Napoleon Chagnon

Napoleon Chagnon was an American anthropologist known for his long-term fieldwork among the Yanomamo of the Venezuelan and Brazilian Amazon, published most famously in Yanomamo: The Fierce People (1968), which described a society organized substantially around warfare and interpersonal violence and offered a sociobiological argument linking male reproductive success to success in violent conflict. Chagnon's work and methods became the subject of sustained and severe controversy within anthropology, most publicly following the 2000 publication of Patrick Tierney's book Darkness in El Dorado, which accused Chagnon of exacerbating conflict among the Yanomamo through his research practices and of ethical violations in his fieldwork; the American Anthropological Association investigated the allegations and issued a report critical of Chagnon before later rescinding it after further review, leaving Chagnon's legacy sharply and durably contested between defenders who regard him as a rigorous scientist and critics who regard his research as ethically compromised.