Napoleon A. Chagnon (1938–2019)

This is more a memoir than an anthropological study, documenting Chagnon's studies of Yanomamo culture over a span of 30 years. Chagnon is extremely bitter: he is on a mission to out his detractors as politically correct / Marxist / non-scientific activists. But he need not take this approach, because many laypeople will enjoy learning about Yanomamo culture more than about academic disputes.

His enemies are split into a few camps. Many just don't like Chagnon as a person. They focus on his supposed ill-treatment of the Yanomamo; his selfishness, such as getting tribesmen to build him a larger hut or rewarding children for shooting rats for his comfort; and his meddling trade of machetes for information. The more nuanced criticism is Chagnon extrapolates backwards in time without much historical evidence. Jared Diamond, in contrast, paints a broad picture using a wide range of scientific evidence outside of immediate observation.

The crux of this work is the correlation between violence and offspring: well-known killers are more likely to take more wives and father more children. I'm not sure why this is so absurd a proposition. The idea seems to annoy Christian missionaries and activists alike. We see such correlations frequently in the animal kingdom, and such assertions about non-humans are readily accepted. But cultural anthropology has split into a scientific approach (sociobiology) and a postmodernist one which holds there are no objective truths.

It seems plausible to me that competition for females has important evolutionary consequence alongside competition for materials such as land and food. Chagnon terms these facets reproductive and somatic resources respectively. Traditionally, only somatic resources are considered relevant. That said, Chagnon is probably going too far in the way he characterises competition for material resources as insignificant among the Yanomamo. Nor does correlation imply causation: the underlying cause may be bigger, stronger, healthier men have more children and also tend to fare well in battle. After years of fighting for credibility, balancing arguments cannot be further from Chagnon's mind.

The last few chapters descend into a long-winded political defence with little interesting content. Recommend you skip or skim these to maintain your sanity.… (plus d'informations)

I received Noble Savages as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

Napoleon Chagnon first visited the Yanomamo tribes, scattered around the Brazilian-Venezuelan border, in the 1960s. Over the course of three decades and numerous additional site visits, he has conducted both qualitative and quantitative research on life within this little-known, stateless tribe, largely removed from modern political authority. The conclusions Chagnon reaches about basic human nature have made him many enemies among the academic community of anthropologists, a controversy discussed in the last 50-75 or so pages of the book.

As a white woman raised in the Western, Judeo-Christian world in relative wealth and modern comfort, learning about the Yanomano was fascinating, if often difficult to read. It's a world of contention, warfare, and violence, often not only among warriors but against women and children, and reading about Chagnon's experiences over 30 years with the tribe gives an interesting logitudinal angle. I don't have a background in anthropology, but Chagnon's narrative style is highly readable, even for novices.

In my opinion, where the book falters is when it gets to the academic controversies at the end of the book. You obviously hear Chagnon's view of events, but I don't know enough about the opposing side(s) to make an informed assessment of the situation. I knew I wasn't going to get this from Chagnon (no offense to him, just reality given the highly contentious situation), so I largely skimmed it. The entire tone of this last section feels a little personal--and obviously, when you're life's work is attacked, it's understandable to feel personally upset and defensive. Still, it seemed a little out of place in an otherwise interesting popular academic study.… (plus d'informations)