Noble Savages, Ignoble Colleagues

In: Philosophy of the social sciences: an international journal = Philosophie des sciences sociales, Band 45, Heft 2, S. 273-282

Abstract

Chagnon narrates the ups and downs of his career, how he managed to document the basic ethnography of the Yanomamö of Amazonia, and the loss of scientific compass in American anthropology that brought a good deal of personal villification and the end of his research. The reviewer endorses the view that organized American anthropology is in an intellectually sorry state but argues that Chagnon's anthropology of anthropology is lacking.