies showed that men who killed had more wives and children than men who did not kill.[5] At the level of the villages, the war-like populations expanded at the expense of their neighbors. Chagnon's positing of a link between reproductive success and violence cast doubt on the sociocultural perspective that cultures are constructed from human experience. An enduring controversy over Chagnon's work has been described as a microcosm of the conflict between biological and sociocultural anthropology.[5][9][10]

Chagnon's ethnography, Yanomamö: The Fierce People was published in 1968 and later published in more than five editions and is commonly used as a text in university-level introductory anthropology classes, making it the all-time bestselling anthropological text. Chagnon was also a pioneer in the field of visual anthropology. He collaborated with ethnographic filmmaker Tim Asch and produced a series of more than twenty ethnographic films documenting Yanomamö life. The ethnographic film The Ax Fight, showing a fight among two Yanomami groups and analyzing it as it relates to kinship networks, is considered a classic in ethnographic film making.[11]

In 2012 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.[4] Marshall Sahlins, who has been a major critic of Chagnon resigned from the Academy and cited Chagnon's induction as a reason.[12]

Controversies

Darkness in El Dorado

In 2000, Patrick Tierney in his book Darkness in El Dorado accused Chagnon and his colleague James Neel, among other things, of exacerbating a measles epidemic among the Yanomamö people. Groups of historians, epidemiologists, anthropologists, and filmmakers, who had direct knowledge of the events, investigated Tierney's claims. These groups ultimately rejected the worst allegations concerning the measles epidemic. In its report, which was later rescinded, a task force of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) was critical of certain aspects of Chagnon's work, such as his portrayal of the Yanomamö and his relationships with Venezuelan government officials.

The AAA convened the task force in February 2001 to investigate some of the allegations made in Tierney's book. Their report, which was issued by the AAA in May 2002, held that Chagnon had both represented the Yanomamö in harmful ways and failed in some instances to obtain proper consent from both the government and the groups he studied. However, the Task Force stated that there was no support to the claim that Chagnon and Neel began a measles epidemic.[13] In June 2005, however, the AAA voted over two-to-one to rescind the acceptance of the 2002 report,[14] noting that "although the Executive Board's action will not, in all likelihood, end debate on ethical standards for anthropologists, it does seek to repair damage done to the integrity of the discipline in the El Dorado case".

Most of the allegations made in Darkness in El Dorado were publicly rejected by the Provost's office of the University of Michigan in November 2000.[15] For example, the interviews upon which the book was based all came from members of the Salesian Society (an official society of the Roman Catholic Church) which Chagnon had criticized, and thus angered, in his book.[16]

Tierney has since claimed that "Experts I spoke to then had very different opinions than the ones they are expressing now."[17]

Brazilian director José Padilha revisits the Darkness in El Dorado controversy in his documentary Secrets of the Tribe. The film, screened at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize. It includes testimonials from key players.[18] Alice Dreger, an historian of medicine and science, who considers herself an outsider to the debate, concluded after a year of research that Tierney's claims were false and the American Anthropological Association was complicit and irresponsible in helping spread these falsehoods and not protecting "scholars from baseless and sensationalistic charges".[19]

Anthropological critiques of his work

Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, one of Chagnon's graduate teachers,[20]:338 has criticized Chagnon's methods, pointing out that Chagnon acknowledges behavior contemptible to his informants by violating food-sharing obligations.[12][21] Sahlins has claimed that Chagnon's trade of steel weaponry for blood samples and genealogical information amounted to "participant-instigation" which encouraged economic competition and violence.[21] Lastly, Sahlins has argued that Chagnon's publications, which contend that violent Yanomami men are conferred with reproductive advantages, make false assumptions in designating killers and omit other variables that explain reproductive success.[21] In 2013, Sahlins resigned from the National Academy of Sciences, in part in protest of Chagnon's election to the body.[12][22][23] Other researchers of the Yanomami such as Brian Ferguson have argued that Chagnon himself contributed to escalating violence among the Yanomami by offering machetes, axes, and shotguns to selected groups to elicit their cooperation.[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]

Written works

Books

Book chapters

Journal articles

Film

Chagnon worked with ethnographic filmmaker Tim Asch to produce at least forty films on Yanomamo culture,[35] including The Feast (1969), The Ax Fight (1975), and Magical Death (1988). These films, especially The Ax Fight, are widely used in anthropological and visual culture curriculum and are considered to be among the most important ethnographic films ever produced.[36]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Shavit 1992, p. 61.
  2. 1 2 Chagnon, Napoleon (1966). Yanomamö Warfare, Social Organization and Marriage Alliances (Thesis). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. OCLC 12160324.
  3. ↑ Though the name Chagnon is French, he uses the American pronunciation.
  4. 1 2 http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/members/20027280.html. Retrieved 27 January 2014. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Eakin, Emily (13 February 2013). "How Napoleon Chagnon Became Our Most Controversial Anthropologist". New York Times. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Gabrielson, Peter (2014). "Profile of Napoleon A. Chagnon". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (47): 16636–16638. doi:10.1073/pnas.1419269111. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  7. ↑ McGee & Warms 2007, p. 247.
  8. ↑ Silva, Stacey (20 January 1988). "Meeting The Fierce People" (PDF). The Daily Nexus. Retrieved 2008-10-23.
  9. ↑ Chagnon, Napoleon (19 August 2014). Napoleon Chagnon: Blood is Their Argument. Edge. Interview with Steven Pinker, Richard Wrangham, Daniel C. Dennett, and David Haig. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  10. ↑ Laden, Greg (2 May 2013). "Are Anthropologists a Dangerous Tribe?". Slate (The Slate Group). Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  11. ↑ Chagnon, N. A., & Bugos, P. (1979). Kin selection and conflict: An analysis of a Yanomamö ax fight. Evolutionary biology and human social behavior: An anthropological perspective, 213-238.
  12. 1 2 3 Sahlins, M. (2013). The National Academy of Sciences: Goodbye to all that. Anthropology Today, 29(2), 1-2.
  13. ↑ "El Dorado Task Force Papers" (PDF). American Anthropological Association. 18 May 2002.
  14. ↑ "AAA Rescinds Acceptance of the El Dorado Report".
  15. ↑ "Statement from University of Michigan Provost Nancy Cantor on the book "Darkness in El Dorado"".
  16. ↑ D'Antonio, Michael (20 January 1988). "Napoleon Chagnon's War of Discovery". LA Times Magazine (UCLA). Retrieved 2008-10-23.
  17. ↑ Miller, John J. "The Fierce People: The wages of anthropological incorrectness," National Review, 20 November 2000.
  18. ↑ Lim, Dennis (31 January 2010), "Secrets of the tribe: World Documentary Competition", Sunfiltered, Sundance channel, archived from the original (blog) on 30 June 2010
  19. ↑ Dreger, Alice (16 February 2011). "Darkness's Descent on the American Anthropological Association". Human Nature 22 (3): 225–46. doi:10.1007/s12110-011-9103-y. PMC 3178026. PMID 21966181.
  20. ↑ Chagnon, Napoleon (2013). Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes – The Yanomamö and the Anthropologists. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9780684855110.
  21. 1 2 3 Sahlins, Marshall (10 December 2000). "Jungle Fever". Washington Post. p. X01. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  22. ↑ Golden, Serena (25 February 2013). "A Protest Resignation". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  23. ↑ Wade, Nicholas (25 February 2013). "Discord Over Scholar’s Tribal Research". New York Times. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  24. ↑ Brian Ferguson, Yanomami Warfare
  25. ↑ Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, Sex at Dawn", Harper, 2010
  26. ↑ Povinelli, Elizabeth. "Tribal Warfare", NYT Bookreview Feb 15 2013
  27. ↑ Lizot, J., & Dart, S. (1994). On warfare: an answer to NA Chagnon. American Ethnologist, 21(4), 845-862.
  28. ↑ Nugent, S. (2003). The yanomami. The Ethics of Anthropology: Debates and Dilemmas, 77.
  29. ↑ Borofsky, R. (2005). Yanomami: The fierce controversy and what we can learn from it (Vol. 12). Univ of California Press.
  30. ↑ Eakin, E. (2013). How Napoleon Chagnon became our most controversial anthropologist. New York Times Magazine, 13.
  31. ↑ Albert, B. (1989). Yanomami" Violence": Inclusive Fitness or Ethnographer's Representation?.
  32. ↑ Albert, Bruce. "On Yanomami warfare: rejoinder." (1990): Current Anthropology pp. 558-563.
  33. ↑ Ferguson, R. B. (2001). Materialist, cultural and biological theories on why Yanomami make war. Anthropological Theory, 1(1), 99-116.
  34. ↑ Ramos, A. R. (1987). Reflecting on the Yanomami: Ethnographic Images and the Pursuit of the Exotic. Cultural Anthropology, 2(3), 284-304.
  35. ↑ Saxon, Wolfgang (11 October 1994). "Timothy Asch, 62, Professor Who Filmed Remote Societies". New York Times. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  36. ↑ Lewis, E.D. (2004). "Introduction: Timothy Asch in America and Australia". In Lewis, E.D. Timothy Asch and Ethnographic Film. Routledge. ISBN 9781134336883.

References

  • McGee, R. Jon; Warms, Richard L. (2007). Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-340522-1. 
  • Shavit, David (1992). The United States in Latin America: A Historical Dictionary. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313275951. 

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