Napoleon Chagnon
| Napoleon Chagnon | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 27, 1938 Port Austin, Michigan |
| Nationality | American |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater | University of Michigan (B.A., M.A., Ph.D.) |
| Thesis | Yanomamö Warfare, Social Organization and Marriage Alliances (1966) |
| Doctoral advisor | Leslie White |
| Known for | Reproductive theory of violence, ethnography of Yanomamö |
| Influences | Meyer Fortes, Sewall Wright, E.O. Wilson |
Napoleon Alphonseau Chagnon (/ˈʃæɡnən/ SHAG-nən; born 27 August 1938) is an American anthropologist, professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri in Columbia and member of the National Academy of Sciences. Chagnon is known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, a society of indigenous tribal Amazonians, in which he used an evolutionary approach to understand social behavior in terms of genetic relatedness. His work has centered on the analysis of violence among tribal peoples, and, using socio-biological analyses, he has advanced the argument that among the Yanomami violence is fueled by an evolutionary process in which successful warriors have more offspring. His 1967 ethnography Yanomamö: The Fierce People has become a bestseller and is frequently assigned in introductory anthropology courses.
Admirers have him as having been a pioneer of scientific anthropology. Chagnon has been called the "most controversial anthropologist" in the United States in a New York Times Magazine profile preceding the publication of Chagnon's most recent book, Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes—the Yanomamö and the Anthropologists, a scientific memoir.
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