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s r i tu te of Archaeology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Buda-pest, Hungary.

UNESCO-FAO. 963. Bioclimatic ma p of the Mediterranean zone:Explanatory notes. Arid Z one Research 2 1 .

,

1969. Vegetation ma p of the hlediterranean zone: Explan-atory notes. Arid Zo ne Research 3 0 .

history,” in Neolithic M acedonia. Edited by M.Gimbutas , pp.418-41. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

W E I D E , D. 1976. ”Appendix: Regional setting an d geomorphic

Yanomami “Violence”:Inclusive Fitness or

Ethnographer’s Representation?

B R U C E A L B E R TORSTOM- Universidade de Brasilia, Caixa Postal07-1121, 70359 Urasiliu, D.F., Brazil, 24 v 89

Brazilian anthropologists have recently argued thatChagn on’s (1988) w’ork adv anc ing a sociobiologically i n-spired theory of Y ano ma mi “violence” ha s been widelydissem inated by th e Brazilian press to exacerbate preju-dice against these Indians and that it has given the gov-

e rnmen t a rgumen ts to jus t i fy the d ismemberment oftheir lands (see Carneiro da Cu nh a 1989; see also Albertand Ramos, 1989,Booth 1989, nd , for a detailed accountof the Y anomam i’s situation in Brazil, Albert 1989a, b ) .Cha gnon (19 89), in response, has said th at h e reportedscientific facts that have simply been misused. I willshow t hat these “fac ts“ are qucst ionable e i ther in them-selves or in t he con text in w hich they are presented andt h a t the theoretical framework in which they are embed-ded is riddled w ith cult ural preconceptions.’

Chag non takes as indicators of the level of violence inYanomami society (pp. 985, 986-89) the percentage ofadult male morta l i ty due to violence (approx imately30%\, th e percentage of m ales estimat ed 2 5 years of ageor older who “ have participated in th e killing of some-one” (44%0), and the percentage of adults over an esti-mated 40 years of age who have “lost a close geneticrelative due to violence” (nearly 70%). He also tenta-

tively explains an apparent statistical correlation be-tween the s ta tu s of “killer ” (“ uno kai ”) and higher repro-ductive success (p . 989, table 2) n t e rm of the greatersucce ss of ‘ ‘ i i~iokuis”n acquiring niates ( p .989, table 3)

either by ab duction or through their prestige in arrang-ing marriage allianc es (p p. 989-90).

First, several co mm ents can bo niade about the valid-ity of Chagnon’s criteria for the assessment of Yano-mami “violence”:

I. I am grateful to Waud Kracke, Alcida Ramos, Kenneth Taylor,Eduardo Vivciros dc Ciistro, und !<obin Wrixht f o r thcir hc lpf dcom men ts on ear l ier vers ions of this report.2.

For other criticism s of Chamon’s reification of Yanomami ”vio-

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Volume 30,N u m b e r 5, Decem ber 1989 I637

I . From Chagnon’s report that, while Y anomam i war-fare has recently diminished in most regions because ofpermanent contact with miss ionaries and government

agents, it is still actively engaged in in the cluster ofvillages in w hich h e ha s don e field resea rch (p. 986), onegets the impression that the situation in this region is

representative of a prist ine and pan-Yanomami reality.This, however, is no t the case. T he Yanomami num berabout 22,500 [no t I ~ , O O O ) ,distributed throughout a terri-tory of aproximately 192,000 km’ n Venezuela andBrazil (see Oficina Ce ntra l Ixg85:38] and Colchester[1985:7] for th e Yan om am i population in Venezuela, Se-cretaria-Geral I1g88:13) for the Yanomami of Brazil).They are linguistically and culturally divided in to foursubgroups: Yanömami (Chagnon’s “Ygnomamö”],Yanomam, Sanima, and Ni na m (Migliazza 1972). Th elevel of male morta l i ty3 in warfare as calculated from

genealogies covering thre e t o five generations [a nd there-fore including mostly deaths prior to intensive and per-man ent contact wi th w hites) varies significantly amongthese subgroups: for example, it is 40 % among theSham atari Ya nöm am i (after Chagnon 1974: 160, table4.10) nd 14% among the Catrimani Yanomam [Albert1985:gg-100 n. 9). t also varies amon gdifferent clustersof villages w ith in t he sam e subgroup: for example,among the Yanömami i t is 40% for the Shamatari, 24%for the Narnoweiteri (after Chagnon 1974: 160, table4 . 1 0 ) , 12% fcr the H z i y a r , ~Hariles pSj:42i,),), aiid IO-

24% for the ”centr al Yan öm ami” (Lizot 1972: 216 n.1).I t thus appears tha t the in tensi ty of warfare was lower inmost parts of Yanomami territory than it was in theShamatari area even before recent interethn ic contact?On the basis of his earlier writings one could hy-pothesize, precisely the opposite of Chagnon’s presentargum ent, tha t the co mpa rativel y high level of warfareintensity registered among the Shamatari is linked tohistorical changes that affected this population in themore distant past. Thus the particularly dynamic pro-cess of village fission an d th e att end ant high frequencyof intervillage hostilities observed among the Sham atarimig ht very well have the ir origin in the “population ex-plosion” that resulted from their early acquisition ofsteel tools through i ndirec t contact and access to unoc-

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3 . Given the nature of the available Yanomami comparative data, Iuse here male instead of adult male mortality percentages. A t anyrate, the general underreporting of child deaths in Yanomamigcnealogies probably makes the latter not much higher than theformer.4. Chagnon (197448 )describes the Shamatari as the ‘’ Fiercer’ Peo-ple.” For accounts of low warfare intensity in most Yanomamiareas from ficltlwork observations during the ‘60s and ‘709, scc

Colc hester [1982:105-6 [Wes tern Sanima]), Fredlund (I982:37(OcamoYanömamiJ] ,Migliazza, qu oted in Chagnon (1966:193, 1 9s[Uraricaa Nina m] ), Sha piro (1g72:3g, 170-71, 173-7.1 ICa trìmaniand Parima Yanomaml), Smole (1976:74, 233 n. ros \ParimaYanömamil), Sponsel [1981:102-3 [Western Sanimal), and Taylor(I974:25 [Eastem Sanimal); see also Peters 11980:276, table 21.

lence,” see Davis (19761, Spo& (1983, 19851, Ramos (1987), andLizot [1989).

whose data show II% male land 14% adult.ma le) mortality i nwarfare for th e Mucajal Nin am between 1958 and 1980.

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cupied territories vacated by other populations (seeChagnon 1966:167).'

Moreover, Chagnon's figure of 30 % is considerablylower than those reported for other indigenous groupswithin the Am azon region (see Sponsel 1g85:10): adultniale mortality in warfare is 59% for the Achuarä (Ross1980:46) nd about 61% for the Waorani (plus X I % i nconflicts due to contact (a f te r Larrick et al. 1979:167,

table 711. Yet Ross notes th at th e Achuarä, even thoughshowing muc h higher adul t male m orta l i ty in warfarethan the Yanoniami, have "a decidedly less ostentatiousforma t for accomplishing suc h ends" (p. 46) . Th e Wao-rani, for their part, are reputed to have an e thos tha temphasizes peacefulness, having been described as a"tribe where harmony rules" (Collins 1983, quoted byKnauft 1987:473). Culturally valued demo nstrations ofaggressiveness (Yanoniami "fierceness") or gentleness(Waorani "peacefulness") must noit be confused withcorresponding rates of violent death, and the use ofeither to characterize a society as a whole is bound tofoster preconceptions rather than anthropological

knowledge (see Knauft 1987 nd Riches 1987).2. n reporting that 44% of m e n 25 years of age or olderhave participated in the killing of someone' (pp. 985,

989) , Chagnon take? the Yanomami ritual category ofuiiokai to be equivalent to the Western concept of"killer." Unokai, however, denotes a state of symbolicimpurity that is said to result from the supernatural in-corpora tion by t he killer of th e blood and flesh of a slainenemy, whether this enemy was killed by an arrow, byshamanism, by sorcery, or by thc k i l ling of his acima!alter ego ( 2 0 f the zg Yano mam death s registered du ringm y f ie ldwork were a t t ributed to these huma n a t tacks bysupernatu ral means [see Albert 198 5:7 07 ]).~ hagnon'sdata on Yano mam i "killers" are based on native retro-

spective acco unts of unokoi cases. Given the polysemyof the sy mb olic category of unokoi, the variable degreeof reliability of his informants, and the size of the demo-graphic basis for his survey (380 men aged 20 years orolder [see p. 989, table 211 one cannot rule ou t some

5. Th e Karawatari and Kohoroshitari village clusters, which mayhave a com mo n origin with th e Shaniatari, niigratcd through theMavaca and Siapa drainage bcforc thcm, at the turn of the ccntury(Chagnon 1974:82-87). ,The previous occupants of this region,Arawak-speaking indigenous groups hostile to the Yanomami,were by then extinct (see Chagnon 1966:29-3t; Albert 1 98 ~:4 0-41, 5 4 - 5 5 ) . For niore details on th e history of contact and changes

amon g th e Yanom ami, see Colchester lrg8z:chap.z; 19841 and Al-ber t (198~:chap. r ; 9881.6 . According to the Yanomani, a man in the condition of unokoimust observe a complex set of ritual restrictions on his move-ments, behavior, and diet ( u n o k n i m u ] n ordcr to protect himselffrom th e risk of prem ature aging caused by the supcrna turnl intru-sion of his victim's blood in to his body. In this respect thc condi-tion of unokai is symbolically constructed as a masculine inver-sion of menstruat ion. The unokaimu ritual process is, moreover,conceived as a digestion of the decaying flesh of the killed enemy.This "exocannibalisni" is closely rclatcd to the "endocannibal"symbolism of the funerary ritual, in which the powdered boneashes of affines are consum ed (effec tively or symbo lically). For afull analysis of Yanomani r itual symbolism, sec Albert (1~851.

degree of emicle tic confus ion in h is record of "killers."In spite of his report that he did not consider super-natural death (p . 987)) it seems l ike ly tha t a portion ofthe men who s ta ted that they or others had undergoneunokai could have done so on the basis of sup ernatur alrather tha n physical killing.

Chagnon (1989) argues that the Yanomanii h e studieddistingu ish a "true" unokai produced by physical killing

("unokai a yoi") fro m a l'false'' on e caused by super-natural killing ("unokai a horemou").On the one hand, Inever heard of the dist inct ion during my 29 months offieldwork amo ng th e Yanom am in Brazil. On the otherhand, the idea that the Yanomami-or me mb ers of an ycomparable society-would consider the ritual conse-quences of a supernatural killing less real than tho se of aphysical one is bewildering. J. Lizot, w ho for 20 years hasl ived aniong Yanomam i who speak th e sam e language asChagnon's informants and has worked intensively onlinguistics, ha s recently reported not only th at he neverencountered the "unokai n yailunokai a horemou" dis-tinction in Yanõmami but also that its supposed formula-

tion as presented by Chagnon is not grammaticallycorrect (personal comm unication , January 25, 1989).'Furthermore , even in cases of actual warfare killing.there is no simple equivalence between our notion of"killer" or homicide and th e Yan omam i category ofunokai. Besides the fact that several different warriorsshoot the same victims in combat or collectively killisolated ene mie s (Chagno n 1988:987), 2 number of themalso shoot dying or, sometimes, even already dead vic-tims io mani lesr the ir anger against th e killer ("real" or"symbolic") of som e relative, t o affirm political andritual solidarity wi th allies, or to confirm ritually theiradult status. For the Yanomami, everyone who has shotan arrow in to the v ic t im is considered to be in the condi-

tion of unokai. In this context, more often than not i t kvirtually imposs le to single out w ho did the actual kill- / i

Westem concept of homicide. For all these reasons, afterany Yanomami raid, the numb er of warriors said to be inthe state of unokai (Yanomam unokarimë th&bë,)isal-wa ys considerably greater than t hat of victim s. This be-ing the case, t he percentage of m en "who have partici-pated in the killing of someone," even calculated onthe basis of claims t o past unokai conditio ns in warfare,cannot be considered equivalent to a percentage ofhomicides and thus by no m eans offers a reliable com-parative m easu re of violence in Yanom ami society.s

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ing in t e rms CO tRparable to the no tion embedded in the

7. Chagnon (1g89) gives as an example of the "false" category,besides supern atural "killers," "men who deflower prepubescentvirgins," bu t neither among the Yanomam no r among the Ya-nöma mi (Lizot, personal co mm unic atio n, April 18, 1989) does thedeflowering of a girl cause a man to enter the s ta te nf unokoi an dundergo th e unokaiinu ritual. In fact, the use of th e unokai cate-gory s mctaphorical in this context, a s in several othe rs (see Albert1985:345-46 n. II, rzl, while its r itual usage sensu stricto consistsnot in a trope but in a belief (see Sperber-xg74:114-19), wh eth er I

" issociated with a physical killing o r with a supernatural one.8. For a convergent analysis of Chagnon's misuse of th e unokaicategory, see Lizot [198g:33]. I



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Volume 30, Number 5, December 1989 I639

3. Th e third index-the percentage of adults who have“lost a close genetic relative due to violence”-is no lessproblem atical. Chagno n himself recognizes (n . 3 5 ) that”ta ken by itself thi s measu re might ‘inflate’ the am oun tof a society’s violence: if all menibers of a society wererelated, then a few deaths would result in a statisticshowing tha t a large fraction of people have lost closekin.’’ Yet he relies on this percentage even thoúgh hepoints t o a high degree of relatedness at the village andth e interv illag e level (pp. 987-89; see also Chagnon

Th e relation between the statu s of “killer” and repro-ductive succcss is, as Chagnon recognizes in the m anycaveats in his introduction of propositions o n the topic(pp. 989, ggo), based o n no firmer grounds t han his m ea-surement of Yanoniami “violence.” Th e argument tha tthe reproductive succe ss of the 44% of the male popula-

tion aged 25 or older who are ‘“tokais” (“killers”) isincreased by their capacity to abd uct women is not sup-ported by any em pirical evidence. On the contrary, Lizot(1988:540-41) rep ort s th at of a tot al of 350 marriages ina large village clyster that he surveyed in 1975, 0.9%were by abduction of women from allied villages and0.8% by capture of w om en from ene my villages. Never-theless, C hagnon insists that Yanomam i men go to warover women (p . 986).

Hc fur the r argucs that tlic “ui iokuis”achicvc greatermarital and reproductive success because “they see m tobe more attractive a s mates than non-unoku is” in mar-riage alliance arrangcm ents (p . 08g),but the only cthno-

graphic sup port h e offers is the anecdota l and misleadingassociation of unoku i and “wuiteri” (“fierce”) as equiva-lent quali t ies at tr ibuted to males supposed to be a nowiidodihiwä (“valuable” ) (p. 990)~’ The meaning of “wai-

teri” ( in fact wuitlieri) is more coniplex than “fierce” oraggressive; it refers also, and principally, t o a set of idealqualities such as courage, daring, toughness, authorita-tive speaking, initiative, generosity, and hu mo r (see A l-bert 1985:97-98; Bortoli 1983:17--18; Lizot 198g:jz-33). Unokai refers to a temporary r i tual s tate andwuitheri denotes a configuration of personal qualities;these concepts are thus not assimilated by theYanoniami. As should be clear from t hc above remarkson unokai, t is unnecessary to be waitlieri to undergo

this r i tual cond it ion [see also Lizot 1989:33), in th e sameway th at it is not eno ugh to hnvc unilcrgonc unoltni toachieve the reputation of being waitìieri.

Th e remainder of Chagnon’s argum ent tha t “unokais“have greater niarital and rcproductive SLICCCSS is basedonly on the notion that “mili tary achievements arevalued and associated with high esteem, as they are inmany othe r cultures, including our own,” and that “non-unokuis m ight be willing t o concede more reproductiveopportunit ies to unokuis in exchange for a life withfewer mo rtal risk s and few er reproductive advantages”

1974:133-41; 1975 ; 1983 [19681:138-42).

(P. 990).

9. Lizot has never encountered the expression o nowä dodihiwii

Chagnon’s characterization of Yanomami society,rather than an analytical effort to understand it in itsown term s, reveals a projection of traditional preconcep-

tions of th e West em construc tion of Othe rness. Th eYanomami were first depicted in his writings as “TheFierce People” within the framework of a theory of“warfare over wom en” in w hich selective female infan-ticide was purported to play a determinant role (seeCha gno n 1966, 1968, 1983 [1g68], and, for discussion,Col ches ter nad.: 4-7, 20-21; Spo nsel 198 1:322--26). Noquantitative evidence was ever produced by Chagnoneithe r on th e proportion of marriages by abduction or onth e proportion of fem ale infanticide (s ee Davis 1976: I -

12).Lizot’s data disprove the first argument, and thesecond was abandoned some t ime ago (see Chagnon,Flinn, znd M elan con 1979). Since his adoption of asociobiological approach, Chagnon‘s theory of Yano-

mam i warfare has been m ainly reformulated through t heargument of maximization of the “inclusive fitness’’ of“killers.” As we ha ve seen, however, serious doubts canbe entertained ab out th is argum ent. Thu s, in Chagnon’sethn ogra phic repre sent ation of Yanomam i society, it is .

as if violence and sexual comp etition constituted pre-ferred them es persisting through changes of theoreticalclothing and in th e face of contrary evidence.

This being the case, Chagnon’s model of Yanomami”violence” does not, properly speaking, show scientificcoherence. On the other hand, it is easy to t r x e t hechoice of t h e m e s of violence and sexual comp etition toideological (sensu D um on t 1977) premises of Euro-

Amer ican culture, and ultimately it is in this realm th atthi s model finds its coherence. The ”fierce-people” im -age of generalized warfare and natural “possessive indi-vidualism” (Macpherson 1971)may be traced directlyto 17th-century European political philosophy, whichnow serve$ as Sahlin s (1g80:173) has pointed ou t, as‘som ethin g of an origin my th for Western society. Th eethnographic representation of the Yanomami built byand through Chagnon appears, then, to be a symbolictransformation, keyed t o genetics, of the Hobbesianpicture of the ”s ta te of nature”:Lachronic “killers” forindividual (biological) benefits, Chagnon’s Yano mamiare said to be ”our contemporary ancestors” (1983[19681:214) and the ir society comparable t o ma caque

troops (1975:108). Th ey are even described a s being fas-cinated by the discovery of police and law and as ur-gently requesting the m a s a means t o curb their chronicwarfare and put an en d to the “co nstant fear” in whichthey live (1988:990): A s in th e sorts of inversions madein myth , the Yan oma mi are constructed here as a nega-tive image of orderIy society, thereby cont ribu ting to th eproduction and validation of current Western culturalvalues. Our sociological present is advanced as thenorm, res ulting from a do uble inversion: of o ur own pastand of t he Other’s pres ent, considered equivalent. In this

IO. This image of Hobbesian inspiration is, of course, doubly in

contradiction with the view of Hobbes himself, for whom th e“state of nature” was, by definition, prior to any societal institu-

(pcrsonat co mmu nication, ]unc 8, ig88), and neither have I. tion and a mere theoretical construction.



6‘10 I C U K H E N T A N T I I K O I ’ O L O C Y

way, the representation of cultural Otherness as natura lsavagery turns this savagery into a fascinating “blackmirror” supposed to reflect both the origin and the re-

verse of (our) society. This may be one reason for thewidespread and uncrit ical intere st in Chagnon’s work.”

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1

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I I . Mu ch could be said also abou t the cpistcmological statu s of th e“mo dem evolutioi ia ry thought” tliat inspires Ch:iyion, but thatwould be beyond my purposc hcrc. For an intcresting analysis ofthe Spencerian misappropriation of Hobbes and Darwin promotedby sociobiology, see Tort (19831.

T A Y L O R , K . I . 1974. Sanuma fauna: Prohibitions andcfassi/kqtions. Caracas: Fundacibn La Salle de Ciencias Natu-rales.

TORT, P . 1983. La pensée hiérarchique e t I’évolution: Les c o m -plexes discursifs. Paris: Aubier.

albert, bruce - yanomami violence (1989)

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