Fierce People
Many of our academic fields of study have been led astray by the egotism of "genius" and an easily misled public. What Milton Friedman did for Economics, Freud for Psychology, Einstein for Physics (could he REALLY have been oblivious to the reality that it's impossible to square a rate?), and Charles Murray for 'Political Science' - was almost equalled for Anthropology by Napoleon Chagnon. He portrayed the Upper Amazonian Yanomamö people as chronically violent and pretended to use evolutionary biology to explain their "constant" warfare. Colin Trurnbull did a similar job on the Ik people of Uganda but received far less censorship for it. Maybe we can blame Idi Amin for that.
Chagnon, a consumate Chauvenist, insisted peoples have personalities, much as people do, and like Turnbull was slightly right. But much as Nicolas Chauvin, a somewhat apocryphal French soldier in La Grande Armée of Napoleon, who's name is the eponym of chauvinism, originally a term for excessive nationalistic fervor, but later used to refer to any form of unquestioned bigotry or bias, absolutely refused to abandon his efforts on behalf of his Emperor ("The Old Guard dies but does not surrender!", Chauvin is reputed to have shouted in defiance in response to a call for honorable surrender) - Chagnon refused to see what he didn't want to see. The Yanomamo were "fierce people"!
With farsical result: Kenneth Good, an anthropologist who, intrigued by Chagnon's thesis, went to the Amazon in 1975 to study the Yanomami, learned their language, lived with them for 12 years, and married a teenager named Yarima offered to him by a chief. The couple moved to suburban New Jersey, near Princeton - a beautiful area with good roads, 100 kinds on breakfast cereals in sparkeling supermarkets, and the world's largest car lot; but when a woman cop pulled them over for some infraction and lectured Kenneth while writing him a ticket, Yarima grew furious. How dare Kenneth tolerate a mere woman berating him, as Yarima was herself doing... Finding it impossible to adjust to Western life, Yarima returned to her rainforest home, and to the style of life to which she'd been raised. Their son, David Good, after being separated from his mother for 20 years, trekked back into the Amazon rainforest to find her. Today he is a microbiome scientist studying Yanomami gut health, focusing on how the Yanomami’s highly diverse microbiomes guard them against Western chronic illnesses like diabetes, allergies, and cancer.
As for Chagnon's thesis: do Apache and Commanche warriors cause havoc on modern throughfares? Do descendents of Nagaland and IrianJaya headhunters surreptitiously seek skulls? I've not noticed much in the way of claims to the effect that some still do. But hey, my personal personality has changed a bit too...
Me, I'm newly addicted to internet quizes to tell about my personality, especially what animal I am
https://www.yahoo.com/health/your-body/substance-use/articles/truth-addictive-personalities-151005111.html
Chagnon, a consumate Chauvenist, insisted peoples have personalities, much as people do, and like Turnbull was slightly right. But much as Nicolas Chauvin, a somewhat apocryphal French soldier in La Grande Armée of Napoleon, who's name is the eponym of chauvinism, originally a term for excessive nationalistic fervor, but later used to refer to any form of unquestioned bigotry or bias, absolutely refused to abandon his efforts on behalf of his Emperor ("The Old Guard dies but does not surrender!", Chauvin is reputed to have shouted in defiance in response to a call for honorable surrender) - Chagnon refused to see what he didn't want to see. The Yanomamo were "fierce people"!
With farsical result: Kenneth Good, an anthropologist who, intrigued by Chagnon's thesis, went to the Amazon in 1975 to study the Yanomami, learned their language, lived with them for 12 years, and married a teenager named Yarima offered to him by a chief. The couple moved to suburban New Jersey, near Princeton - a beautiful area with good roads, 100 kinds on breakfast cereals in sparkeling supermarkets, and the world's largest car lot; but when a woman cop pulled them over for some infraction and lectured Kenneth while writing him a ticket, Yarima grew furious. How dare Kenneth tolerate a mere woman berating him, as Yarima was herself doing... Finding it impossible to adjust to Western life, Yarima returned to her rainforest home, and to the style of life to which she'd been raised. Their son, David Good, after being separated from his mother for 20 years, trekked back into the Amazon rainforest to find her. Today he is a microbiome scientist studying Yanomami gut health, focusing on how the Yanomami’s highly diverse microbiomes guard them against Western chronic illnesses like diabetes, allergies, and cancer.
As for Chagnon's thesis: do Apache and Commanche warriors cause havoc on modern throughfares? Do descendents of Nagaland and IrianJaya headhunters surreptitiously seek skulls? I've not noticed much in the way of claims to the effect that some still do. But hey, my personal personality has changed a bit too...
Me, I'm newly addicted to internet quizes to tell about my personality, especially what animal I am
https://www.yahoo.com/health/your-body/substance-use/articles/truth-addictive-personalities-151005111.html
posted by Mythorelics | 1:36 AM
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