The Ethics of Anthropology and Amerindian Research: Reporting on Environmental Degradation and Warfare

538 Pages·2012·10.55 MB·English

by  Richard J. Chacon Ph.D. (auth.)

The Ethics of Anthropology and Amerindian
Research

Richard J. Chacon Rubén G. Mendoza
●
Editors
The Ethics of Anthropology
and Amerindian Research
Reporting on Environmental Degradation
and Warfare
Editors
Richard J. Chacon Rubén G. Mendoza
Department of Sociology and Anthropology Institute for Archaeological Science,
Winthrop University Technology and Visualization
Rock Hill, SC 29733, USA Social, Behavioral, and Global Studies
[email protected] California State University, Monterey Bay
Seaside, CA 93955, USA
[email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4614-1064-5 e-ISBN 978-1-4614-1065-2
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-1065-2
Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011943625
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For his indefatigable and lifelong
commitment to accurately reporting
Amerindian ways of life and the plight
of native people, we respectfully dedicate
this work to Napoleon Chagnon.

Foreword
The most revealing moments in ethnographic research often emerge in confl ict.
At such times, structure – cultural structure, the structure of power and history –
clarifi es. As with society, so with an academic discipline such as anthropology: in
confl ict, the issues that matter bare themselves. They matter, of course, most at the
moment they arise, but not surprisingly are often simply the latest iteration of issues
that have emerged time and again. It should not strike anyone as odd that a disci-
pline as large and varied as anthropology – and now, with historical depth – should
periodically be rent by confl ict. T he Ethics of Anthropology and Amerindian
Research , however, makes clear the depths to which the discipline has fractured in
recent years.
To say that Ethics is needed – or that more works plumbing these and related
topics, in sustained analysis, should follow – is an understatement. The recent history
of anthropology has been marked by episodes in which the principal professional
organization in America, the American Anthropological Association (AAA), has
sought, in policy and resolution, to clarify anthropological ethics, the place of science,
and concepts such as indigeneity, human rights, and race; and has critiqued the
practice of specifi c anthropologists or projects. Despite oft-laudable (if naive) inten-
tion, the results have not always been salutary. Indeed, one infamous case—the
AAA’s response to the accusations of Patrick Tierney in D arkness in El Dorado
against the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon—revealed an incautious use of
evidence and methodology as well as a destructive rush to judgment.
Richard Chacon and Rubén Mendoza, the editors of E thics , and their fellow
contributors detail research – their own and others – caught up in these recently
spun-related webs of intrigue and accusation. Signifi cantly, Ethics builds on three
recent books edited by Chacon, two with Mendoza and one with David Dye
(Chacon and Dye 2007; Chacon and Mendoza 2007a, b). Here and elsewhere they
(and others whose work is not represented in these volumes) provide evidence and
analyses deep in time of the violence and brutalities of warfare or of subsistence
hunting that often displays little or no concern for what today might be labeled
conservation or sustainable practice (see also Krech 1999, 2012). Of the 17 essays
in Ethics , framed by the introduction and conclusion, ten speak especially to
vii
viii Foreword
violence or warfare, fi ve in particular to ecology and conservation, and two to both.
The majority of the contributions are authored by archaeologists and the remainder
by cultural anthropologists along with others. Five contributors are of native
ancestry. The essays range widely, from head and limb removal in warfare in the
Ohio valley, blood sacrifi ce among the Maya, and the sophisticated strategies and
tactics developed to prevail in war; to the question of sustainability of hunting
practices among the Maya and the Achuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon; and to
metacritique of representations of Amerindians in museum exhibitions and fi lm
(e.g., Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto”).
The visceral reaction to this work in the academy and public arena is well docu-
mented. Scholars often vilify it and its authors, branding them racists or (in the case
of the senior editor) a cademic Nazis. These essays, like all such works, should rise or
fall not because of ad hominem attacks but because of their use of evidence and the
clarity and intelligence of theory and analysis. Yet the most vociferous critics, whose
main interest appears to stem from cultural politics, seldom engage on this level.
Instead, they misrepresent or do not bother to read or engage an argument; polemi-
cists, some unhesitatingly, play the race card in hopes of silencing this work.
Why? One reason – I speak here from personal experience – is that because this
research cuts against the grain of received wisdom concerning the impact of warfare
and subsistence practice in Amerindian societies past and present, and is perceived
as politically incorrect, anti-indigenous, and (for work addressing ecology and con-
servation) anti-environmentalist. That the media appropriates anthropological
research to ends other than that for which it was written only complicates the reac-
tion (Krech 2007).
On one level, one can understand why some in the academy or native communi-
ties might react negatively. As a rule, anthropologists who do fi eldwork care deeply
for the well-being of the people in whose communities they live as guests. They
would never set out to undermine them. This is so strongly internalized as to take on
the qualities of a refl ex. And might not research fi ndings implicating native people
with environmentally or politically damaging behavior make it impossible for
indigenous people—often poor and powerless—to play on a level fi eld?
But the societies – or processes – about which we write have long been in the
throes of change and globalization. Culture was never distributed evenly in small-
scale societies – this was a timeworn anthropological “myth” – and today nation-
states which encase smaller-scale societies and communities that remain of
longstanding interest to anthropologists, with the people who live in them, see a
distribution of beliefs, values, and practices that are more variable than ever. Thus,
“the people” whose actions emerge from a full panoply of sentiments and values,
some ancient, others new, and still others perceived as “traditional” (even if of recent
invention), demonstrate extraordinary variability.
Moreover, societal membership today is more complex than ever; societal boundaries
are less sharply defi ned than ever; and indigeneity itself is variable and contested –
complicated in origin and distant in expression from its essentialized moorings in
declarations advanced in the United Nations (Gordon and Krech 2011). No matter
Foreword ix
how isolated a community might seem today, the world outside is in the frame of
every person who can see the contrail of a plane high overhead, feel the impact of
changing climate, or experience the effect of exotic biota, products, and ideas
fl owing across porous borders. Given these changes, one is likely to fi nd the “refl ex”
of support for one’s people logically diffi cult and even, in certain instances, impos-
sible to carry out in practice – for the people do not agree on what a proper course
of action (on, say, projects with environmental consequences) might or should be
(see Krech 1999, 2007). Our disciplinary ethics need to anticipate and respond to
the contradictions and ambiguities of today’s societies and cultures.
Ethics , I hope, will be given its full due. Not only are the contributors committed
to agreed-to canons of evidence revealed in the reasonable use of scientifi c, historical,
or cultural analysis, and determined to follow analyses to judicious ends, the argu-
ments they advance will rise or fall on the weight of that evidence and argumenta-
tion. Even if we do not always learn from the past in taking or avoiding action in the
present. We simply cannot afford to ignore comparative analysis in a world torn by
confl ict and sinking in environmental crisis.
Washington, DC, USA Shepard Krech
References
Chacon, Richard and David Dye. 2007. T he Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as
Trophies by Amerindians. New York: Springer Press
Chacon, Richard and Rubén Mendoza, 2007a. N orth American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual
Violence . Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Chacon, Richard and Rubén Mendoza, 2007b. L atin American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual
Violence . Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Gordon, David and Shepard Krech III, eds. 2012. I ndigenous Knowledge and the Environment in
Africa and North America. Athens: Ohio University Press.
Krech, Shepard III. 1999. T he Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: WW Norton.
Krech, Shepard III. 2007. “Beyond T he Ecological Indian ,” in N ative Americans and the
Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian , eds. Michael E. Harkin and David Rich
Lewis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 3–31.
Krech, Shepard III. 2012. “‘That’s Real Meat:’ Birds, Native People, and Conservation in the
Neotropics.” In D esigning Wildlife Habitats , ed. John Beardsley. Washington, DC: Dumbarton
Oaks Research Library and Collecti on.