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Erin Brennan

Relativism > The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) - 1 views

plato.stanford.edu/...supplement2.html

semantics Sapir-Whorf theories linguistics linguistic determinism anthropology research

shared by Erin Brennan on 20 Feb 13 - Cached
  • But the label linguistic relativity
  • linguistic relativity
  • linguistic relativity
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • 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.
  • They hold that each language embodies a worldview, with quite different languages embodying quite different views, so that speakers of different languages think about the world in quite different ways.
  • Linguistic Diversity: Languages, especially members of quite different language families, differ in important ways from one another.
  • Linguistic Influence on Thought: The structure and lexicon of one's language influences how one perceives and conceptualizes the world, and they do so in a systematic way.
  • Our language affects how we perceive things: Even comparatively simple acts of perception are very much more at the mercy of the social patterns called words than we might suppose. …We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation (p. 210). But the differences don't end with perception: The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same worlds with different labels attached (p. 209).
  • Human languages are flexible and extensible, so most things that can be said in one can be approximated in another; if nothing else, words and phrases can be borrowed (Schadenfreude, je ne sais quoi). But what is easy to say in one language may be harder to say in a second, and this may make it easier or more natural or more common for speakers of the first language to think in a certain way than for speakers of the second language to do so. A concept or category may be more available in some linguistic communities than in others (e.g., Brown, 1956, pp. 307ff). In short, the linguistic relativity hypothesis comes in stronger and weaker forms, depending on the hypothesized forms and the hypothesized strength of the hypothesized influence
  • Questions about the impact of a variable on cognition are empirical and causal questions. Such questions can only be answered with care once we specify which aspects of an independent variable, say culture, influence which aspects of thought and what form that influence takes. Such hypotheses can vary greatly in specificity, strength, and scope. Testing a specific version of the hypothesis requires a combination of skills, including those of a good ethnographer, linguist, and experimental psychologist. A comparison of more than two cultures is needed to draw any firm conclusions. The truth of specific hypotheses may turn on issues involving the modularity of mind and the degree of modular encapsulation. If the mind is highly modular, finding an influence of one aspect of language or culture of some aspect of cognition may tell us little about the influence of other aspects of language or culture on cognition
  • The child acquires this ability on the basis of the utterances she hears and the feedback (rarely in the form of corrections) she receives. The problem is that the child's data here are very unsystematic and sparse compared to the systematic and nearly unbounded linguistic competence the child quickly acquires.
  • We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds--and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds (p. 213).
  • “at the mercy” of our language, it is “constrained” by it; no one is free to describe the world in a neutral way; we are “compelled” to read certain features into the world (p. 262). The view that language completely determines how we think is often called linguistic determinism. Hamann and Herder sometimes seem to equate language with thought, and in these moods, at least, they came close to endorsing this view.
  • zach ruch on 20 Feb 13
     
    Sapir Whorf Linguistics analysis
Erin Brennan

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - 1 views

www.aber.ac.uk/...whorf.html

Sapir-Whorf mould theories social language

shared by Erin Brennan on 20 Feb 13 - Cached
  • Within linguistic theory, two extreme positions concerning the relationship between language and thought are commonly referred to as 'mould theories’ and 'cloak theories'. Mould theories represent language as 'a mould in terms of which thought categories are cast' (Bruner et al. 1956, p. 11). Cloak theories represent the view that 'language is a cloak conforming to the customary categories of thought of its speakers' (ibid.). The doctrine that language is the 'dress of thought' was fundamental in Neo-Classical literary theory (Abrams 1953, p. 290), but was rejected by the Romantics (ibid.; Stone 1967, Ch. 5). There is also a related view (held by behaviourists, for instance) that language and thought are identical. According to this stance thinking is entirely linguistic: there is no 'non-verbal thought', no 'translation' at all from thought to language. In this sense, thought is seen as completely determined by language.
  • Sapir argued in a classic passage that: Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
  • ir idea of what these were. I should note that Whorf distanced himself from the behaviourist stance that thinking is entirely linguistic (Whorf 1956, p. 66). In its most extreme version 'the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis' can be described as consisting of two associated principles. According to the first, linguistic determinism, our thinking is determined by language. According to the second, linguistic relativity, people who speak different languages perceive and think about the world quite differently.
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  • the Whorfian perspective is that translation between one language and another is at the very least, problematic, and sometimes impossible. Some commentators also apply this to the 'translation' of unverbalized thought into language. Others suggest that even within a single language any reformulation of words has implications for meaning, however subtle. George Steiner (1975) has argued that any act of human communication can be seen as involving a kind of translation, so the potential scope of Whorfianism is very broad indeed. Indeed, seeing reading as a kind of translation is a useful reminder of the reductionism of representing textual reformulation simply as a determinate 'change of meaning', since meaning does not reside in the text, but is generated by interpretation.
  • The Whorfian perspective is in strong contrast to the extreme universalism of those who adopt the cloak theory. The Neo-Classical idea of language as simply the dress of thought is based on the assumption that the same thought can be expressed in a variety of ways. Universalists argue that we can say whatever we want to say in any language, and that whatever we say in one language can always be translated into another. This is the basis for the most common refutation of Whorfianism. 'The fact is,' insists the philosopher Karl Popper, 'that even totally different languages are not untranslatable'
  • Whilst few linguists would accept the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its 'strong', extreme or deterministic form, many now accept a 'weak', more moderate, or limited Whorfianism, namely that the ways in which we see the world may be influenced by the kind of language we use.
  • Moderate Whorfianism differs from extreme Whorfianism in these ways: the emphasis is on the potential for thinking to be 'influenced' rather than unavoidably 'determined' by language; it is a two-way process, so that 'the kind of language we use' is also influenced by 'the way we see the world'; any influence is ascribed not to 'Language' as such or to one language compared with another, but to the use within a language of one variety rather than another (typically a sociolect - the language used primarily by members of a particular social group); emphasis is given to the social context of language use rather than to purely linguistic considerations, such as the social pressure in particular contexts to use language in one way rather than another.
Brendan Raleigh

Support for Linguistic Relativity - 1 views

www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/...cats-dogs-in-press.pdf

linguistic relativism sapir whorf hypothesis cognition thinking brain thought process

shared by Brendan Raleigh on 20 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Brendan Raleigh on 20 Feb 13
     
    Gilbert, Regier, Kay, and Ivry use several studies done regarding the left and right hemisphere of the brain and how each hempishere is able to react to certain stimuli, especially color and animals, given the types of classification each language puts the items in. Due to the effect classification had on reaction times, the data supports the idea that language affects cognition and understanding of the word. "in an early study, Kay and Kempton (1984) found that English speakers perceive colors that cross the lexical boundary between ''green'' and ''blue'' to be less similar than do Tarahumara speakers of Mexico, who use the same word to identify both of these colors, and thus lack a lexical boundary at this position in color space" "Reaction times (RTs) were faster when the target belonged to a different lexical category than the distractors (e.g., blue among greens) compared to when the target and distractors were from the same lexical category (e.g., two different hues of green). However, this effect was only observed when the target appeared in the right visual field; RTs to targets in the left visual field did not vary as a function of the categorical relationship between the target and distractors." "RTs to targets in the left visual field did not vary as a function of the categorical relationship between the target and distractors" "The results of Experiment 2 are consistent with the hypothesis that language modulates perceptual discrimination by means of lexical categories more in the RVF than in the LVF. This pattern is disrupted by verbal, but not by nonverbal, interference, supporting the third prediction outlined in the introduction." "the disruption of Whorf effects by verbal interference strongly suggests that language affects discrimination on-line through the activation of lexical codes, rather than through a long-term, enduring warping of perceptual space."
kirkch01

Sapir-Worf Hypothesis - 3 views

www.diigo.com/...sapir_worf-hypothesis

shared by kirkch01 on 20 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • kirkch01 on 20 Feb 13
     
    highlighted text: basic description of hypothesis, and discussion by proponents and opponents alike.
James Granderson

Linguistic relativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Linguistic_relativity

relativity sapir whorf linguistic determinism

shared by James Granderson on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • 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.
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  • While undertaking geographical research in northern Canada he became fascinated with the Inuit people and decided to become an ethnographer. In contrast to von Humboldt, Boas always stressed the equal worth of all cultures and languages, and argued that there was no such thing as primitive languages, but that all languages were capable of expressing the same content albeit by widely differing means. Boas saw language as an inseparable part of culture and he was among the first to require of ethnographers to learn the native language of the culture being studied, and to document verbal culture such as myths and legends in the original language.
  • Boas' student Edward Sapir reached back to the Humboldtian idea that languages contained the key to understanding the differing world views of peoples. In his writings he espoused the viewpoint that because of the staggering differences in the grammatical systems of languages no two languages were ever similar enough to allow for perfect translation between them.
  • The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.
  • On the other hand, Sapir explicitly rejected strong linguistic determinism by stating, "It would be naïve to imagine that any analysis of experience is dependent on pattern expressed in language."
  • Sapir was explicit that the connections between language and culture were neither thoroughgoing nor particularly deep, if they existed at all: It is easy to show that language and culture are not intrinsically associated. Totally unrelated languages share in one culture; closely related languages—even a single language—belong to distinct culture spheres. There are many excellent examples in Aboriginal America. The Athabaskan languages form as clearly unified, as structurally specialized, a group as any that I know of. The speakers of these languages belong to four distinct culture areas... The cultural adaptability of the Athabaskan-speaking peoples is in the strangest contrast to the inaccessibility to foreign influences of the languages themselves.
  • Among Whorf's best-known examples of linguistic relativity are instances where an indigenous language has several terms for a concept that is only described with one word in English and other European languages (Whorf used the acronym SAE "Standard Average European" to allude to the rather similar grammatical structures of the well-studied European languages in contrast to the greater diversity of the less-studied languages). One of Whorf's examples of this phenomenon was the supposedly large number of words for 'snow' in the Inuit language, an example which some have later contested as a misrepresentation.[25] Another of Whorf's examples are the Hopi language words for water, one indicating drinking water in a container and another indicating a natural body of water. These examples of polysemy served the double purpose of showing that indigenous languages sometimes made more fine grained semantic distinctions than European languages and that direct translation between two languages, even of seemingly basic concepts like snow or water, is not always possible.
  • Whorf's most elaborate argument for the existence of linguistic relativity regarded what he believed to be a fundamental difference in the understanding of time as a conceptual category among the Hopi.[27] He argued that in contrast to English and other SAE languages, the Hopi language does not treat the flow of time as a sequence of distinct, countable instances, like "three days" or "five years," but rather as a single process and that consequentially it does not have nouns referring to units of time as SAE speakers understand them. He proposed that this view of time was fundamental in all aspects of Hopi culture and explained certain Hopi behavioral patterns. However, later Malotki (1983), who researched Hopi, claimed that he found no evidence of Whorf's claims in 1980's era speakers, nor in historical documents going back to the preconquest era.
  • Current researchers such as Lera Boroditsky, John A. Lucy and Stephen C. Levinson believe that language influences thought, but in more limited ways than the broadest early claims.
  • James Granderson on 19 Feb 13
     
    Wikipedia article about linguistic relativity. 
Stephanie Hegarty

ScienceDirect.com - Cognitive Psychology - Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and E... - 2 views

www.sciencedirect.com/...S0010028501907480

thought english language

shared by Stephanie Hegarty on 18 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Stephanie Hegarty on 18 Feb 13
     
    "Does the language you speak affect how you think about the world? This question is taken up in three experiments. English and Mandarin talk about time differently-English predominantly talks about time as if it were horizontal, while Mandarin also commonly describes time as vertical. This difference between the two languages is reflected in the way their speakers think about time. In one study, Mandarin speakers tended to think about time vertically even when they were thinking for English (Mandarin speakers were faster to confirm that March comes earlier than April if they had just seen a vertical array of objects than if they had just seen a horizontal array, and the reverse was true for English speakers)."
J Scott Hill

Code of Ethics - 0 views

www.aaanet.org/...Code-of-Ethics.cfm

ethics AAA research

shared by J Scott Hill on 07 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • Download the Code of Ethics (PDF)
  • J Scott Hill on 07 Feb 13
     
    The AAA Code of Ethics provides a thought provoking and informative look into some of the responsibilities Anthropologists have to their research subjects, the community of anthropologists, and the wider public.   The nature of anthropological fieldwork is particularly fraught with ethical conundrums.  
markyearick

Perspectives on Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado - 0 views

www.jstor.org/...320007

perspectives darkness anthropology Yanomami

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  • markyearick on 06 Feb 13
     
    "Even before its publication, Darkness in El Dorado became a Janusfaced text that in calling attention to methodological and ethical shortcomings of scientific research in the Amazon also brought attention to faults in its own production." "Tierneys harrowing account forces us to ask how personal and professional ethical questions are defined and connected. His merit is to have brought together a vast amount of information about Western anthropological and medical practices carried out among the Yanomami and to have situated these practices within the network of institutional connections that made them possible and the ideologies of science and history that have rendered them so popular." "While Tierneys focus is on individuals, his book locates them in two relevant contexts: the cold war and the Vietnam War, during which currents of evolutionary genetics, sociobiology, and cultural anthropology claiming that aggression plays a positive role in human evolution found broad support, and the Venezuelan petrostate culture of clientelism, which fostered a network of corrupt politicians and businessmen with interests in the Yanomami and their territory for reasons of profit and power."
Brendan Raleigh

Coronil et al., Perspectives on Darkness in El Dorado - 1 views

anthroniche.com/...0457.htm

darkness el dorado tierney neel chagnon measles Yanomami

shared by Brendan Raleigh on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
J Scott Hill liked it
  • 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.
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  • Elsewhere Tierney's misrepresentations cannot be dismissed as this kind of error. For instance, he associates unethical experiments in the University of Rochester Medical School with Neel, who was "company commander" and "ran much of the hospital" (p. 301). But rather than running the hospital, the page cited by Tierney from Neel's autobiography ( 1994 :22) says that he drilled the students in military exercises required by their army service. This is a particularly useful example of Tierney's misuse of citations, since it is so easily checked.
Erin Brennan

The Fierce anthropologists - 0 views

anthroniche.com/...0400.htm

Chagnon Tierney Yanomami evidence immorality violence accusations

shared by Erin Brennan on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
J Scott Hill liked it
  • 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.
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  • It was at this stage that a journalist named Patrick Tierney, who had earlier written a book claiming that human sacrifice survived among some Indian Andean tribes, spent a year there. Darkness in El Dorado, the book on Tierney’s adventures among the gold miners which was to have been published by Viking in 1995, never appeared. Instead, last year WW Norton announced it was publishing his book, which had now become a tale of ‘How scientists and journalists devastated the Amazon’,
  • Chagnon had enjoyed good relations with the Roman Catholic Salesian missionaries who control access to most of the region. Indeed, the relationship was so good, he told me, that he was asked by one priest to arrange the murder of another missionary who had gone off the rails and taken up with a Yanomamö concubine far up the river (he declined). But the relationship started to unravel as the Yanomamö grew more famous.
  • Some of his enemies are personal. He is by all accounts a boisterous man (he calls the two professors who have attacked him ‘absolute zeros’). Moving among the Yanomamö, Chagnon had the sort of personality — or discovered it in himself— that could thrive and impose itself on a brutal and treacherous political environment. For the first months of his fieldwork, while he was learning the language, the Yanomamö systematically lied to him. He needed to collect genealogies in order to trace the histories of the people he moved among, yet among the Yanomamö there is a taboo against using people’s names, and especially’ the names of the dead.
  • Neel and Chagnon ‘greatly exacerbated’ and probably started the epidemic of measles that killed so many Yanomamö. They caused or at least worsened the epidemic by their use of a virulent vaccine (Edmonston B) that was quite wrong for use on a population like this with no prior exposure to measles.
  • The most Tierney would concede at a press conference is that ‘the question of transmissibility [whether the vaccine could have caused the epidemic] is still up in the air’, at which point Dr Yvonne Maldonado, the expert on infectious diseases and childhood immunisation on the panel, finally lost her cool: ‘You’re not a physician, not an epidemiologist and not even a scientist as far as I can tell... There is absolutely no evidence for transmissibility.’ By now she was almost shouting at the man two feet away from her. ‘There is no evidence! The vaccine did not cause an epidemic. It did not cause deaths.’
  • No one doubts that the situation of the Yanomamo and of the other indigenous peoples of South America is truly dreadful.
  • When I pressed Professor Sponsel on the question of whether he should have checked these damaging allegations that a colleague had been responsible for hundreds of deaths before passing them on. he grew quite heated. ‘I’m not a medical doctor. My role, ethically, was to alert the AAA because of my concern with human rights. After that, the only role I had was to respond to questions when people asked me in a civil, polite manner. Terry Turner and I wrote that memo to the two top people in the organisation and sent copies to four other people in the committee on ethics. Whoever leaked it is the one who should be sanctioned or censured.
Erin Brennan

What are the major questions concerning the Darkness in El Dorado controversy? - 63 views

The American Anthropological Association is called on to take action on the allegations made by Patrick Tierney, an investigative journalist, about the genetic and medical experiments conducted by ...

Questions

started by J Scott Hill on 31 Jan 13 24 follow-ups, last by Erin Brennan on 06 Feb 13
James Granderson

Napoleon Chagnon, Anthropologist, Discusses His Dramatic Career from Northern Michigan - 1 views

anthroniche.com/...0305.htm

Chagnon measles missionary Sanchez Asch Padilha darkness

shared by James Granderson on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Yanomamö: The Fierce People
  • 1968 University of Michigan medical expedition
  • deadly measles epidemic
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Chagnon
  • How did that measles epidemic get started? Chagnon: It was introduced to the Yanomamö in Brazil. The young daughter of a missionary brought it back from a trip to Manaus. The incubation period is about two weeks—she was perfectly healthy when she left Manaus. There’s good documentation of this origin of the 1968 epidemic. The missionary published this account, and it should have ended there. All serious investigators accept this account.
  • this of course conflicted with ethical or moral principles.
  • Brazilian gold rush on the Yanomamö
  • First published in 1968, Yanomamö: The Fierce People is arguably the best selling anthropology textbook of all time (move over Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa). But Chagnon’s career has been as tumultuous as it has been epic. For decades his peers hotly debated his view that humans had, as he describes it, an "evolved nature in addition to a learned nature." Then a book released in 2000, Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon, by Patrick Tierney, turned those academic skirmishes into all-out war on Chagnon and his career.
  • a new movie, Secrets of the Tribe, made by Brazilian filmmaker Jose Padilha and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, resurrects the old charges, again insinuating Chagnon’s guilt in the Amazon measles affair. And once again, Chagnon is waging a defense.
  • Chagnon: What I do is collect factual, empirical data as distinct from dealing only in subjective stories like myths as some cultural anthropologists do. I’m trying to push the study of societies toward an empirical set of scientific procedures. I do, however, also collect and study myths, the understanding of which lies more in the arena of comparative literature … which can also be studied scientifically, even with evolutionary theory, as some of my former students do.
  • We were able to show with my census data that 25 people died of an upper respiratory infection a day or two before, including the headman and a very famous leader I had known for 25 years.
  • In July of 1993 Brazilian gold miners brutally attacked a Yanomamö village, decapitating women and children with machetes and murdering about a dozen people in all.
  • In fact, you actually allowed Padilha access to the valuable footage that you and filmmaker Timothy Asch shot of the Yanomamö.
  • persuaded me about his firm commitment to truth, the scientific method, and objectivity in reporting, I allowed him access to my films. Then when the film came out it was just a piece of trash.
  • Chagnon: The film ignorantly misrepresents the facts.
  • was horrified to find, in 1968, that the Salesian Priest, Padre Sanchez, had a Brazilian man with an active case of measles at this mission and urged him to get this man out or he would expose all of the Yanomamö to the disease—and told him that the Yanomamö were now coming back from Patanowä-teri where they had attended a feast.
  • James Granderson on 06 Feb 13
     
    In an interview, Chagnon explains his take on how the measles epidemic was really introduced. 
  • Erin Brennan on 06 Feb 13
     
    Damning accusations have been publicly and factually refuted and Chagnon's reputation largely cleared, but...
zach ruch

Anthropological Niche of Douglas W. Hume - Biographies - 2 views

anthroniche.com/...biographies.html

Biographies

shared by zach ruch on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Timothy Asch, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California
  • While studying at Columbia University, he worked as a teaching assistant for Margaret Mead who got him interested in the potential use of visual media for instruction. He was intrigued by this field, and that’s probably why he made this his life long passion and career.
  • Napoleon Chagnon is a Professor of Sociobiology at the University of California, Santa Barbara
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  • During his studies, Napoleon spent time in very remote villages so he could better understand the warfare, as well as other social features of the Yanomamo.
  • James Van Gundia Neel, professor emeritus of human genetics and internal medicine, died of cancer Feb. 1 at his home in Ann Arbor. He was 84. An internationally renowned scientist, Neel was a pioneer in the study of human genetics and one of the first to foresee its importance in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions
  • Patrick Tierney, author of Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon-W.W. Norton & Co., 2000
Andrew Pennington

Darkness in El Dorado Controversy : SAGE Knowledge - 1 views

knowledge.sagepub.com/...n228.xml

shared by Andrew Pennington on 04 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Five years after its publication, this unprecedented controversy was still rife with debate and far from settled. Moreover, it goes to the very heart of anthropology, with broad implications for every anthropologist. Primarily, it is a matter of professional ethics and more generally, of values. Values have been a sincere concern of various practitioners of anthropology since its beginnings about 150 years ago. For example, many anthropologists have demonstrated their humanitarian commitment through advocacy work in promoting the survival, welfare, and rights of indigenous societies struggling under the pressures of Western colonialism and the genocide, ethnocide, and ecocide often associated with it.
James Granderson

El Dorado Interim Report/Request for Information - 1 views

anthroniche.com/...0459.htm

taskforce neel vaccination darkness allegations radioactive

shared by James Granderson on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
Erin Brennan liked it
  • 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
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • evolution of various codes of ethics and ethical guidelines existing during the time a particular set of actions occurred
  • That damaging representations of the Yanomami were published and repeated even after such representations were criticized as likely to cause them harm
  • our response to the allegations will not always be to determine whether they are true or false, since in many cases this is simply undeterminable.
  • That practices of anthropologists in the field were unethical, ignoring legal constraints and ethics codes and tending, either through oversight or purposefully, to exacerbate violence, spread disease, and violate the dignity of individual Yanomami through, for instance, inappropriate sexual relations
  • That a program of vaccination of Yanomami undertaken by James Neel in 1968 caused an epidemic of measles
  • That anthropologists, especially Americans, and others generally ignored threats to the Yanomami and gave the highest priority to continuing established programs of research of no immediate benefit to the Yanomami
  • That anthropologists and others working with the Yanomami have not adequately addressed malnutrition, disease, and disorganization among them
  • That experiments involving the injection of radioactive iodine were carried out among the Yanomami without attention to the principles of informed consent then in effect
  • James Granderson on 06 Feb 13
     
    Interim report that details specific allegations made against Neel and anthropologists in "Darkness in El Dorado." 
Erin Brennan

http://anthroniche.com/darkness_documents/0619.pdf - 0 views

anthroniche.com/...0619.pdf

shared by Erin Brennan on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
Erin Brennan liked it
    • Erin Brennan
      Erin Brennan on 06 Feb 13
       
      For some reason I cannot highlight this article but I wanted to point out that this is important because Chagnon is making his own statements defending his work
  • Erin Brennan on 06 Feb 13
     
    Napoleon Chagnon protests the claims by Dirk Wittenborn, an author of a novel titled "Fierce People" that calls Chagnon's anthropological work " thoroughly biased and even fabricated". Chagnon argues that the Survival International debate is a "libelous misrepresentation" of his work.
James Granderson

Napoleon Chagnon Elected to the National Academy of Sciences - 0 views

anthroniche.com/...0001.htm

Chagnon darkness Neel noblesavages measles

shared by James Granderson on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • His election not only vindicates Chagnon of unfounded accusations that have undermined his reputation and career, but is an achievement that reflects well upon our discipline.
  • highest honors bestowed upon a US scientist.
  • complex nature of humans as alternately cruel and kind, both warlike and peaceable
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Inspired by Patrick Tierny’s Darkness in El Dorado, which accused Chagnon and deceased geneticist James Neel of intentionally infecting Yanomamö Indians with measles, the AAA set up the “El Dorado Task Force” (TF) to examine Chagnon and Neel’s ethical conduct
  • relegate this shameful event into history and restore Chagnon’s reputation as one of the great anthropologists of the 20th century
  • is developing a large, institutionally accessible database containing genealogical and demographic data, population and conflict histories, photographs, maps and other unpublished data on large, remote villages in the Siapa Basin
  • Noble Savages: My Life among Two Dangerous Tribes, the Yanomamö and the Anthropologists
Stephanie Hegarty

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CEAQFjAC&url=http%3... - 2 views

www.google.com/url

darkness Neel

shared by Stephanie Hegarty on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Stephanie Hegarty on 06 Feb 13
     
    a devastating measles epidemic broke out "coincident with," to use Neel's phrasing, his arrival in the field in 1968. Neel indicated he had brought two thousand doses of measles vaccine and had planned to hand these over to mis- sionaries in the region. But faced with the epidemic, Neel and his team vaccinated many Yanomami as well. Here is how Neel described his actions: "Much of our carefully designed protocol for that expedition was quickly scrapped as we dashed from village to village, organizing the missionaries, ourselves doing our share of immunizations but also treatment when we reached villages to which measles had preceded us. We always carried a gross, almost ridiculous excess of antibi- otics - now we needed everything we had, and radioed for more" (1994:162). To what degree this description accurately reflects Neel's actions during the epidemic is one of the critical questions in the controversy. Tierney accused Neel of wors- ening the measles epidemic through his actions; others have suggested Neel could have done more than he did to save Yanomami lives during the epidemic.
Stephanie Hegarty

Response to Allegations against James V. Neel in Darkness in El Dorado, by Patrick Tierney - 3 views

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...PMC384880

epidemic darkness allegations

shared by Stephanie Hegarty on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The most serious charge accuses Neel of deliberately initiating a 1968 measles epidemic among the Yanomami by using a hazardous and contraindicated vaccine to test theories about human evolution, “leadership genes,” and infectious diseases.
  • Various other allegations against Neel in Tierney’s book include the following:1.That he failed to provide medical care to the Yanomami during the measles epidemic.2.That the Yanomami population-genetics studies directed by Neel were performed as controls for comparison with work on mutation detection among the survivors of the atomic bombing in Japan.3.That Neel performed unethical experiments on the Yanomami, involving radioactive iodine injections.4.That he sought to demonstrate the existence of a “leadership gene” among the Yanomami headmen.5.That Neel was somehow involved in administering plutonium injections into patients in the Rochester hospital where he was a medical house officer in the 1940s.6.That he discounted the risks of atomic radiation.7.That Neel denounced modern American society and advocated improving the human race by principles of coercive eugenics.
  • Stephanie Hegarty on 05 Feb 13
     
    "The most serious charge accuses Neel of deliberately initiating a 1968 measles epidemic among the Yanomami by using a hazardous and contraindicated vaccine to test theories about human evolution, "leadership genes," and infectious diseases."
Stephanie Hegarty

The Yanomami Scandal - 0 views

anthroniche.com/...0257.htm

darkness deaths measles

shared by Stephanie Hegarty on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • 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."
  • Stephanie Hegarty on 05 Feb 13
     
    "The New Yorker have created a furor, Patrick Tierney, an investigative journalist, has accused both Neel and Chagnon of committing serious abuses against the Yanomami. He charges Neel with instigation of, or at the very least doing little or nothing to deal with, the serious measles epidemic among the Yanomami that resulted in thousands of deaths. "
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