Ethnographers are the people who study other peoples’ cultural practices. The study of cultures is a complicated process and requires the ethnographer to have patience with the society and avoid any bias when reporting the findings. Before giving a conclusion on a particular culture, the ethnographer must compare it with the other cultural practices in the world. For instance, Chagnon portrays Yanomami culture as full of violence and aggressiveness. He does not bear in mind that there are other extreme cultural norms involving extreme violence and discrimination. Anybody carrying out any study on societies should focus on the positive more than the negative side of the society. Chignon displays the Yanomami society as fierce, primitive, and violent while sponsel sees it in another way.

The Yanomami live in Venezuela and Brazil is a place full of conflict and aggression and considered as one of the most violent tribes in the world. The tribe is also primitive in many ways as they do not wear clothes “…when you are stark naked, and the invention of the handkerchief is millennia away” (Chagnon 13). Chignon portrayed the Yanomami people as one of the largest society living in their traditional norms especially the organized warfare. Chagnon characterizes the tribe as fierce people amongst themselves although a number of anthropologists have disputed Chignon’s portrayal of the tribe. The tribe according to Chagnon is sly, and intimidating “many amused Yanomamo onlookers quickly learned the English phrase, ‘Oh shit!’, and once they discovered that the phrase offended and irritated the missionaries, they used it as often as they could in their presence” (Chignon 14). One form of violence is the duels that are ritualized among the people and can be interpersonal or inter-village ith many rituals governed by well-set rules. For instance in the cases of physical duels to people hit each other many times until one of them retreats or collapses. The fight may involve chest pounding with fists, slapping with an open hand, or by using some weapons such as wooden clubs or long poles. Duels are mainly for resolving conflicts and sometimes act as sports like any other culture where people practice boxing. Some of the fights are due to infidelity, and jealousy. The other form of violence portrayed by Chagnon is a raid where several men waylay an enemy at dawn as he walks out from the shabono going for a bath or elimination. The raid results in death and sometimes a massacre of ten or mo people before the raiders retreat to their homes. Going on raids is a way of achieving the social prestige or revenge for a death, and sometimes the raiders abduct and gang-rape women in the forest before they are married to the raiders’ relatives. Some treacherous feasts also result to fighting the guests resulting in several deaths and sometimes a massacre. Chagnon characterizes the Yanomami as the one of the most violent communities in the world although other anthropologists such as Lizot disagree with him and depicts them as warriors who can be sensitive and delicate. Chagnon portrays the Yanomami as people in constant warfare, which lead to deaths although he does not describe the kind of war. Some wars are for young men as either brawls or street fights and not necessarily true wars. Violence erupts after short periods in many tribal societies resulting in homicides due to the primitivism of the Yanomami.

Sponsel portrays Yanomami as warriors ho can be brutal and cruel sometimes but are delicate, loving, and sensitive to humans. Sponsel argues that violence is there, but there are long, peaceful periods in the society and are not evil savages. Their culture is all about warfare, but they are still human beings. According to Sponsel, who lived among the society the Yonamami are not as violent as Chagnon depicts them. The people were also not as fierce as earlier though apart from the normal conflicts between husband and wife, a few club fights, and some false alarms. “These Yanomami did not value fierceness in any positive

Way” (Sponsel 104). In fact, the society was already influenced by the missionaries and the other people especially the ones working in the Catholic Mission in the region. Sponsel questions the validity of the description of the society as primitive and disagrees since their sociocultural, daily lives are rich, and they know the ecology very well. The people have been influenced by the Western culture by various visitors such as explorers, scientists, missionaries, and anthropologists. Sponsel sees Yanomami women as characters who play a great role in politics, peacemaking, and other aspects of life and not just to satisfy men sexually as Chagnon portrays them. Sponsel sees a problem in Chagnon’s description of aggressiveness of the Yanomami people as there is a lot of biases as it depicts the negatives of the society. The absence of wars simply means that the society is at peace, and the fights are only for cultural celebrations and not enmity. Some fights are sporting activities and not a form of violence. There are other societies ith similar cultural practices such as homicide, wife beating, suicide, human beating, and homicides which proves that the Yanami are not the most fierce communities as anthropologists such as Chagnon portrays them.

Chagnon, Napoleon. The Yanomamo. Cengage Learning, 2012.

Chagnon, Napoleon A. Yanomamo: The last days of Eden. Harcourt, 1992.

Sponsel, Leslie E. “Yanomami: an arena of conflict and aggression in the Amazon.” Aggressive Behavior 24.2 (1998): 97-122.