Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Anthropology

This debate style reader is designed to introduce students to controversies in anthropology. The readings, which represent the arguments of leading anthropologists and researchers, reflect a variety of viewpoints and have been selected for their liveliness and substance and because of their value in a debate framework. This title will be a beneficial tool to encourage critical thinking on important anthropological issues. Taking Sides is supported by our student website, Dushkin Online (www.dushkin.com/online/).

PART 1. Biological Anthropology

ISSUE 1. Is Race a Useful Concept for Anthropologists?

YES: George W. Gill, from “The Beauty of Race and Races,” Anthropology Newsletter (March 1998)

NO: Jonathan Marks, from “Black, White, Other,” Natural History (December 1994)

Biological and forensic anthropologist George W. Gill contends that the concept of race remains a useful one. For him, races are conceived as populations originating in particular regions. He contends that because races can be distinguished both by external and skeletal features, the concept is an especially useful tool for the forensic task of identifying human skeletons. Furthermore, the notion of race provides a vocabulary for discussing human biological variation and racism. Biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks argues that race is not a useful concept for anthropologists because there are no “natural” divisions of the human species. He concludes that the popular idea of races as discrete categories of people who are similar to each other and different from all members of other races is a cultural—not a biological—concept.

ISSUE 2. Are Humans Inherently Violent?

YES: Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, from Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996)

NO: Robert W. Sussman, from “Exploring Our Basic Human Nature,” Anthro Notes (Fall 1997)

Biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham and science writer Dale Peterson maintain that sexual selection, a type of natural selection, has fostered an instinct for male aggression because males who are good fighters mate more frequently and sire more offspring than weaker and less aggressive ones. Biological anthropologist Robert W. Sussman regards the notion that human males are inherently violent as a Western cultural tradition, not a scientifically demonstrated fact.

ISSUE 3. Did Neandertals Interbreed With Modern Humans?

YES: João Zilhão, from “Fate of the Neandertals,” Archaeology (July/August 2000)

NO: Jean-Jacques Hublin, from “Brothers or Cousins?” Archaeology (September/October 2000)

Archaeologist João Zilhão discusses the recently found remains of a young child who was buried in a rock shelter in Portugal about 25,000 years ago. He concludes that the Lagar Velho child was a hybrid with mixed Neandertal and early modern human ancestry. Biological anthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin maintains that the Lagar Velho child was merely one variant within the diverse early modern human population. He argues that there was some cultural influence from early modern humans to Neandertals but little or no interbreeding between them.

PART 2. Archaeology

ISSUE 4. Did People First Arrive in the New World After the Last Ice Age?

YES: Stuart J. Fiedel, from Prehistory of the Americas, 2d ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

NO: Thomas D. Dillehay, from “The Battle of Monte Verde,” The Sciences (January/February 1997)

Archaeologist Stuart J. Fiedel supports the traditional view that humans first reached the Americas from Siberia at the end of the last Ice Age. He argues that there are currently no convincing sites dated before that time and is skeptical of statements by other archaeologists who date human occupation of sites significantly earlier. Archaeologist Thomas D. Dillehay asserts that the site he has excavated at Monte Verde proves that humans reached the New World well before the end of the last Ice Age, possibly as early as 30,000 years ago.

ISSUE 5. Was There a Goddess Cult in Prehistoric Europe?

YES: Marija Gimbutas, from “Old Europe in the Fifth Millennium : The European Situation on the Arrival of Indo-Europeans,” in Edgar C. Polomé, ed., The Indo-Europeans in the Fourth and Third Millennia (Karoma Publishers, 1982)

NO: Lynn Meskell, from “Goddesses, Gimbutas, and ‘New Age’ Archaeology,” Antiquity (March 1995)

Archaeologist Marija Gimbutas argues that the civilization of pre–Bronze Age “Old Europe” was matriarchal—ruled by women—and that the religion centered on the worship of a single great Goddess. Archaeologist Lynn Meskell considers the belief in a supreme Goddess and a matriarchal society in prehistoric Europe to be an unwarranted projection of some women’s utopian longings onto the past.

ISSUE 6. Did Prehistoric Native Americans Practice Cannibalism in the American Southwest?

YES: Brian R. Billman, Patricia M. Lambert, and Banks L. Leonard, from “Cannibalism, Warfare, and Drought in the Mesa Verde Region During the Twelfth Century A.D.,” American Antiquity (January 2000)

NO: Kurt E. Dongoske, Debra L. Martin, and T.J. Ferguson, from “Critique of the Claim of Cannibalism at Cowboy Wash,” American Antiquity (January 2000)

Archaeologists Brian Billman and Banks L. Leonard and bioarchaeologist Patricia Lambert argue that there is evidence of prehistoric cannibalism in the Mesa Verde region of southwestern Colorado. They conclude that the bodies of seven individuals were processed in ways that suggest that they were eaten by other humans. Archaeologists Kurt E. Dongoske and T.J. Ferguson and bioarchaeologist Debra L. Martin object that the analytical framework Billman et al. use assumes that cannibalism took place and does not adequately consider alternative hypotheses.

PART 3. Linguistic Anthropology

ISSUE 7. Can Apes Learn Language?

YES: E. S. Savage-Rumbaugh, from “Language Training of Apes,” in Steve Jones, Robert Martin, and David Pilbeam, eds., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution (Cambridge University Press, 1999)

NO: Joel Wallman, from Aping Language (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Psychologist and primate specialist E. S. Savage-Rumbaugh argues that, since the 1960s, attempts to teach chimpanzees and other apes symbol systems similar to human language have resulted in the demonstration of a genuine ability to create new symbolic patterns. Linguist Joel Wallman counters that attempts to teach chimps and other apes sign language or other symbolic systems have demonstrated that apes are very intelligent animals, but up to now these attempts have not shown that apes have any innate capacity for language.

ISSUE 8. Does Language Determine How We Think?

YES: John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson, from “Introduction: Linguistic Relativity Re-examined” and “Introduction to Part 1,” in John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson, eds., Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (Cambridge University Press, 1996)

NO: Steven Pinker, from The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Perennial Classics, 2000)

Sociolinguists John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson contend that recent studies of language and culture suggest that language structures human thought in a variety of ways that most linguists and anthropologists had not believed possible. Cognitive neuropsychologist Steven Pinker draws on recent studies in cognitive science and neuropsychology to support the notion that previous studies have examined language but have said little, if anything, about thought.

PART 4. Cultural Anthropology

ISSUE 9. Should Cultural Anthropology Model Itself on the Natural Sciences?

YES: Marvin Harris, from “Cultural Materialism Is Alive and Well and Won’t Go Away Until Something Better Comes Along,” in Robert Borofsky, ed., Assessing Cultural Anthropology (McGraw-Hill, 1994)

NO: Clifford Geertz, from The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays by Clifford Geertz (Basic Books, 1973)

Cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris argues that anthropology has always been a science and should continue to be scientific. He contends that the most scientific approach to culture is cultural materialism, which he has developed specifically to be a “science of culture.” He concludes anthropology’s goal should be to discover general, verifiable laws as in the other natural sciences. Cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz views anthropology as a science of interpretation, and as such he argues that anthropology should never model itself on the natural sciences. He believes that anthropology’s goal should be to generate deeper interpretations of diverse cultural phenomena, using what he calls “thick description,” rather than attempting to prove or disprove scientific laws.

ISSUE 10. Was Margaret Mead’s Fieldwork on Samoan Adolescents Fundamentally Flawed?

YES: Derek Freeman, from Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth (Harvard University Press, 1983)

NO: Lowell D. Holmes and Ellen Rhoads Holmes, from Samoan Village: Then and Now, 2d ed. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1992)

Social anthropologist Derek Freeman contends that Margaret Mead went to Samoa determined to prove anthropologist Franz Boas’s cultural determinist agenda and states that Mead was so eager to believe in Samoan sexual freedom that she was consistently the victim of a hoax perpetrated by Samoan girls and young wome n who enjoyed tricking her. Cultural anthropologists Lowell D. Holmes and Ellen Rhoades Holmes contend that during a restudy of Mead’s research, they came to many of the same conclusions that Mead had reached about Samoan sexuality a...