Yanomami : The Fierce Controversy and What We Can Learn from It

Yanomami raises questions central to the field of anthropology - questions concerning the practice of fieldwork, the production of knowledge, and anthropology's intellectual and ethical vision of itself.

Using the Yanomami controversy - one of anthropology's most famous and explosive imbroglios - as its starting point, this books considers how fieldwork is done, how professional credibility and integrity are maintained, and how the discipline might change to address central theoretical and methodological problems.

Both the most up-to-date and thorough public discussion of the Yanomami controversy available and an innovative and searching assessment of the current state of anthropology, this book asks far-reaching questions about how we represent ourselves, how we reproduce academic structures, and how we engage with our colleagues.The Yanomami controversy was sparked by the publication of Patrick Tierney's best-selling book, Darkness in El Dorado, in which he accuses James Neel, a prominent geneticist who belonged to the National Academy of Sciences, of knowingly perpetuating a measles epidemic during his research among the Yanomami in the late 1960s.

Tierney also revealed the human rights infractions of anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, whose introductory text on the Yanomami is the best-selling anthropological monograph of all time - selling approximately three million copies.

This book identifies the ethical dilemmas of the controversy and raises deeper, structural questions about the discipline.

A portion of the book is devoted to a unique roundtable in which important scholars on different sides of the controversy discuss key issues.

This format draws readers into the discussion and encourages them to draw their own conclusions.