Peace and War - The case of The Yanomami 4206-FS122z

Among the Yanomami - according to ethno-historian Brian Ferguson - there occur about fifty 'wars' every year. 'Why they are fierce,' explains anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon.
The Yanomami, who live in the tropical forest in northern Amazon, are a society of horticulturalists and hunter-gatherers. Their territory extends over the area of approximately 200.000 km2 across the border between Brazil and Venezuela. The Yanomami are the most numerous 'isolated' tribe of America. There are almost 24.000 of them, their communities can have up to 500 members. --- The history of the Yanomami has been (and continues to be) filled with examples of extreme violence against them. They continue to suffer from high mortality rates because of illnesses (measles, flu, whooping cough) introduced by gold prospectors who invaded their lands at the end of the 80s. Many have been assassinated by miners. Five Brazilian miners massacred a Yanomami village in 1993. --- The initial contact with the Europeans can be traced back to the first half of the nineteenth century, when the Yanomami started to encounter workers from extraction companies which were expanding all over the territory, with soldiers on the border, missionaries and foreign tourists. In the first half of the century the first missions were founded (catholic and evangelical) as points of permanent contact. Specifically, the missions transformed themselves into poles of sedentarization, places providing objects for industrial fabrication, but in some cases also in places where diseases (in many cases mortal) could be caught. Despite external influences, most of the Yanomami still live in the forest, occasionally moving in search of new territories to cultivate and hunt. A traditional Yanomami village is constituted by an ample multi-family house called 'shabono'. Every village is considered to be an independent political and economic unit which contracts marriages and alliances with neighbouring villages; however, there also exist conflicts which, frequently, result in 'wars' between the groups.
The book 'Yanomamö: the fierce people' ("Yanomamo: el pueblo salvaje", published in English in 1968) by an anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, is economically the most successful publication in social anthropology and a textbook widely recommended in ethnology and anthropology courses all over the world. The book focuses on a supposed fierceness and tendency towards conflicts of the Yanomami, who are presented by Chagnon as people characterized by outstanding violence and aggression. Nevertheless, journalist Patrick Tierney arguments that it was Chagnon who frequently aroused conflicts within the tribes which provoked deaths and lesions. In a letter to Chagnon, a representative of the Yanomami César T. stated that 'People should know that you are a big liar'. For a long time various anthropologists have described Chagnon's concepts as unfounded and lacking in precision. According to them, the Yanomami are neither more nor less violent than any other tribe. Chagnon's theories have been frequently criticised.
In the seminar we will analyze some of the theories and 'explications' of the causes of violent conflicts between shabonos; for example: 'scarcity of proteins', 'scarcity of land', 'scarcity of women' (and the practice of feminine infanticide and polygyny), scarcity of other resources (e.g., metal), 'vengeance', 'aggressive character', socio-psychological and -biological theories, etc.