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Napoleon Chagnon
USINFO | 2013-06-25 13:27
Napoleon A. Chagnon (ˈʃæɡnən shag-nən;[1] born 1938) is an American anthropologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri in Columbia. He is best known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, a society of indigenous tribal Amazonians, as well as his contributions to evolutionary theory in cultural anthropology, and to the study of warfare. A New York Times reviewer labeled Chagnon 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. Allegations that he played a role in communal violence and introduced disease prompted his early retirement.[2]
Chagnon was born in Port Austin, Michigan, the second of twelve children.[2] He attended the University of Michigan and received a bachelor's degree in 1961, an M.A. in 1963, and a PhD in 1966 under the tutelage of Leslie White.[3][4]
Career
Chagnon is best known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, his contributions to evolutionary theory in cultural anthropology, and to the study of warfare. The Yanomamö are a society of indigenous tribal Amazonians that live in the border area between Venezuela and Brazil.[5]
Working primarily in the headwaters of the upper Siapa and upper Mavaca Rivers in Venezuela, Chagnon conducted fieldwork among these people from the mid-1960s until the latter half of 1990s. Because the Yanomamö people could not pronounce his last name, they nicknamed him Shaki, the closest pronunciation they could approximate, which also seemed appropriate because Chagnon was constantly asking questions, and Shaki means pesky bee. 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. Applying this genealogical approach as a basis for investigation, he is one of the early pioneers of the fields of sociobiology and human behavioral ecology.
In addition to investigating genealogical ties between the Yanomamo, Chagnon was also interested in the way politics worked within the Yanomamö society as well as discovering why there was as he describes it chronic warfare.[citation needed]
Chagnon is well known for his ethnography, YanomamöThe Fierce People published in 1968, which was 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.
Chagnon had earlier taught at the Pennsylvania State University and Northwestern University.
Controversies[edit]
Darkness in El Dorado[edit]
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 American Anthropological Association 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 Yanomamo 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.[6][dead link] In June 2005, however, the AAA voted over two-to-one to rescind the acceptance of the 2002 report,[7] 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.[8] 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.[9]
Tierney has since claimed that Experts I spoke to then had very different opinions than the ones they are expressing now.[10]
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.[11][dead link]
Alice Dreger, an historian of medicine and science, and 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.[12]
Researcher contamination in Yanomamöfindings[edit]
Some have argued that the Yanomamö became violent after Chagnon arrived to conduct his research and offered machetes, axes, and shotguns to selected groups to elicit their cooperation.[13][14]
Written works[edit]
Chagnon, Napoleon A (1966), Yanomamö Warfare, Social Organization and Marriage Alliances (unpublished PhD dissertation), Ann Arbor, MI Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan
Books[edit]
Chagnon, Napoleon A (1968), YanomamöThe Fierce People.
——— (1974), Studying the Yanomamö, New York Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
——— (1992), Yanomamo – The Last Days of Eden.
———; Cronk, Lee; Irons, William (2002), Adaptation and Human Behavior An Anthropological Perspective.
——— (2013), Noble Savages My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes – The Yanomamö and the Anthropologists.
Book chapters[edit]
Chagnon, Napoleon A (1986), Yanomamö social organization and aggression, in FRIED, M, War; the Anthropology of Armed Conflict and Aggression, New York Garden City
——— (1995), Chronic Problems in Understanding Tribal Violence and Warfare, in Willey &Chichester, Genetics of Criminal and Antisocial Behavior, Ciba Foundation Symposium
——— (1972), Tribal social organization and genetic microdifferentiation, in HARRISON, A; BOYCE, A, Structure of human populations, Oxford
——— (1973), Daily life among the Yanomamo, in ROMNEY, AK; DEVORE, PL, You and others, Cambridge
——— (1973), Yanomamo social organization and warfare, in FRIED, M, Explorations in Anthropology, New York Crowell
——— (1973), The culture-ecology of shifting (pioneering) cultivation among the Yanomamo Indians, in GROSS, DR, International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, New York Garden City
——— (1977), Yanomamo – the fierce people, in GOULD, R, Man's many ways, New York Harper & Row
——— (1977), Yanomamo warfare, in COPPENHAVER, D, Anthropology full circle, New York Prager
——— (1979), Is Reproductive Success Equal in Egalitarian Societies, in CHAGNON, N; IRONS, W, Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior, North Scituate Duxbury
——— (1979), Mate Competition, Favoring Close kin, and Village Fissioning Among the Yanomamö Indians, in CHAGNON, N; IRONS, W, Evolutionary biology and human social behavior, North Scituate Duxbury
——— (1982), Anthropology and the Nature of Things, in WIEGELE, T, Biology and the Social Sciences, Boulder Westview
——— (1982), Sociodemographic Attributes of Nepotism in Tribal Populations Man the Rule-Breaker, in GROUP, KSCS, Current problems in sociobiology, New York Cambridge University Press
———; Ayers, M; Neel, JV; Weitkamp, L; Gershowitz, H (1975), The influence of cultural factors on the demography and pattern of gene flow from the Makiritare to the Yanomamaindians, in HULSE, FS, Man and nature studies in the evolution of the human species, New York Random House
———; Bugos, PE (1979), Kin selection and conflict an analysis of a Yanomamö ax fight, in CHAGNON; IRONS, W, Evolutionary biology and human social behavior, North Scituate Duxbury Press
———; Flinn, MV; Melancon, TF (1979), Sex-ratio variation among the Yanomamö Indians, in CHAGNON, Napoleon; IRONS, W, Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior, North Scituate Duxbury Press
Journal articles[edit]
Chagnon, Napoleon A (1967a), Yanomamo – the fierce people, Natural History, LXXVII 22–31
——— (1967b), Yanomamö Social Organization and Warfare, Natural History, LXXVI 44–48
——— (1968a), The Culture-Ecology of Shifting (Pioneering) Cultivation Among The Yanomamö Indians, International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences 3 249–55
——— (1968b), The feast, Natural History, LXXVII 34–41
——— (1970), Ecological and Adaptive Aspects of California Shell Money, Annual Report of the UCLA Archaeological Survey 12 1–25
——— (1973), The culture-ecology of shifting (pioneering) cultivation among the Yanomamo Indians, in GROSS, DR, International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, New York Garden City
——— (1975), Genealogy, Solidarity and Relatedness Limits to Local Group Size and Patterns of Fissioning in an Expanding Population, Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 19 95–110
——— (1976), Yanomamo, the true people, National Geographic Magazine 150 210–23
——— (1980), Highland New Guinea models in the South American lowlands, Working papers on South American Indians 2 111–30
——— (1981), Doing fieldwork among the Yanomamo, Contemporary Anthropology 11–24
——— (1988), Life Histories, Blood Revenge, and Warfare in a Tribal Population, Science 239 985–92
——— (1989), Yanomamö survival, Science 244 11
——— (1990), On Yanomamö violence reply to Albert, Current Anthropology 31 49–53
———; Ayres, M; Neel, JV; Weitkamp, L; Gershowitz, H (1970), The influence of cultural factors on the demography and pattern of gene flow from the Makiritare to the Yanomamaindians, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 32 339–49
———; Hames, RB (1979), Protein Deficiency and Tribal Warfare in Amazonia New Data, Science 203 910–13
———; Le Quesne, P; Cook, JM (1971), Yanomamö Hallucinogens Anthropological, Botanical, and Chemical Findings, Current Anthropology 12 72–74
———; Margolies, L; Gasparini, G; Hames, RB (1982–83), Parentesco, demografia, patrones de inversion de los padres y el uso social del espacioarquitectonico entre los Shamatari-Yanomamo del TF Amazonas informepreliminar, BoletinIndigenistaVenezolano (in Spanish)
Chagnon was born in Port Austin, Michigan, the second of twelve children.[2] He attended the University of Michigan and received a bachelor's degree in 1961, an M.A. in 1963, and a PhD in 1966 under the tutelage of Leslie White.[3][4]
Career
Chagnon is best known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, his contributions to evolutionary theory in cultural anthropology, and to the study of warfare. The Yanomamö are a society of indigenous tribal Amazonians that live in the border area between Venezuela and Brazil.[5]
Working primarily in the headwaters of the upper Siapa and upper Mavaca Rivers in Venezuela, Chagnon conducted fieldwork among these people from the mid-1960s until the latter half of 1990s. Because the Yanomamö people could not pronounce his last name, they nicknamed him Shaki, the closest pronunciation they could approximate, which also seemed appropriate because Chagnon was constantly asking questions, and Shaki means pesky bee. 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. Applying this genealogical approach as a basis for investigation, he is one of the early pioneers of the fields of sociobiology and human behavioral ecology.
In addition to investigating genealogical ties between the Yanomamo, Chagnon was also interested in the way politics worked within the Yanomamö society as well as discovering why there was as he describes it chronic warfare.[citation needed]
Chagnon is well known for his ethnography, YanomamöThe Fierce People published in 1968, which was 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.
Chagnon had earlier taught at the Pennsylvania State University and Northwestern University.
Controversies[edit]
Darkness in El Dorado[edit]
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 American Anthropological Association 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 Yanomamo 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.[6][dead link] In June 2005, however, the AAA voted over two-to-one to rescind the acceptance of the 2002 report,[7] 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.[8] 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.[9]
Tierney has since claimed that Experts I spoke to then had very different opinions than the ones they are expressing now.[10]
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.[11][dead link]
Alice Dreger, an historian of medicine and science, and 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.[12]
Researcher contamination in Yanomamöfindings[edit]
Some have argued that the Yanomamö became violent after Chagnon arrived to conduct his research and offered machetes, axes, and shotguns to selected groups to elicit their cooperation.[13][14]
Written works[edit]
Chagnon, Napoleon A (1966), Yanomamö Warfare, Social Organization and Marriage Alliances (unpublished PhD dissertation), Ann Arbor, MI Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan
Books[edit]
Chagnon, Napoleon A (1968), YanomamöThe Fierce People.
——— (1974), Studying the Yanomamö, New York Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
——— (1992), Yanomamo – The Last Days of Eden.
———; Cronk, Lee; Irons, William (2002), Adaptation and Human Behavior An Anthropological Perspective.
——— (2013), Noble Savages My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes – The Yanomamö and the Anthropologists.
Book chapters[edit]
Chagnon, Napoleon A (1986), Yanomamö social organization and aggression, in FRIED, M, War; the Anthropology of Armed Conflict and Aggression, New York Garden City
——— (1995), Chronic Problems in Understanding Tribal Violence and Warfare, in Willey &Chichester, Genetics of Criminal and Antisocial Behavior, Ciba Foundation Symposium
——— (1972), Tribal social organization and genetic microdifferentiation, in HARRISON, A; BOYCE, A, Structure of human populations, Oxford
——— (1973), Daily life among the Yanomamo, in ROMNEY, AK; DEVORE, PL, You and others, Cambridge
——— (1973), Yanomamo social organization and warfare, in FRIED, M, Explorations in Anthropology, New York Crowell
——— (1973), The culture-ecology of shifting (pioneering) cultivation among the Yanomamo Indians, in GROSS, DR, International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, New York Garden City
——— (1977), Yanomamo – the fierce people, in GOULD, R, Man's many ways, New York Harper & Row
——— (1977), Yanomamo warfare, in COPPENHAVER, D, Anthropology full circle, New York Prager
——— (1979), Is Reproductive Success Equal in Egalitarian Societies, in CHAGNON, N; IRONS, W, Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior, North Scituate Duxbury
——— (1979), Mate Competition, Favoring Close kin, and Village Fissioning Among the Yanomamö Indians, in CHAGNON, N; IRONS, W, Evolutionary biology and human social behavior, North Scituate Duxbury
——— (1982), Anthropology and the Nature of Things, in WIEGELE, T, Biology and the Social Sciences, Boulder Westview
——— (1982), Sociodemographic Attributes of Nepotism in Tribal Populations Man the Rule-Breaker, in GROUP, KSCS, Current problems in sociobiology, New York Cambridge University Press
———; Ayers, M; Neel, JV; Weitkamp, L; Gershowitz, H (1975), The influence of cultural factors on the demography and pattern of gene flow from the Makiritare to the Yanomamaindians, in HULSE, FS, Man and nature studies in the evolution of the human species, New York Random House
———; Bugos, PE (1979), Kin selection and conflict an analysis of a Yanomamö ax fight, in CHAGNON; IRONS, W, Evolutionary biology and human social behavior, North Scituate Duxbury Press
———; Flinn, MV; Melancon, TF (1979), Sex-ratio variation among the Yanomamö Indians, in CHAGNON, Napoleon; IRONS, W, Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior, North Scituate Duxbury Press
Journal articles[edit]
Chagnon, Napoleon A (1967a), Yanomamo – the fierce people, Natural History, LXXVII 22–31
——— (1967b), Yanomamö Social Organization and Warfare, Natural History, LXXVI 44–48
——— (1968a), The Culture-Ecology of Shifting (Pioneering) Cultivation Among The Yanomamö Indians, International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences 3 249–55
——— (1968b), The feast, Natural History, LXXVII 34–41
——— (1970), Ecological and Adaptive Aspects of California Shell Money, Annual Report of the UCLA Archaeological Survey 12 1–25
——— (1973), The culture-ecology of shifting (pioneering) cultivation among the Yanomamo Indians, in GROSS, DR, International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, New York Garden City
——— (1975), Genealogy, Solidarity and Relatedness Limits to Local Group Size and Patterns of Fissioning in an Expanding Population, Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 19 95–110
——— (1976), Yanomamo, the true people, National Geographic Magazine 150 210–23
——— (1980), Highland New Guinea models in the South American lowlands, Working papers on South American Indians 2 111–30
——— (1981), Doing fieldwork among the Yanomamo, Contemporary Anthropology 11–24
——— (1988), Life Histories, Blood Revenge, and Warfare in a Tribal Population, Science 239 985–92
——— (1989), Yanomamö survival, Science 244 11
——— (1990), On Yanomamö violence reply to Albert, Current Anthropology 31 49–53
———; Ayres, M; Neel, JV; Weitkamp, L; Gershowitz, H (1970), The influence of cultural factors on the demography and pattern of gene flow from the Makiritare to the Yanomamaindians, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 32 339–49
———; Hames, RB (1979), Protein Deficiency and Tribal Warfare in Amazonia New Data, Science 203 910–13
———; Le Quesne, P; Cook, JM (1971), Yanomamö Hallucinogens Anthropological, Botanical, and Chemical Findings, Current Anthropology 12 72–74
———; Margolies, L; Gasparini, G; Hames, RB (1982–83), Parentesco, demografia, patrones de inversion de los padres y el uso social del espacioarquitectonico entre los Shamatari-Yanomamo del TF Amazonas informepreliminar, BoletinIndigenistaVenezolano (in Spanish)
