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Darkness in El Dorado by Patrick Tierney: A case of highly selective investigative jour... - 1 views

anthroniche.com/...0499.htm anthropology research Questions
shared by Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Tierney's use of the Jungleman and Valera life histories to support his thesis and then totally ignoring in these same sources major eyewitness and participant accounts of women capture, rape and the murder of children is not an example of investigative journalism that we can trust
  • Although his documentation with footnotes and citation of sources would seem impressive, it does not hold up to straightforward tests of what the sources really say and what Tierney reports them to say. These distortions give testament to a lack of journalistic responsibility and ethics.
  • Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13
     
    This article is another example of the Tierney's questionable claims of Chagnon's motives and use of sources.  It describes two examples in particular where Tierney only points out the parts of the stories that support his argument, completely disregarding the context of each source.
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Kenan Malik's review of 'Darkness in El Dorado' by Patrick Tierney - 0 views

www.kenanmalik.com/...tierney_darkness.html research anthropology paradigm
shared by Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • 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
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • Chagnon presented the Yanomamo as a fierce, primitive tribe whose mores opened the window onto our own past ('our contemporary ancestors' as Chagnon has described them).
  • linked Yanomami violence to genetic success
  • Chagnon revealed that men who had killed had more than twice as many wives and three times as many offspring as non-killers. The idea that murderous violence enhanced Yanomami men's reproductive success was manna for sociobiologists.
  • Chagnon's paper is one of the most widely cited scientific studies of all time - and one of the most fiercely criticised.
  • humans are an inherently violent and aggressive species. Chagnon himself has said that violence 'may be the principal driving force behind the evolution of culture'
  • Patrick Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado
  • Tierney accuses Chagnon, among other things, of scientific fraud, sexual abuse, political corruption and, most sensationally, genocide
  • Chagnon, and his mentor the geneticist James Neel, may have deliberately infected Yanomami with measles, beginning an epidemic that wiped out hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people, as part of a grotesque experiment to test the impact of natural selection on primitive groups.
  • Tierney's book, they claim, is 'a case study of the dangers in science of the uncontrolled ego'.
  • Tierney presents a convincing case that Chagnon has consistently overestimated Yanomami violence, and that he himself was responsible for fomenting much of it
  • Chagnon had changed the political balance between different Yanomami groups by favouring some over others, and by selectively providing steel goods and weapons to certain groups. Chagnon was apparently given to bursting into villages decorated in war paint and brandishing a shotgun. Yanomami men soon realized that their own displays of aggression would be rewarded with machetes and other highly prized tools.
  • Chagnon was an active participant in the wars. Yanomami men were fighting for access not to women but to Chagnon himself.
  • In 1968 a measles epidemic decimated the Yanomami population. At exactly the same time, Chagnon had embarked on an expedition to the Amazon under the leadership of the geneticist James Neel. During that expedition the two men initiated a programme of inoculation against measles to protect the Yanomamo. According to Tierney, however, it was that very programme of inoculation that caused the epidemic in the first place.
  • Tierney quotes several people who hint darkly that an epidemic might have been exactly what Neel wanted. Moreover, once the epidemic was under way, Neel and Chagnon 'refused to provide any medical assistance to the sick and dying Yanomami', insisting that 'they were there only to observe and record the epidemic, and that they must stick strictly to their roles as scientists, not provide medical help.'
  • Neel rejected the medical orthodoxy that the Yanomami were genetically susceptible to measles, believing that the Yanomamis' survival-of-the-fittest lifestyle had given them immune systems more robust than those of us in pampered modern societies have. The epidemic would prove Neel's theories.
  • Tierney produces very little direct evidence to back up his monstrous claims.
  • The consensus is that the measles epidemic began before Chagnon and Neel arrived in Venezuela, and that they initiated their inoculation programme precisely because they were aware of the earlier outbreak
  • used Edmonston B
  • after receiving advice from the Venezuelan government
  • In many ways Darkness in El Dorado raises more questions about Tierney's motives, and those of Chagnon's other critics, than it does about Chagnon's own work.
  • What Tierney is questioning is the very possibility of a scientific anthropology. Anthropologists cannot simply be observers, as traditional scientific objectivity requires, but must actively take sides in any political struggle involving the peoples they are studying. And in such a struggle the norms of scientific objectivity become subordinate to the political aims
  • Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13
     
    I find this article interesting because it not only describes Tierney's point of view of Chagnon in 'Darkness in El Dorado' but it questions Tierney's own credibility of accusing Chagnon for such outrageous crimes.  It describes his reasoning behind all his claims but also points out the last of factual evidence he presents with them.
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Darkness in El Dorado - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...tierney-dorado.html darkness paradigm anthropology
shared by Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • 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
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Siapa region alone
  • only ABC's John Quiñones asked
  • the more remote and more isolated a
  • tribal group is, the greater its market value
  • the last intact
  • boriginal grou
    • Mia Gooding
      Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13
       
      *aboriginal group*
  • The round house's roofing was whisked up and away, like Dorothy's house in a Kansas tornado, while the Yanomami's possessions—bark hammocks, gourds, woven baskets, and bamboo arrows—splintered and shattered like Tinkertoys. The on-camera journalist, Marta Rodríguez Miranda, said, "They kindly accepted our landing in the middle of the shabono even though their whole roof would collapse with the downblast."
  • " set off a frenzy of media competition
  • "Aren't we doing some harm, spoiling this culture, even by coming here today?"
  • Charles Brewer,
  • Definitely," Brewer answered. "Every time we are making a contact, we are spoiling them."
  • Chagnon and Brewer had visited the Yanomami of Dorita-teri at another location in 1968
  • two award-winning documentaries
  • Yanomama: A Multidisciplinary Study, dramatically illustrated the scientists' altruism in rescuing the Dorita-teri's parent village from a deadly measles epidemic.
  • The second documentary—The Feast—showcased Yanomami ferocity
  • Harokoiwa angrily claimed that Chagnon had killed countless Yanomami with his cameras
  • many of the Yanomami who starred in The Feast died of mysterious illnesses immediately afterward
  • Mia Gooding on 05 Feb 13
     
    This document illustrates many of the discrepencies between what the visitors and researchers claimed happened in the Yanomami villages while underscoring the actuality of the situation.  Many of these tribes were devastated by the constant media attention they were getting.  Even on the arrival of anyone to their village by helicopter, houses were destroyed, trees were uprooted, and villagers were injured.  The article discusses Chagnons documentaries as well, describing how they were portrayed at the time as award-winning documentaries.  Apparently Chagnons work rescued the Yanomami from the measles epidemic in the first film and 'showcased' their 'ferocity' in the second.  The article then goes on to say how many of the Yanomami featured in his films died shortly after of some unknown illness and describes a scene where upon Chagnons return to the village he was assaulted with axes and was nearly killed.
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Darkness in El Dorado by Patrick Tierney - 3 views

books.google.com/books darkness Yanomami scientists
shared by James Granderson on 04 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • James Granderson on 04 Feb 13
     
    This is a preview of the book.
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JSTOR: Current Anthropology, Vol. 43, No. 1 (February 2002), pp. 149-152 - 0 views

www.jstor.org/...338288 anthropology paradigm disease research
shared by Erin Meachem on 04 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • 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?
  • Erin Meachem on 04 Feb 13
     
    This reflection is written by one of the men who sent the email to the president and president-elect of the AAA.
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Dr. Kim Hill on Darkness in El Dorado - 0 views

www.cep.ucsb.edu/...kimhill.html
shared by Andrew Pennington on 04 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • "Darkness in El Dorado".
  • "Darkness in El Dorado".
  • I have been motivated to write this document because of Sponsel's attempt to censor my viewpoint from the debate about the value of the book. I have worked with South American Indians for 23 years and have done nearly 120 months of fieldwork with remote Indian tribes.
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Michael Shermer: What Is Skepticism, Anyway? - 2 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...epticism-anyway_b_2581917.html science skepticism ted
shared by J Scott Hill on 02 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Consider global warming: Are you a global warming skeptic? Or are you skeptical of the global warming skeptics? In this case, I used to be a global warming skeptic, but now I'm skeptical of the global warming skeptics, which makes me a global warming believer based on the facts as I understand them at the moment. The "at the moment" part is what makes conclusions in science and skepticism provisional.
  • Thus, science and skepticism are synonymous, and in both cases it's okay to change your mind if the evidence changes. It all comes down to this question: What are the facts in support or against a particular claim?
  • Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Skepticism is not "seek and ye shall find," but "seek and keep an open mind."
  • Skepticism is the rigorous application of science and reason to test the validity of any and all claims.
  • Typically pseudoscientists will make statements that are unverified, or verified by a source within their own belief circle.
  • J Scott Hill on 02 Feb 13
     
    This Article highlights the connection between skepticism, science, and belief.  This dovetails with our discussion of paradigm shifts and how scientific results gain credibility through the peer review process where the data and methods are scrutinized along with the truth claims by qualified peers.
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Anthropological Niche of Douglas W. Hume - Darkness in El Dorado - 3 views

anthroniche.com/...index.html darkness
shared by J Scott Hill on 31 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • We write to inform you of an impending scandal that will affect the American Anthropological profession as a whole in the eyes of the public, and arouse intense indignation and calls for action among members of the Association. In its scale, ramifications, and sheer criminality and corruption it is unparalleled in the history of Anthropology... (Turner & Sponsel letter) This website is dedicated to providing a place to find information about Patrick Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon.
  • J Scott Hill on 31 Jan 13
     
    This website by Douglas Hume contains an immense amount of material concerning the controversy resulting from Patrick Tierney's book, darkness in El Dorado.  Please read through this site and use you personal library in Diigo to create a database of sources you will use in our discussion/debate next week.
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ANTHROPOLOGIST BIOGRAPHIES -Ortner - 1 views

www.indiana.edu/...Ortner.htm theory ortner keysymbols
shared by J Scott Hill on 30 Jan 13 - Cached
  • 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.
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Marcel Mauss - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Marcel_Mauss gift mauss gebusi
shared by J Scott Hill on 30 Jan 13 - Cached
  • n his classic work The Gift, Mauss argued that gifts are never "free". Rather, human history is full of examples that gifts give rise to reciprocal exchange. The famous question that drove his inquiry into the anthropology of the gift was: "What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back?" (1990:3). The answer is simple: the gift is a "total prestation", imbued with "spiritual mechanisms", engaging the honour of both giver and receiver (the term "total prestation" or "total social fact" (fait social total) was coined by his student Maurice Leenhardt after Durkheim's social fact).
  • The giver does not merely give an object but also part of himself, for the object is indissolubly tied to the giver: "the objects are never completely separated from the men who exchange them" (1990:31). Because of this bond between giver and gift, the act of giving creates a social bond with an obligation to reciprocate on part of the recipient. To not reciprocate means to lose honour and status, but the spiritual implications can be even worse: in Polynesia, failure to reciprocate means to lose mana, one's spiritual source of authority and wealth.
  • In a gift economy, however, the objects that are given are inalienated from the givers; they are "loaned rather than sold and ceded". It is the fact that the identity of the giver is invariably bound up with the object given that causes the gift to have a power which compels the recipient to reciprocate. Because gifts are inalienable they must be returned; the act of giving creates a gift-debt that has to be repaid
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Food For Thought: Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...eat-based-diet-made-us-smarter evolution human thought food diet
shared by J Scott Hill on 29 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • cut marks on animal bones appeared
  • that could have been made only by a sharp tool.
  • But Aiello's favorite clue is somewhat ickier — it's a tapeworm. "The closest relative of human tapeworms are tapeworms that affect African hyenas and wild dogs," she says.
  • Besides better taste, cooked food had other benefits — cooking killed some pathogens on food.
  • It breaks up the long protein chains, and that makes them easier for stomach enzymes to digest. "
  • collagen is very hard to digest. But if you heat it, it turns to jelly."
  • starchy foods like turnips, cooking gelatinizes the tough starch granules and makes them easier to digest too. Even just softening food — which cooking does — makes it more digestible. In the end, you get more energy out of the food.
  • J Scott Hill on 29 Jan 13
     
    Interesting audio piece on cooked food, meat, and the evolution of our big brains.
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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...ture_of_Scientific_Revolutions Kuhn science philosophy paradigm revolutions
shared by J Scott Hill on 29 Jan 13 - Cached
  • 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.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Those scientists who possess an exceptional ability to recognize a theory's potential will be the first whose preference is likely to shift in favour of the challenging paradigm. There typically follows a period in which there are adherents of both paradigms. In time, if the challenging paradigm is solidified and unified, it will replace the old paradigm, and a paradigm shift will have occurred.
  • In any community of scientists, Kuhn states, there are some individuals who are bolder than most. These scientists, judging that a crisis exists, embark on what Thomas Kuhn calls revolutionary science, exploring alternatives to long-held, obvious-seeming assumptions. Occasionally this generates a rival to the established framework of thought. The new candidate paradigm will appear to be accompanied by numerous anomalies, partly because it is still so new and incomplete. The majority of the scientific community will oppose any conceptual change, and, Kuhn emphasizes, so they should. To fulfill its potential, a scientific community needs to contain both individuals who are bold and individuals who are conservative.
  • One of the aims of science is to find models that will account for as many observations as possible within a coherent framework. Together, Galileo's rethinking of the nature of motion and Keplerian cosmology represented a coherent framework that was capable of rivaling the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic framework.
  • Chronologically, Kuhn distinguishes between three phases. The first phase, which exists only once, is the pre-paradigm phase, in which there is no consensus on any particular theory, though the research being carried out can be considered scientific in nature. This phase is characterized by several incompatible and incomplete theories.
  • If the actors in the pre-paradigm community eventually gravitate to one of these conceptual frameworks and ultimately to a widespread consensus on the appropriate choice of methods, terminology and on the kinds of experiment that are likely to contribute to increased insights, then the second phase, normal science, begins, in which puzzles are solved within the context of the dominant paradigm. As long as there is consensus within the discipline, normal science continues.
  • Over time, progress in normal science may reveal anomalies, facts that are difficult to explain within the context of the existing paradigm. While usually these anomalies are resolved, in some cases they may accumulate to the point where normal science becomes difficult and where weaknesses in the old paradigm are revealed. Kuhn refers to this as a crisis. Crises are often resolved within the context of normal science. However, after significant efforts of normal science within a paradigm fail, science may enter the third phase, that of revolutionary science, in which the underlying assumptions of the field are reexamined and a new paradigm is established. After the new paradigm's dominance is established, scientists return to normal science, solving puzzles within the new paradigm.
  • SSR is viewed by postmodern and post-structuralist thinkers as having called into question the enterprise of science by demonstrating that scientific knowledge is dependent on the culture and historical circumstances of groups of scientists rather than on their adherence to a specific, definable method.
  • SSR has also been embraced by creationists who see creationism as an incommensurate worldview in contrast to naturalism while holding science as a valuable tool.[7]
  • J Scott Hill on 29 Jan 13
     
    Good highlights of Kuhn's book and the notion of Paradigm shift in science.
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Cultural universal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Cultural_universal universal cultural
shared by J Scott Hill on 28 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • J Scott Hill on 28 Jan 13
     
    Here is a relatively long list of "cultural universals." 
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Anthropology - Anthropology - Research Guides at Musselman Library - 0 views

libguides.gettysburg.edu/anthropology anthropology research guides library
shared by J Scott Hill on 28 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • 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.
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Friday Five: Leading Digital Ethnographers | Edelman Digital - 0 views

www.edelmandigital.com/...-leading-digital-ethnographers digital ethnography anthropologists web2.0
shared by J Scott Hill on 23 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • J Scott Hill on 23 Jan 13
     
    This five anthropologists are good example of how anthropologists are contributing to the understanding of how information technology is transforming us.  Equally important, they illustrate the many applied and basic research endeavors for anthropologists on the web.

Concerning "Ritual among the Nacirema" - 12 views

started by James Granderson on 22 Jan 13 no follow-up yet
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