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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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The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view, or otherwise influences their cognitive processes. Popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the principle is often defined as having two versions: (i) the strong version that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories and (ii) the weak version that linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behaviour. The term "Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis" is a misnomer, as Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf never co-authored anything, and never stated their ideas in terms of a hypothesis. The distinction between a weak and a strong version of the hypothesis is also a later invention, as Sapir and Whorf never set up such a dichotomy, although often in their writings their views of this relativity principle are phrased in stronger or weaker terms.

Sapir in particular wrote more often against than in favor of anything like linguistic determinism. Sapir's student Benjamin Lee Whorf came to be seen as the primary proponent as a result of his published observations of how he perceived linguistic differences to have consequences in human cognition and behavior. Harry Hoijer, one of Sapir's students, introduced the term "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis",[2] even though the two scholars never actually advanced any such hypothesis.[3] Whorf's principle of linguistic relativity was reformulated as a testable hypothesis by Roger Brown and Eric Lenneberg who conducted experiments designed to find out whether color perception varies between speakers of languages that classified colors differently. As the study of the universal nature of human language and cognition came into focus in the 1960s the idea of linguistic relativity fell out of favour among linguists. A 1969 study by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay demonstrated the existence of universal semantic constraints in the field of color terminology which was widely seen to discredit the existence of linguistic relativity in this domain, although this conclusion has been disputed by relativist researchers.

A main point of debate in the discussion of linguistic relativity is the correlation between language and thought. The strongest form of correlation is linguistic determinism, which would hold that language entirely determines the range of possible cognitive processes of an individual. This view has sometimes been attributed to Benjamin Lee Whorf, and to Ludwig Wittgenstein, but it is not currently the consensus that either of these thinkers actually espoused determinist views of the relation between language and thought.

Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) World CulturesA cross-cultural database that contains information on all aspects of cultural and social life. Information is organized into cultures and ethnic groups and the full-text sources are subject-indexed at the paragraph level.

This article is the beginning of Ortner’s latest project: American ethnography and the examination of the relationship between class and capitalism in America. When she began her career anthropology, Ortner notes that research in America was unheard of. Since the advent of postmodernism, reflexivity and the exploration of experience that form an anthropologist's perspective have gained greater validity. Ortner’s current research is thus follows her high school classmates, whose culture helped form her perspective.

his was a previously inarticulated method of cultural analysis, but one nonetheless used frequently by anthropologists. Her purpose was to explicate this analysis before applying it to her monograph on the Sherpas on which she was simultaneously working.

There are two types of main symbols: summarizing and elaborating. Summarizing symbols, not surprisingly, combine several complete ideas into one symbol or sign that the participant perceives. This single symbol stands for all of these ideas simultaneously. This summarizing occurs often with sacred symbols such as the American flag. Summarizing symbols act as a catalyst in order to make an impact on the respondent.

Tierney served our profession with a sorely needed wakeup call unprecedented in its effectiveness, whatever the negative consequences that inevitably accompany controversies and scandals and to whatever degree his numerous and diverse allegations prove true.

Tierney exposed the ugliest affair in the entire history of anthropology. It cannot be summarily dismissed by a vocal minority as simply a matter of personal animosities, turf war, postmodernist critique of science or scientism, objectivist versus activist, differing interpretations of Yanomami aggression, sensationalist or tabloid journalism, etc. As Susan Lindee recognizes and contrary to Raymond Hames, not all of the fundamental claims made by Tierney have been discussed, let alone refuted.

the Pandoras box opened by Tierney should be examined and debated within the framework of the ethics and politics of knowledge production in the West, and that includes professional, ethical, and moral responsibility toward the communities who host research. The three basic questions I raised at the open forum on this controversy at the last AAA convention remain: What have the Yanomami contributed to us? What have we contributed to the Yanomami, for better and for worse? How are professional ethics and human rights involved?

expedition leaders Napoleon Chagnon and Charles Brewer Carías

claimed first contact with 3,500 Yanomami Indians

Yanomami villages they say had never been visited before by anyone except other tribal members" set off a frenzy of media competition

Meanwhile, Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), the physician, botanist, and zoologist, established the taxonomic bases of binomial nomenclature for fauna and flora, and was a pioneer researcher in biologically defining "human race". In Systema Naturae (1767), he established five human-race taxa: (I) the Americanus, (II) the Asiaticus, (III) the Africanus, (IV) the Europeanus, and (V) the Monstrosus, based upon geographical distribution and skin color. Each race possessed innate physiognomic characteristics: the Americanus were red-skinned, of stubborn character, and angered easily; the Africanus were black-skinned, relaxed, and of negligent character; the Asiaticus race were yellow-skinned, avaricious, and easily distracted; the Europeanus were white-skinned, of gentle character, inventive mind, and bellicose; and the Monstrosus were mythologic human sub-races.[13] The sub-races were the "four-footed, mute, hairy" Homo feralis (Feral man); the animal-reared Juvenis lupinus hessensis (Hessian wolf boy), the Juvenis hannoveranus (Hannoverian boy), the Puella campanica (Wild-girl of Champagne), and the agile, but faint-hearted Homo monstrosus (Monstrous man) sub-races: the Patagonian giant, the Dwarf of the Alps, and the monorchid Khoikhoi (Hottentot). In Amoenitates academicae (1763), Linnaeus presented the Homo anthropomorpha (Anthropomorphic man) race of mythologic, humanoid creatures, such as the troglodyte, the satyr, the hydra, and the phoenix, incorrectly identified as simian creatures.[citation needed]

Our earliest ancestors ate their food raw — fruit, leaves, maybe some nuts. When they ventured down onto land, they added things like underground tubers, roots and berries.

"You can't have a large brain and big guts at the same time," explains Leslie Aiello, an anthropologist and director of the Wenner-Gren Foundation in New York City, which funds research on evolution. Digestion, she says, was the energy-hog of our primate ancestor's body. The brain was the poor stepsister who got the leftovers.

"What we think is that this dietary change around 2.3 million years ago was one of the major significant factors in the evolution of our own species," Aiello says.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn, is an analysis of the history of science, published in 1962 by the University of Chicago Press. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of scientific knowledge and it triggered an ongoing worldwide assessment and reaction in—and beyond—those scholarly communities. In this work, Kuhn challenged the then prevailing view of progress in "normal science". Scientific progress had been seen primarily as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn argued for an episodic model in which periods of such conceptual continuity in normal science were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science.

What is arguably the most famous example of a revolution in scientific thought is the Copernican Revolution. In Ptolemy's school of thought, cycles and epicycles (with some additional concepts) were used for modeling the movements of the planets in a cosmos that had a stationary Earth at its center. As accuracy of celestial observations increased, complexity of the Ptolemaic cyclical and epicyclical mechanisms had to increase to maintain the calculated planetary positions close to the observed positions. Copernicus proposed a cosmology in which the Sun was at the center and the Earth was one of the planets revolving around it.

Copernicus' contemporaries rejected his cosmology, and Kuhn asserts that they were quite right to do so: Copernicus' cosmology lacked credibility.

El Dorado Task Force

activities that may have resulted in personal gain to scientists, anthropologists and journalists while contributing harm to the Yanomami

activities by anthropologists, scientists and journalists that may have contributed to malnutrition, disease and disorganization

Darkness in El Dorado, by Patrick Tierney is filled with a series of accusations ranging from misconduct, unprofessional conduct, to downright illegal and immoral acts

book is also impressively documented

However, when specific sources relied upon by Tierney are compared with the way Tierney uses them, a very different pattern emerges: one of highly selective use of sources in ways that support Tierney's main arguments and the omission of much more substantive materials which contradict him.

In the twentieth century, the consequences of racial science led anthropologists to reject naturalistic explanations and to see human behaviour as dictated largely by culture, not biology

all too often anthropologists saw what they wanted to

The most prominent of the new generation of sociobiological anthropologists was the American Napoleon Chagnon

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.

His accusations against Chagnon also implicate him in the epidemic, arguing that he administered a counter-indicated vaccine on Neel's instructions; but Tierney's major charges are different and various. He claims that Chagnon interfered massively with the lives of the Yanomami in all sorts of ways.

The charges that James Neel induced a measles epidemic among the Yanomami or at least treated them like guinea pigs to be studies while the epidemic ran its course have been disputed by medical experts and others who know about Neel’s research. If these charges are without merit, as now seems probable, then the only accusations remaining against Neel depend on innuendo and guilt by association. In the final chapter of his book Tierney retells the disgraceful story of how American doctors experimented on unwitting subjects in the USA whom they referred to in their files as "human products."

But the label linguistic relativity

linguistic relativity

Many linguists, including Noam Chomsky, contend that language in the sense we ordinary think of it, in the sense that people in Germany speak German, is a historical or social or political notion, rather than a scientific one.