{"id":3646,"date":"2013-04-13T16:13:41","date_gmt":"2013-04-13T21:13:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/?p=3646"},"modified":"2013-04-15T23:56:24","modified_gmt":"2013-04-16T04:56:24","slug":"napoleon-chagnons-noble-savages-the-life-of-an-anthropological-heretic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/2013\/04\/13\/human-nature\/napoleon-chagnons-noble-savages-the-life-of-an-anthropological-heretic\/","title":{"rendered":"Napoleon Chagnon’s “Noble Savages” – The Life of an Anthropological Heretic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Supposedly Otto von Bismarck once said, “Laws are like sausages.\u00a0 It is better not to see them being made.”\u00a0 The same could as well be said of science.\u00a0 However,\u00a0for those who insist on watching the process, Napoleon Chagnon’s<\/a> “Noble Savages<\/a>” is a must read.\u00a0 The book relates the author’s experiences as an anthropologist, a field long dominated by a particularly unsavory crew of sausage makers.\u00a0 Indeed, there is some question about whether they ever intended to make any real sausages at all.\u00a0 Instead, for many decades now, they have been busily engaged in concocting imaginary ones, which have the advantage of tasting much better than the real ones.\u00a0 In point of fact, they don’t invent sausages, but human beings, which, unlike the real ones, are never aggressive, and always nice.\u00a0 One might refer to them as Homo nihilum<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Chagnon was never cut out to be one of these fanciful anthropologists.\u00a0 He lacked imagination.\u00a0 On top of that, he was naive.\u00a0 In a word, he told the truth.\u00a0 Chagnon devoted his career to studying the Yanomam\u00f6, an indigenous people of South America.\u00a0 It was obvious to him from the start that they were not particularly nice, and were decidedly not invariably benign and unaggressive.\u00a0 He lacked the skills that are carefully acquired by most anthropologists, such as the ability, when one holds up four fingers in front of their face, to truly believe that they are seeing five.\u00a0 In a word, he had the bad taste to blurt out what he had seen in learned journals and academic conferences.\u00a0 This unwonted candor so shocked his fellow anthropologists that they actually began acting like Yanomam\u00f6 themselves, confirming some of Chagnon’s hypotheses in the process; they reacted with furious hostility and aggression towards a perceived member of an outgroup.\u00a0 The shibboleth of human “niceness” that Chagnon had so clumsily demolished happened to be one of the main ideological props, not only of their ingroup, but of the ingroup of a whole host of related ideologues as well.\u00a0 In their alternative universe, humans are never, ever naturally aggressive.\u00a0 The somewhat discordant fact that warfare has been a ubiquitous feature of human existence since before the dawn of recorded time is explained away as merely the unfortunate artifact of some pathological derailing of human culture in the distant past.\u00a0 In order for us all to become “nice” again, all we need to do is eliminate these pernicious cultural engrams from our brains by such time-honored techniques as denying the obvious.\u00a0 Ironically, their furious and ruthless attacks on Chagnon provided a perfect example of the very behavior they were so determined to deny.\u00a0 They debunked their own myth.\u00a0 As Chagnon put it,<\/p>\n

This virtual Noble Savage is a construct based on faith:\u00a0 in that respect anthropology has become more like a religion – where major truths are established by faith, not facts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and,<\/p>\n

Despite the skepticism widely shared in the now politically correct anthropological profession, the ethnographic and archaeological evidence overwhelmingly indicates that warfare has been the most important single force shaping the evolution of political society in our species.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Having so egregiously upset the apple cart by observing that human beings are not necessarily all that “nice” after all, Chagnon could not leave well enough alone.\u00a0 Instead, he rubbed salt in the wound.\u00a0 As any good progressive can tell you, such human conflict as does exist must be caused by “greed” for money, property, and related appurtenences of the social means of production.\u00a0 Alas, it turns out that this notion, too, belongs in the realm of faith, not facts.\u00a0 In the author’s words,<\/p>\n

Conflicts over the possession of nubile females have probably been the main reason for fights and killings throughout most of human history:\u00a0 the original human societal rules emerged, in all probability, to regulate male access to females and prevent the social chaos attendant on fighting over women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suggest that conflicts over the means of reproduction – women – dominated the political machinations of men during a vast span of human history and shaped human male psychology.\u00a0 It was only after polygyny became “expensive” that these conflicts shifted to material resources – the “gold and diamonds” my incredulous colleagues alluded to – and the material means of production.\u00a0 By that time, after the agricultural revolution, the accummulation of wealth – and its consequence, power – had become a prerequisite to having multiple mates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chagnon simply would not desist.\u00a0 Next, he went after another of the favorite sacred cows of the “progressives”; the notion of egalitarianism:<\/p>\n

Pre-state societies – tribesmen like the Yanomam\u00f6 – are described by many anthropologists as egalitarian:\u00a0 everyone is more or less interchangeable with any other person of the same age and same sex, so status differentials are essentially determined by age, sex, and occasionally the ephemeral characteristics of leaders.\u00a0 This is definitely not the case among the Yanomam\u00f6.\u00a0 If my teachers (and anthropology textbooks) got anything wrong, it was their misunderstanding of the notion of egalitarianism:\u00a0 they stubbornly insisted on tying it to “differential access to material resources.”\u00a0 Among the Yanomam\u00f6, tribesmen differ in their ability to command and order others around because of differing numbers of kinsmen they can deploy in their service, whether they are unokai <\/em>(men who have killed or been involved in a killing), and other nonmaterial attributes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and,<\/p>\n

The traditional anthropological view of egalitarianism is remarkably Eurocentric and ethnocentric, that is, the argument that tribesmen are egalitarian because nobody has “privileged” access to “strategic” material resources.\u00a0 Such a view erroneously projects our own political and economic views into the Stone Age.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps the most unforgivable sin of all was Chagnon’s embrace of sociobiology\/evolutionary psychology.\u00a0 As he put it,<\/p>\n

Our training had emphasized the role that culture played in human social relationships while completely ignoring the evolution of human behavior.\u00a0 The view from anthropology was that psychologists studied human behavior and anthropologists studied culture.\u00a0 Ever since Durkheim, cultural anthropology was skeptical about not only psychology and biology, but any theory that emphasized the biological underpinnings of behavior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He goes on to describe his own embrace of what is known to the layman as human nature, and the furious attacks such ideas drew from the ideological zealots of the “progressive” left, noting,<\/p>\n

One of the pro-sociobiology participants that I frequently ran into at these debates, Robert Trivers<\/a>, said to me at one of them:\u00a0 “I’ve finally figured out what they mean by a ‘balanced’ debate.\u00a0 For every clear demonstration of how effective a sociobiological explanation is of some phenomenon, it must be ‘balanced’ by a completely nonsensical appeal to B.S., emotions, and political correctness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, this particular flavor of ideologically inspired obscurantism is known to aficionados as the Blank Slate episode in the behavioral sciences.\u00a0 It is interesting how his status as, in spite of his heresies, a member of the academic tribe, has shaped Chagnon’s consciousness of the affair.\u00a0 For example, he is unfamiliar with anything that happened before E. O. Wilson’s<\/a> publication of Sociobiology<\/em><\/a> in 1975, has apparently never read Robert Ardrey<\/a> and is unaware of his significance, particularly in shaping the consciousness of a large audience outside of academia, and seems unaware that, for the time being at least, the Blank Slaters have lost control of the message outside of the ivory towers.\u00a0 For example, the “mainstream media” has embraced the basic premises of evolutionary psychology as if there had never been the least controversy about the subject.\u00a0 This was decidedly not the case in the 1980’s and 90’s.\u00a0 Furthermore, Chagnon seems to think that Blank Slate ideology was less pervasive in other branches of the behavioral sciences, such as psychology, than in cultural anthropology.\u00a0 This was certainly not the case in the United States, though it may have been true to some extent in Europe and elsewhere.\u00a0 In a word, he takes a very cultural anthropology-centric view of the affair.\u00a0 As a\u00a0 result he\u00a0can certainly see clearly enough what’s going on in his own field.\u00a0 However, the impact of the Blank Slate orthodoxy transcends any one academic baliwick, and he may not see this big picture quite as well.<\/p>\n

In any case, all these heresies goaded the ideologues who called the tune in anthropology into a frenzy.\u00a0 As usual, they were none too picky about the ways they chose to strike back.\u00a0 There were, of course, the usual accusations of racism and\u00a0fascism, and the familiar bowdlerization of anything faintly smacking of evolutionary psychology as “genetic determinism.” A collection of slanders was published by a particularly vile reptile by the name of Patrick Tierney and, to its eternal shame, was uncritically received by the august members of the American Anthropological Association.\u00a0 Those interested in the details of this episode are encouraged to read, “Darkness\u2019s<\/em> Descent on the American Anthropological Association<\/a>,” by Alice Dreger.\u00a0 The attacks continue unabated to this day.\u00a0 A typical example of the genre, full of the usual pious grandstanding, by one Lori Allen,\u00a0another “expert” who was never there may be found here<\/a>.\u00a0 By all means read her essay.\u00a0 After you reach the 99th ad hominem attack on Chagnon, it may start to dawn on you why I insist on the importance of understanding morality for what it really is.\u00a0 In general, people like Ms. Allen can no more justify the legitimacy of their copious striking of pious poses than the man in the moon.<\/p>\n

In the end, Chagnon had the consolation of being elected to the National Academy of Sciences, at which one of his more persistent attackers, Martin Sahlins, resigned.\u00a0 Good riddance!\u00a0 May many more of\u00a0Sahlins’ fellow obscurantists pursue the same course.\u00a0 It reminds me of the words from my favorite German version of Haydns Creation<\/em>, after God says, “Let there be light!” (see Google translate.\u00a0 The original libretto was actually in English, but I like the German translation a lot better)<\/p>\n

Erstarrt entflieht der H\u00f6llengeister Schar<\/em>
\n In des Abgrunds Tiefen hinab<\/em>
\n Zur ewigen Nacht.<\/em><\/p>\n

Verzweiflung, Wut und Schrecken<\/em>
\n Begleiten ihren Sturz,<\/em>
\n Und eine neue Welt<\/em>
\n Entspringt auf Gottes Wort.<\/em><\/p>\n

I may be an atheist, but sometimes a good oratorio hits the spot.\u00a0 Other than that, I can only say I admire Chagnon for his courage, both in enduring the rage of his fellow “scientists,” and in working in conditions in which his life and safety were anything but secure for many years in the pursuit of knowledge.\u00a0 And, by all means, read the book.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:\u00a0 Hattip to her ladyship for the hbd-chick-lanche<\/a>.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supposedly Otto von Bismarck once said, “Laws are like sausages.\u00a0 It is better not to see them being made.”\u00a0 The same could as well be said of science.\u00a0 However,\u00a0for those who insist on watching the process, Napoleon Chagnon’s “Noble Savages” is a must read.\u00a0 The book relates the author’s experiences as an anthropologist, a field … Continue reading “Napoleon Chagnon’s “Noble Savages” – The Life of an Anthropological Heretic”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46,101,181,105,28,135,198],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amity-enmity-complex","category-anthropology","category-blank-slate","category-evolutionary-psychology-2","category-human-nature","category-ingroups-and-outgroups","category-robert-ardrey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwEq0-WO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3646"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3651,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646\/revisions\/3651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}