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Minangkabau

The Minangkabau--who predominate along the coasts of Sumatera Utara and Sumatera Barat, interior Riau, and northern Bengkulu provinces--in the early 1990s numbered more than 3.5 million. Like the Batak, they have large corporate descent groups, but unlike the Batak, the Minangkabau traditionally reckon descent matrilineally. In this system, a child is regarded as descended from his mother, not his father. A young boy, for instance, has his primary responsibility to his mother's and sisters' clans. In practice, in most villages a young man will visit his wife in the evenings but spend the days with his sister and her children. It is usual for married sisters to remain in their parental home. According to a 1980 study by anthropologist Joel S. Kahn, there is a general pattern of residence among the Minangkabau in which sisters and unmarried lineage members try to live close to one another, or even in the same house.

Indonesia, a vast polyglot nation, has made significant economic advances under the administration of President YUDHOYONO but faces challenges stemming from the global financial crisis and world economic downturn. Indonesia's debt-to-GDP ratio in recent years has declined steadily because of increasingly robust GDP growth and sound fiscal stewardship. The government has introduced significant reforms in the financial sector, including in the areas of tax and customs, the use of Treasury bills, and capital market supervision. Indonesia's investment law, passed in March 2007, seeks to address some of the concerns of foreign and domestic investors. Indonesia still struggles with poverty and unemployment, inadequate infrastructure, corruption, a complex regulatory environment, and unequal resource distribution among regions. The non-bank financial sector, including pension funds and insurance, remains weak. Despite efforts to broaden and deepen capital markets, they remain underdeveloped. Economic difficulties in early 2008 centered on high global food and oil prices and their impact on Indonesia's poor and on the budget. The onset of the global financial crisis dampened inflationary pressures, but increased risk aversion for emerging market assets resulted in large losses in the stock market, significant depreciation of the rupiah, and a difficult environment for bond issuance. As global demand has slowed and prices for Indonesia's commodity exports have fallen, Indonesia faces the prospect of growth significantly below the 6-plus percent recorded in 2007 and 2008.

The first strand of the book, which occupies less than one-tenth of Tierney's text but has received the most public attention, argues that Neel and Chagnon collected blood samples for the Atomic Energy Commission to compare mutation rates in populations contaminated by radiation with those in one uncontaminated by it and at the same time carried out an experiment on immunity formation among an isolated population involving a measles vaccination program. According to Tierney, although a safer and cheaper vaccine was already available, Neel chose the Edmonston B vaccine because it produced antibodies that would allow for comparison of European and Yanomami immune systems and prove the latter's ability to generate levels of antibiodies similar to those of populations previously exposed to the disease. Tierney's most controversial and damaging charge is that these activities may have led to a deadly outbreak of measles. While medical experts agree that no vaccine could have caused an epidemic, it is still not clear why this outdated vaccine was chosen or what measures were taken to care for those affected by its known reaction.

For Tierney, however, seemingly any biomedical research is unethical; all studies for Tierney are "experiments" (however observational their methods), and all "experiments" that do not directly benefit the community involved in the study are "criminal" (p. 43). Thus James Neel, a recently deceased distinguished human geneticist as well as physician, who carried out an extensive series of biomedical studies of the Yanomami, is criminalized.

ere is where Neel parted company with classical eugenics. He never advocated selective breeding practices. He merely pointed out the selective consequences of Yanomami polygyny (Neel 1980 ) and noted with irony the extreme unlikelihood that populations in the industrialized world would adopt Yanomami marriage practices. His prescriptions for the gene pool (Neel 1994 ) all involved manipulating the environment rather than genetics. These included efforts to control population growth, "euphenics" or the reshaping of environments to "ameliorate the expression of our varied genotypes" (Neel 1994 :353), keeping mutation rates as low as possible through control of exposure to environmental mutagens, and providing counseling to prospective parents to decrease the transmission of genetic diseases. None of these ideas bear any resemblance to classic eugenic schemes.

Approved February 2009 I. Preamble Anthropological researchers, teachers and practitioners are members of many different communities, each with its own moral rules or codes of ethics. Anthropologists have moral obligations as members of other groups, such as the family, religion, and community, as well as the profession. They also have obligations to the scholarly discipline, to the wider society and culture, and to the human species, other species, and the environment. Furthermore, fieldworkers may develop close relationships with persons or animals with whom they work, generating an additional level of ethical considerations. In a field of such complex involvements and obligations, it is inevitable that misunderstandings, conflicts, and the need to make choices among apparently incompatible values will arise. Anthropologists are responsible for grappling with such difficulties and struggling to resolve them in ways compatible with the principles stated here. The purpose of this Code is to foster discussion and education. The American Anthropological Association (AAA) does not adjudicate claims for unethical behavior. The principles and guidelines in this Code provide the anthropologist with tools to engage in developing and maintaining an ethical framework for all anthropological work.

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Chagnon, aged 63, is one of the most distinguished anthropologists alive.

But he has also made plenty of enemies. Some are professional. Chagnon’s explanation of Yanomamö violence was deeply controversial, both. among people who understand it as a general theory of human nature (which it is meant to be), and among those who see it only as a particular explanation of Yanomamö culture. The Yanomamo are not, in fact, exceptionally violent by the standards of aboriginal people.

Chagnon’s enemies believe the Yanomamö sometimes fought because he had paid them to act for his cameras.