Anthropologists, Anthropoligists

Like religion, culture, and especially cultural anthropology, which is not a science, divides even the anthropologists themselves. The fight involving evolutionary psychology is described in Hilary and Steven Rose, Alas, Poor Darwin (Harmony Books, 2001). Harmony Books, indeed! Those who believe that behavior is rooted in our genes are denounced as racists, even Nazis. Vituperation is not new. It greeted Darwin himself and more recently Derek Freeman's Margaret Mead and Samoa (1980). An even greater storm has arisen over Patrick Tierney, Darkness in El Dorado, which accuses a geneticist and an anthropologist of causing the death of hundreds, perhaps thousands of Yanomami Indians in Venezuela. The internet has taken the scandal to internatational cyberspace, as described in detail in The Chronicle of Higher Education (1/12/01). Too bad anthropologists have abetted the ritual killing of university geography departments. I thought they justified ritual killings. Of each other too?

Ronald Hilton - 2/11/01