ANTHRO: Culture Wars in anthropology

Marshall Sahlins

Napoleon Chagnon

Marshall Sahlins, one of the most eminent cultural anthropologists alive, through down the gauntlet when Napoleon Chagnon, one of the most notorious cultural anthropologists alive, was admitted to the National Academy of Sciences.


Naploeon Chagnon in the mid 1960s

The war within anthropology between nature and nurture has been recast as a debate about the respective importance of genes and environment.  At a more philosophical level, the discipline has been split for decades between the positivist, empiricist scientific tribe, and the literary, interpretive humanistic tribe.

From time to time there is detante, but when memoirs get published or there are elections in the American Anthropological Association, the barbs get sharpened, the drums start beating and the natives get restless.

The endless cycle of warfare returns to the valley.

Here's a New York Times article about how Chagnon became the center of a controversy that spans all of anthropology:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/napoleon-chagnon-americas-most-controversial-anthropologist.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Here's another article about the controversy:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/25/prominent-anthropologist-resigns-protest-national-academy-sciences

If that's not enough, try these from Nicholas Wade:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/science/national-academy-of-sciences-scholar-resigns-over-napoleon-chagnons-admission.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/science/napoleon-chagnons-war-stories-in-the-amazon-and-at-home.html

NPR chimes in:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/02/26/172951757/the-napoleon-chagnon-wars-flare-up-again-in-anthropology