Quote:Chagnon's friends can play at psychoanalysis, too, and they see dark motivations in the forces aligned against him. "The biggest cause is jealousy," says William Irons, an anthropologist at Northwestern University. "Nap's written a major book that's stood up for many years and actually made money. How many academics can say that?"
Besides raw envy, Irons sees competition over the control of the Yanomamo as a potent political symbol. Like wealthy liberals who entertained Black Panthers in the '60s, today's environmentalists get a thrill out of identifying with the least-developed tribe on earth. To boost their political agenda, they want to present the Yanomamo as innocent and peaceful. "The facts that are found in the field don't matter to them," Irons says. "What matters is their utopian view of the nature of mankind."
Over decades of study, Chagnon has become convinced that the urge to organize and fight is a practical necessity that resides deep inside us and not in modern economies or politics. He sees that ferocity and aggression are favored by modern societies as well as in Yanomamoland. He points to the memorials and honors bestowed on soldiers and warriors during every historical period. For further evidence of aggression on a visceral level, he might also look to his own situation. Ideas are supposed to compete freely in science and the academy, but this ideal has been lost in his own case. His detractors in anthropology show no sympathy or compassion.
"I can't feel sorry for him," says Harris, who, like Chagnon, is at the end of his career. "He's been too much a braggart. He took on the Catholic Church when he shouldn't have. Now he's paying. I can't say I feel bad about that."
Opposition to Chagnon mostly had to do with his huge success: Anthropologists seem to be largely a jealous, competitive group! His textbook was required reading at many universities.
People feared his findings and stories would encourage Nazism? What? Are they insane?
Some rejection too from those who fear eugenics. Everybody has an agenda. Few want to do the hard work of spending 15 months in the jungle to get to some raw data and facts. Arm-chair philosophers.
The Catholic church was offended because they feared he was leading the Yanomanos away from the control of the Catholic missionaries. They were worried about their funding. Too bad! Proves my point, most conflict and religion is about money or some definition of economics.
He was a braggart . . . so what? I think he had reason to swagger. I know lots of folks who swagger here in Texas having accomplished very little.
Marvin Harris also wrote, what?, about 16 titles, many bestsellers to the general public. Woe to the anthropologist who makes it big.
You know, in Hollywood there may be a lot of behind the scenes backstabbing, but when they are interviewed, everyone they ever worked with was "wonderful, marvelous, professional, funny."
Too bad anthropologists can't come together as a professional group. But, that's probably why they became anthropologists to begin with. They just wondered if there was any group of people better, more worth their time, than the people they came from.
The profession seems to attract educated, egocentric malcontents.
I'll return with a link to the whole essay, if I can find it again. That quote above actually isn't the best part.
c.i.
Right 
