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Book Cover
Book
Author Tierney, Patrick.

Title Darkness in El Dorado : how scientists and journalists devastated the Amazon / Patrick Tierney
Edition First edition
Published New York : Norton, [2000]
©2000

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  981.1 Tie/Die  AVAILABLE
Description xxvii, 417 pages, <8> leaves of plates : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 25 cm
Contents pt. 1. Guns, germs, and anthropologists, 1964-1972 -- ch. 1. Savage encounters -- ch. 2. At play in the field -- ch. 3. The Napoleonic Wars -- ch. 4. Atomic Indians -- ch. 5. Outbreak -- ch. 6. Filming the feast -- ch. 7. A mythical village -- pt. 2. In their own image, 1972-1994 -- ch. 8. Erotic Indians -- ch. 9. That Charlie -- ch. 10. To murder and to multiply -- ch. 11. A kingdom of their own -- ch. 12. The massacre at Haximu -- ch. 13. Warriors of the Amazon -- pt. 3. Ravages of El Dorado, 1996-1999 -- ch. 14. Into the vortex -- ch. 15. In Helena's footsteps -- ch. 16. Gardens of hunger, dogs of war -- ch. 17. Machines that make black magic -- ch. 18. Human products and the isotope men -- appendix. Mortality at Yanomami villages
Summary "When the Yanomami were first encountered by Napoleon Chagnon, Jacques Lizot, and other preeminent anthropologists in the 1960s, the "discovery" of their ferocious warfare and sexual competition revolutionized modern anthropology as profoundly as Franz Boaz and Margaret Mead's findings had done nearly a half-century before. Their brutal wars and mating habits spawned countless films and books, the most prominent being Chagnon's The Fierce People, which sold more than a million copies and influenced the nascent field of sociobiology. To Chagnon and his colleagues, the Yanomami represented the last frontier, their habitat the final place where one could observe the behavior of man in a pristine setting untouched by outside influence." "Now, in a work that complements Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, Patrick Tierney refutes the macho theories and revolutionary claims of an entire era of anthropology in an explosive account based on more than a decade of research. He demonstrates how these researchers, as well as journalists and scientists, echoed the travails of the Spanish and English explorers of five centuries ago as they sought the illusory city of El Dorado, a promised land already destroyed by their own brutality. In painstaking detail, Tierney explores the hypocrisy, distortions, and humanitarian crimes committed in the name of research, and reveals how the Yanomami's internecine warfare was, in fact, triggered by the repeated visits of outsiders who went looking for a "fierce" people whose existence lay primarily in the imagination of the West. Tierney, who gained access to dozens of unedited audio tapes of documentaries, provides an astonishing link between the Atomic Energy Commission and these anthropological forays, and his book serves as a new chapter in the long, sorrowful history of Western cultural imperialism."--BOOK JACKET
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Subject Chagnon, Napoleon A., 1938- -- Influence.
Chagnon, Napoleon A., 1938- -- Public opinion.
Chagnon, Napoleon A., 1938-
Anthropological ethics -- Amazon River Region.
Genocide -- Amazon River Region.
Gold mines and mining -- Amazon River Region.
Indians, Treatment of -- Amazon River Region.
Yanomamo Indians -- Crimes against.
Yanomamo Indians -- Social conditions.
Yanomamo Indians.
LC no. 00038682
ISBN 0393049221