Wednesday, February 6, 2013

The Yanomami Ax Fight: Science, Violence, Empirical Data and the Facts

The Yanomami Ax Fight: Science, Violence, Empirical Data and the Facts: "We do need to review some facts. Looking at the empirical evidence reveals a very different story. The story matches what Brian Ferguson wrote about the Yanomami, with ideas developed over 20 years ago:

Although some Yanomami really have been engaged in intensive warfare and other kinds of bloody conflict, this violence is not an expression of Yanomami culture itself. It is, rather, a product of specific historical situations: The Yanomami make war not because Western culture is absent, but because it is present, and present in certain specific forms. All Yanomami warfare that we know about occurs within what Neil Whitehead and I call a “tribal zone,” an extensive area beyond state administrative control, inhabited by nonstate people who must react to the far-flung effects of the state presence. (1995:6)"

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