[HN Gopher] Francis Fukuyama - Against Identity Politics
___________________________________________________________________
Francis Fukuyama - Against Identity Politics
Author : edu
Score : 79 points
Date : 2022-01-15 14:57 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (amc.sas.upenn.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (amc.sas.upenn.edu)
| Lamad123 wrote:
| Remember his smug _End of Histtory_?
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| (2018)
|
| And yet the future is all about Identity politics. It's an
| optimization problem really. Recent crises show that liberal
| democracy can no longer serve the needs of individuals that have
| increasingly more freedoms (partly thanks to technology) and who
| are no longer willing to compromise with large groups. The
| challenge is going to be how to build political systems that
| simultaneously cater to all the various identity dimensions of
| citizens, while at the same time avoiding the oppression of 50%
| by the other 50%, as happens in democracies. This is a
| technological problem (after all democracy itself was
| technology), and interestingly many of the decentralized projects
| aim to solve parts of it. What seems to be lacking is an
| integrated understanding of all such parts.
| jacknews wrote:
| Now I realise you have to produce many words to fill a book, but
| a more succinct argument would be appreciated, and this seems to
| be all over the place, with pat explanations of recent history,
| which is probably much more complex in reality.
|
| And is the argument really about 'identity', or just 'status'?
|
| IMHO, economics is flawed at it's core, because people do not
| just value material wealth, but relative, social wealth, aka
| status, in fact, almost above all. That also explains twitter,
| facebook, instagram, etc.
| Gimpei wrote:
| Ego rents are very much a part of modern economic theory. As
| are any range of cognitive biases (see behavioral economics),
| institutional frictions, spatial constraints, and on and on.
| It's a wide tent. Some say too wide.
| jvsg_ wrote:
| Could you explain ego rent? Google didn't give me an answer
| (it sucks these days tbh).
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Like, you make no money but get to feel important. See the
| "CEOs" at startup conferences.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| I hate identity politics as much as the next guy, but I think a
| lot of Fukuyama's takes here are pretty bad. He repeatedly paints
| massive groups with a large and indiscriminate brush. For
| instance:
|
| "The right seeks to cut off immigration altogether and would like
| to send immigrants back to their countries of origin."
|
| Uh, what? The United States is a nation of immigrants and we all
| know it. I don't think anyone wants to send immigrants back, it
| would be illegal and unconstitutional as well as impossible. Now,
| restricting ILLEGAL immigration on the other hand? Yes, basically
| everyone on the right supports this. But not wanting illegal
| immigration is literally on the other side of the map from not
| wanting any immigration at all and sending back immigrants.
|
| I don't lend much credence to this guy anyway, considering that
| he thought history ended in 1992, as other comments have
| mentioned. But I think just as important as identity politics is
| defining the opposing side by the worst ideas of its supporters.
| For example, defining Democrats by "defund the police", or
| defining Republicans as the party of "white nationalism". There
| are tons of people on both sides who don't believe in this crap
| and are dedicated to the core ideals of economic prosperity for
| all and expansion of opportunities. Tuning these crazies out
| would go a long way to calming down the discourse in this
| country, but I don't think essays like this really help the
| situation.
| kristopolous wrote:
| The key behind understanding the guy is he's always defending
| imperialism and the current power structure as the correct,
| natural and inevitable course of events, with no other
| alternative possible.
|
| He's been playing that same song for decades. You already know
| what his position on everything is and how he'll argue for it.
| The real amazing thing is how much he's committed to it
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Yeah that's a bad take, though it's true that even for legal
| migration the right is generally cooler on it than the left.
| They wouldn't cut it all off, but they'd probably restrict it
| more.
| pessimizer wrote:
| was8309 wrote:
| per 'defund the police' being extreme, here's a story. living
| near Pitt in 1981. iiuc, Reagan defunding forced the local
| psych hospital to empty out. So now we had a bunch of patients
| with psychiatric disabilities living homeless in the
| neighborhood, and my understanding is that they needed to stay
| close by the hospital in order to get daily meds. Of course
| this resulted in more police involvement, and though I don't
| have the proof, the common sense reaction would be to allocate
| more officers to the zone. I'll bet the officers in the street
| weren't thrilled.
|
| end result : mental health funding decreased and police funding
| increased.
|
| So my understanding of 'defund the police' is to reverse what
| happened in that and many similar situations
| roenxi wrote:
| > So my understanding of 'defund the police' is to reverse
| what happened in that and many similar situations...
|
| Most comments explaining "defund the police" seem to settle
| on a different meaning, because I've seen one or two around
| and this one is new to me.
|
| It is best to take political slogans literally. When a large
| group of people gets together and starts chanting something,
| then votes someone in who promises to execute the chant there
| is always a pretty good chance that the slogan will get
| implemented literally.
|
| Eg, I'm pretty sure that there were some half-hearted
| arguments that "build a wall" was metaphorical. It turned out
| to involve a literal wall.
| nerdponx wrote:
| It seems pretty literal to me. Fund police less, fund other
| things more instead.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Most comments explaining "defund the police" seem to
| settle on a different meaning,
|
| Most comments explaining "defund the police" are from
| people who disapprove of it. The above is exactly how I've
| always heard it described. If they wanted to abolish the
| police, they could have just said "abolish the police."
| fumanchux wrote:
| The "Reagan defunded psychiatric hospitals" trope needs to
| die. The wards started emptying in the 60s with the granting
| or rights to the patients. We don't want to go back to "one
| flew over the cuckoo's nest". Then more with the invention of
| meds that controlled the worst symptoms. Psychiatric
| hospitalization rates dropped 65% from 1970-1979. Those
| hospitals were funded by states not the feds, so there was a
| much larger trend going on.
|
| [1] https://www.nasmhpd.org/sites/default/files/TACPaper.2.Ps
| ych...
| dlbucci wrote:
| Both things can be true. Reagan did repeal this, for
| example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Syst
| ems_Act_of...
| [deleted]
| drewcoo wrote:
| Fukuyama isn't worried about facts. Factually, Obama and now
| Biden have deported far more people than Trump or Bush. Obama
| was even known as "the deporter in chief."
|
| https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/state-and-local-...
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Here is a quote from Fukuyama's essay about exactly that:
|
| > Doing little to prevent millions of people from entering
| and staying in the country unlawfully and then engaging in
| sporadic and seemingly arbitrary bouts of deportation--which
| were a feature of Obama's time in office--is hardly a
| sustainable long-term policy.
| rkk3 wrote:
| > I don't lend much credence to this guy anyway, considering
| that he thought history ended in 1992
|
| I'm not sure why people jump on this so much - it very well
| could have ended if the US had better leadership & strategy...
| If the US had Marshal plan equivalent for the former USSR & a
| realist China strategy, things would have been different. But
| sure Huntington's book is better.
| [deleted]
| jzellis wrote:
| Golly, because he was so right about everything else.
| yob22 wrote:
| Have you ever read any of them his books?
| borepop wrote:
| Also Francis Fukuyama: history ended in 1992.
| huetius wrote:
| To be fair, by "end" he meant "telos," or "ideal," following
| Hegel. He did not mean that there would be no more history. Of
| course, his thesis is still wrong.
|
| EDIT: the original essay also had a question mark at the end of
| the title.
| retrac wrote:
| Well, it kinda did though, didn't it? Being charitable for a
| second, I suspect it's more that history is "on pause" than
| ended, but I do get a feeling of almost timeless stasis.
|
| In comparison to the scale of ideological, political, economic,
| and social changes for the 19th and 20th centuries, essentially
| nothing has happened since 1992. No major nation has had a
| revolution. There have been no major wars between nation-
| states. No ideologies of note have arisen or been cast down.
| Nothing historical has happened -- so the end of history.
|
| From what I've read, a lot of people felt similarly in the late
| era of the Pax Britannia. (Which is a big part of why I think
| it's just "on pause".)
| toyg wrote:
| _> essentially nothing has happened since 1992._
|
| Oh yeah, the web changed nothing. /s
|
| _> No major nation has had a revolution._
|
| You are disrespecting Syria, Iraq, Venezuela, Ukraine,
| Turkey... and of course Yugoslavia, which started breaking up
| in 1991 (Fukuyama started his ramblings in 1989) and didn't
| end until 2001 - if you can consider the current fragile
| peace an end, which it really isn't. Plus, most South
| American countries continue to "tweak" their constitutions
| every few years, one way or the other. And if you go to
| Africa, well, have I got news for you...
|
| _> There have been no major wars between nation-states._
|
| The US literally invaded and occupied two sovereign countries
| since then, in both cases continuing major operations for
| more than a decade. But if we consider "nation-states" only
| Western states or superpowers, there has been no such war in
| the 30 years before 1992 either. That's because conventional
| "top-quality" nation-state conflicts have been made
| impractical by nuclear weapons and MAD, well before 1992.
| What we have now is asymmetrical warfare (superpower vs
| minnow) or proxy warfare. That doesn't mean these conflicts
| don't make history or don't change things significantly -
| they very much do.
|
| _> No ideologies of note have arisen or been cast down._
|
| The techno-utopianism that the internet generated is an
| ideology in itself, and the backlash has only just started.
| Same for conspiracy-theorism as a way of life, climate
| change, identity politics... just because they don't make
| people wear the same shirt and march in the streets, it
| doesn't mean they are not deeply-ideological movements. You
| can argue that they were "invented" before 1992, but 1)
| inevitably these things take time, 2) they didn't really have
| that much traction until the '00s.
|
| _> Nothing historical has happened_
|
| That's such a sheltered viewpoint. I'm sure quite a few
| people in Yemen, Syria, Venezuela, Brazil, Afghanistan,
| Yugoslavia, Turkey, Ukraine, Tunisia, Lybia, Ethiopia,
| Nigeria, Hong Kong, Rwanda, Sudan, Chad, Congo, Somalia,
| Algeria, Liberia, Mali, etc etc, would have something to say.
|
| History is very much grinding all around us, it's just a
| question of whether we actually want to look at it or we'd
| rather pretend it didn't exist.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Are you aware that he admitted that he was wrong? I believe
| he wrote a book on it.
| retrac wrote:
| Yes, it's pretty clear he was falsified. (China didn't go
| liberal! Shocker.) Doesn't mean his ideas weren't thought-
| provoking. But it's probably best to think of such
| political science as political philosophy.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Yes, it's pretty clear he was falsified.
|
| Okay, it wasn't clear to me that was your view from your
| comment.
|
| > political science as political philosophy
|
| I think he stepped out of that realm when he tried to
| make a prediction and justify it as correct.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I think there is just not a shared definition for
| "history" among people who here that line in a vacuum, vs
| more Marxisty type people. "history" is a very particular
| thing for Marxists. even in his book you are talking
| about, it is talked about on those lines, not in an
| everyday concept of history.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I don't understand why this comment is here. It's a good
| thing to point out to people that don't know what he
| meant, but within his own framework he was incorrect,
| which he admitted. The social relations we see today are
| not the ones he originally predicted and there's
| absolutely no guarantee that it won't get "worse" or go
| in a completely different direction.
| 988747 wrote:
| > In comparison to the scale of ideological, political,
| economic, and social changes for the 19th and 20th centuries,
| essentially nothing has happened since 1992. No major nation
| has had a revolution. There have been no major wars between
| nation-states. No ideologies of note have arisen or been cast
| down. Nothing historical has happened -- so the end of
| history.
|
| The period since 1992 was relatively peaceful, that's right.
| But that's not what Fukuyama's thesis was about, especially
| since he couldn't know in 1992 what would happen in the next
| 30 years.
|
| Fukuyama's theory was that mankind has reached its optimal,
| stable state and that that the further historical changes are
| very unlikely, because why would people want to mess with
| perfection :) It was basically very naive optimism, I guess
| he was still in euphoria after Soviet Union collapse...
|
| Since then we had "war on terrorism" and PATRIOT act, big
| financial crisis of 2008, rise of social media and
| surveillance state, and now COVID pandemic. Plenty of
| historical changes, most of them for worse.
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| A take that didn't make it past the title.
| skywal_l wrote:
| Well his history ended in 1992. The guy spent a life becoming
| an expert on Soviet imperialism and in a few days most of his
| knowledge became obsolete. I could see how he could say
| something like that.
| rvense wrote:
| His point at the end about the impossibility of the word "un-
| Danish" is at least thirty years out of date, if not 80. "Udansk"
| is fairly frequently used, across the political spectrum, usually
| denoting some variation of intolerance, unwillingness to
| compromise, and narrowmindedness which are implied almost
| universally to be antithetical to Danishness.
|
| Even on the right, the phrases "Danish culture" and "Danish
| values" are used much more than any reference to blood or
| ethnicity. It is very much a fringe view to suggest that people
| are not able to become like us and assimilate (though a lot less
| fringe to claim that many foreigners, especially muslims, don't
| want to do so.)
| yob22 wrote:
| draw_down wrote:
| netcan wrote:
| rvense wrote:
| He gives a summary of 20th century politics that doesn't
| include fascism, and makes the Cold War sound like it was a
| battle between "small government" and "worker's rights". He
| says outright that nationalism on the political right is a
| "redefinition".
|
| This is so bizarre I can only assume I'm reading it wrong.
| guerrilla wrote:
| He also ignores all the material demands of the groups
| involved in identity politics, as if they don't intersect (A
| LOT!) This is inane.
| fallingknife wrote:
| What are the material demands of those groups? There seems
| to be a general demand for special treatment and privileged
| legal status based on membership in their identity group,
| but symbolic issues seem very much at the center of
| identity politics.
| guerrilla wrote:
| When a group is disproportionately excluded from the
| education, economic and other systems of society due to,
| for example, racism or sexism, they tend to have
| disproportionately worse economic outcomes (sometimes
| extremely so.) This is almost always recognized by that
| group of people and a strong motivating factor from
| overcoming their systemic disadvantage.
|
| > demand for special treatment and privileged legal
| status based on membership in their identity group
|
| Usually they're just asking for equal treatment, but if
| you mean things like affirmative action then this is
| obviously just society paying off its debt to the group
| for previous exclusion _or_ jump-starting things to get
| closer to an equal society.[1]
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action#Origins
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > When a group is disproportionately excluded from the
| education, economic and other systems of society due to,
| for example, racism or sexism, they tend to have
| disproportionately worse economic outcomes
|
| Well, it depends. A lot of real-world identity politics
| amounts to malicious, overt marginalization of "market-
| dominant" or "model" minorities who, despite their
| marginalized status, have _better_ educational and
| economic outcomes than the relevant majority group.
|
| This is the story of, e.g. Asians in the U.S. but also of
| recent African immigrants from subcultures like the Igbo,
| Ashanti and Yoruba with a focus on education and cultural
| development, who get marginalized in Black communities
| throughout the West for supposedly "acting white" or,
| more diplomatically stated, "pursuing respectability
| politics".
| guerrilla wrote:
| > overt marginalization of "market-dominant" or "model"
| minorities who, despite their marginalized status, have
| better educational and economic outcomes than the
| relevant majority group.
|
| Because they aren't "disproportionately excluded from the
| education, economic and other systems of society due to,
| for example, racism or sexism." Being a minority does not
| automatically make one marginalized and one does not need
| to be a minority to be marginalized.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Because they aren't "disproportionately excluded from
| the education, economic and other systems of society"
|
| Of course they are, this is pretty much what
| marginalization means. My point is precisely that real-
| world marginalization can be an _outcome_ of identity
| politics, especially when minorities differ in their
| overall attitudes towards education or economic
| development.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Of course they are, this is pretty much what
| marginalization means
|
| Then we can't agree on that premise. I don't think they
| are even remotely marginalized to the same extent. If
| they were, they would suffer the same consequences. To be
| clear, I'm not saying that anti-Asian racism doesn't
| exist; obviously it does, it's just not on the level that
| anti-Black racism is on.
|
| > My point is precisely that real-world marginalization
| can be an outcome of identity politics
|
| Sure, it can, Ethiopia is repeatedly a great example of
| that. Asians in America aren't. None of those that
| Fukuyama listed are either.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > To be clear, I'm not saying that anti-Asian racism
| doesn't exist; obviously it does, it's just not on the
| level that anti-Black racism is on.
|
| I never said that anti-Asian attitudes are "on the level"
| that anti-Black ones are. What I'm saying is that such
| things should point us towards a far more nuanced
| understanding of how "identity politics" might play out
| in the real world.
| guerrilla wrote:
| More nuanced than what?
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| I agree; he ignores all the national liberation movements,
| which were typically nationalistic and linked to an ethnic
| identity (even when nominally "Communist"). More charitably
| he's trying to talk about the transition from the Old Left to
| the New Left.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I am not clear on your complaints here, maybe you are reading
| it wrong? To pick up on one thing: do you feel that the
| political right has, rather, sustained a consistent
| nationalistic bent for the past century? You dont feel like
| it has changed recently, and rather, perhaps, believing it
| has changed is misguided?
| rvense wrote:
| Nationalism is a defining characteristic of political
| conservatism.
| N1H1L wrote:
| It is in fact the first feature - conservatism is almost
| always focused on preventing changes to a current
| identity from multiculturalism and cosmopolitan forces
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| What, in your mind, was 20th century politics defined by?
|
| Edit: like I get the economism here feels reductive to you, I
| think, but I just think it would at least be equally absurd to
| say they were predominantly defined by identity issues. As is
| shown in the essay, our concept of identity is intractable from
| globalism and modernity. So I'm just not sure what the obvious
| issue is here. If we admit that it is nuanced, then you have to
| explain where the lines of that nuance are obvious, and
| economism is a good tool for that.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Really, it's just a shitty comment that probably doesn't
| belong in any discussion and should be ignored. "Huh?!" This
| doesn't pass as substantive in any way whatsoever. Don't
| waste your time thinking about it.
| psyc wrote:
| I have always wished for an official rule against beginning
| comments with either "Huh?" or "What are you talking
| about?"
| netcan wrote:
| Indian independance, irish independance and the formation of
| most current nation states...on the basis of national
| identity. Fascism, Nazism, the kmer rouge. Even communism, in
| its own terms, was about class identity.
|
| The US civil rights movement and the creation of its modern
| political dichotomy. Islamism. Arabism & the Arab league.
| Apartheid. Post-apartheid SA. Post colonialism. The Rwanda
| genocide. Yugoslavia's demise.
| N1H1L wrote:
| The US is not the world. US politics were deeply identitarian
| too first of all, Jim Crow Laws, Civil Rights Act and
| desegregation were explicitly identity based and not
| economic.
|
| And then as other posters have mentioned - hundreds of
| national independence movements - almost all based on a
| national identity
| moomin wrote:
| Identity politics is a term the right use to try to trivialise
| and minimise the importance of civil rights movements. And boy is
| this very long rant a demonstration of that.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| That's really not what it says. The essay is very explicit
| about calling _Trumpism_ a form of white identity politics.
|
| (That's why the title is terrible: It dissuades anyone left of
| Joe Biden from reading.)
| krapp wrote:
| Trumpism _is_ white identity politics. That Trump 's base is
| rural white voters who feel alienated and disenfranchised by
| the loss of white demographic majority and the encroachment
| of multiculturalism into their communities is a thesis they
| themselves have put forth. This isn't even controversial, the
| relationship between Trumpist populism and the alt-
| right/white supremacist communities has been thoroughly
| discussed and well documented at this point.
|
| Note that the presence of non-white Trump supporters doesn't
| invalidate the premise. No one is claiming Trumpism is _only
| and exclusively_ white identity politics, but that is
| certainly a core motivating factor behind the movement.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| - " Trumpism is white identity politics" - What happens if
| you replace the word "white" with say non-college educated
| working people?
| N1H1L wrote:
| > non-college educated working people?
|
| Lots of Hispanics and Blacks in that group, who
| surprisingly aren't that keen on Trump
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Not entirely true. Larger percentage of Hispanics and
| Blacks voted for Trump than any other republican
| presidential candidate.
| [deleted]
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| Hispanics are not a homogenous group like you portray
| them to be. For example Republicans won Hispanics in
| Virginia this year [1]. There is a balance between more
| conservative leaning Hispanics from Central/South
| America, wealthier 3rd+ generation Hispanics who lean
| conservative, and more liberal recent Mexican
| demographics. All evidence from the past 2 elections in
| 2020 and 2021 indicate that Hispanics as a whole are
| shifting towards the GOP (even if Democrats currently
| have a solid majority among Hispanics as a whole).
|
| [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/04/latino-
| poll-virgini...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Trump got 30% of the Latino vote in 2020, more than
| republicans get historically.
| quacked wrote:
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| andrepd wrote:
| What? Precisely the opposite, Marx thought the only
| fundamental differences were class differences. Does
| "proletarians of the world, unite!" seem like a
| nationalist/identitarian slogan?
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Not "unite", unite in fight against oppression. Unite
| against your countrymen, the opposite of nationalism. Once
| proletariat in developed countries was deemed unsuitable as
| engine for revolution new ideologies aimed at urban blacks
| and college students were developed.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| This is the "frankfurt school tried to invent a new
| communism" conspiracy theory. In actuality, "identity
| politics" is a big bracket of civil rights issues, some
| applications of which are good and some of which (the
| obvious example being cancel culture) are bad. But the
| whole point is to try to move towards an egalitarian
| society for queer, trans, ethnic, female etc people who
| have historically had the short end of the stick in the
| West in various different ways. The whole "if you're
| white then you're an oppressor" angle is a gross
| misapplication of the theory by people who don't
| understand the difference between individual and systemic
| effects.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| PS I have studied Marxism for years and would win identity
| olimpics over 99.99% of you
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| Old academic yells at clouds
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| This is a moderate essay with an unfortunate title. What it is
| _not_ is a typical right-wing rant. I would hope people could
| tell these apart.
|
| It presents a middle path and almost plaintively asks people to
| follow it. I fear this is wishful thinking, but at least he's
| trying to be conciliatory and constructive.
|
| What surprised me was his reference to _Snow Crash_. I did not
| expect that in an essay by Francis Fukuyama.
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| I have no earthly idea how "identity politics" is related to the
| demise of the arab spring. In as far as it may relate to the rise
| of authoritarianism in Eastern Europe (Poland and Hungary), it is
| by being easy foil for Victor Orban and his ilk (cf. "LGBTQ-free
| zones"). Even if one were to believe these neo-fascists wouldn't
| just find some other scapegoat, I don't see how it would morally
| justify a return to 1950s social policies. Throwing some people
| under a train in support of human rights seems to be the quickest
| way to defeat your stated purpose.
|
| It isn't even obvious that "identity politics" is tethered
| exclusively to left-wing politics. Plenty has been written about
| the group of people that invaded the Capitol last year, and the
| only consistent characteristic of that group was being white. No,
| it has nothing to do with economics. It included a doctor making
| $ 650,000 p. a. as well as a group that traveled to DC on a
| private jet.
|
| Hell, the major group of young reactionaries in Europe (until
| recently) had "Identity" in their name.
|
| This text just seems entirely out of place, and I was wondering
| if I missed the (2008) in the title while reading it. There's
| nothing new in it, and it wouldn't get much attention if it
| weren't for the name.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| It is equally confounding to me that you either: read the piece
| and still have these complaints, or you didn't and still feel
| authorized to respond in this way.
| N1H1L wrote:
| > No, it has nothing to do with economics. It included a doctor
| making $ 650,000 p. a. as well as a group that traveled to DC
| on a private jet.
|
| People forget this a lot - and try to ignore it consistently.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Graeber tears this guy's work apart in his new book and shows his
| work is incompatible with recent and old anthro research. Hard to
| take him seriously in other areas
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| > recent and old anthro research
|
| "Anthropology" is a field that so thoroughly discredited itself
| by political advocacy that no one to the right of Trotsky could
| possibly take it seriously. These are the people who trashed
| Napoleon Chagnon, who actually lived with the Yanomani, for the
| audacity of reporting what they were like, which wasn't what
| they like to hear.
|
| From the NYT obituary:
|
| _Dr. Chagnon dismissed as "Marxist" the widespread
| anthropological belief that warfare in tribal life was usually
| provoked by disputes over access to scarce resources.
|
| "The whole purpose and design of the social structure of
| tribesmen seems to have revolved around effectively controlling
| sexual access by males to nubile, reproductive- age females,"
| he wrote in his 2014 memoir, "Noble Savages."
|
| Other anthropologists rejected these assertions as exaggerated
| and even racist, saying they could do harm to the tribe by
| casting it in a bad light. Many argued that human behavior was
| best explained not by genetics and evolution but by the social
| and natural environments in which people live. _
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| If you'd like to see the writing on Chagnon that Graeber
| promoted, which I'm not certain your summary really captures
| - http://dwhume.com/darkness_documents/0246.htm
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| You really want to push an article with garbage phrases
| like this?
|
| "By far the greater part is the story, sufficiently
| notorious in its own right, of the well-known
| anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon: of his work among the
| Yanomami people of Venezuela and his fame among the science
| tribe of America."
|
| "during the late 1960s and early 1970s Chagnon had served
| as a jungle advance man and blood collector."
|
| "Chagnon inscribed these indelible identification numbers
| on people's arms--barely 20 years after World War II."
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