Yanomami: An arena of conflict and aggression in the Amazon

Abstract

The Yanomami of Venezuela and Brazil have become an arena of conflict and aggression in the Amazon in at least three respects: their internal aggression; the aggression among anthropologists and others concerned with them; and the external aggression against the Yanomami from Western society. As such, the Yanomami provide a microcosm of several aspects of the anthropology of conflict and aggression. After some background, a critical analysis is developed of 10 problem areas that call into serious question the scientific status of Yanomami as one of the most violent human societies ever known in anthropology: the Yanomami as "the fierce people"; documentation of their aggression; inflation of their aggression as warfare; neglect of cross-cultural perspective; modern warfare as reversion to tribalization; the negative concept of peace; male sexist bias; the Yanomami as "primitive"; the character of debates; and research priorities and professional ethics. The analysis has more general implications for the epistemology of the study of aggression.

Peace and Nonviolence: Anthropological Aspects

“…Furthermore, when the components of nonviolence and peace in a society are neglected, then reality may be distorted to the point of being misleading and that may have serious practical consequences (Sponsel, 1998(Sponsel, , 2010a. To use an analogy, health and illness are necessarily complementary concepts.…”

Darkness’s Descent on the American Anthropological Association

“…Yet in fact, for more than a decade before this, Turner, Sponsel, and a number of Brazilian anthropologists had been trying to go after Chagnon for his work on the Yanomamö (Carneiro de Cunha 1989; Sponsel 1998; Turner 1994). Turner and Sponsel were particularly critical of Chagnon’s sociobiological approach.…”

Social Mechanisms and Causal Inference

“…The popular view of the Yanomami is primarily due, of course, to Napoleon Chagnon's (1968Chagnon's ( , 1974Chagnon's ( , 1988) famous depiction of them as the "fierce people." Most lay people, I think, would be surprised to learn that nearly every anthropologist who has seriously studied the Yanomami rejects Chagnon's portrayal of them (see Sponsel 1998 for a good literature review on this topic). 14.…”

“…Moreover, Yanomami specialists generally appear to regard his book as making a significant contribution that should reshape anthropological discussions of warfare. For example, in a review of the Yanomami warfare literature, Leslie Sponsel (1998) states that Ferguson's "work should force anthropologists to reevaluate previous ethnographies as well as to evaluate and design future research in light of the distinct possibility that what was formerly believed to chronic, endemic 'primitive' or tribal warfare may actually have been triggered (or at least intensified) and transformed by contact (indirect or direct) with Western 'civilization'" (p. 110). 15.…”