🚀 go-pugleaf

Ian A. York wrote:
> 
> Arens (see my book review elsewhere on AFU) spends nearly 30 pages on the
> Aztecs.  Athough he has no dispute with the wide-spread human sacrifice
> practiced by the Aztecs, he questions whether there was ever cannibalism
> involved.  I won't go into all of his arguments, 

[etc]

Ian,

It seems that Arens' book isn't quite the Bible of anthropology that you 
make it out to be.  I've included just a couple of recent posts from 
sci.anthropology that show what some people in that community think of 
it.  I haven't read the book, but my impression from these posts (and 
from the way you describe it) is that Arens has a political agenda.  
Sadly, this is common in anthropology, and frequently leads to very poor 
scholarship.  I'll cite as an example Margaret Mead's theories of Samoan 
sexual customs, which are now thoroughly discredited.  The two posts I 
include below were in response to someone's endorsement of Arens.

There is also, of course, the piece about Kuru in the web page 
http://www.airtime.co.uk/bse/tse.htm (thanks to Ron Ackermann).  This 
confirms my story about "laughing disease."  (If you believe the Web 
page, that is.  It looked very authentic to me.)

I'm tired of this discussion, so I won't be participating any longer.  I 
suggest that it be taken to sci.anthropology, where there seem to be 
some people who actually know what they're talking about.

	Steve Barnard


Posts from sci.anthropolgy follow:
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In article <319A2924.3754@dur.ac.uk>, Trish Carter 
<p.a.carter@dur.ac.uk> writes:

|> Read Arens: The Man-Eating Myth. Then stop asking silly questions

According to marvin harris, in _good to eat_, arens is pretty silly
himself. Harris shows that many of the claims used by arens to show that
people don't _really_ eat people are blatently false, as discussed in
this very forum ad nauseum not too long ago.

Clearly there are anthropologists who are very anxious to 
debunk/discredit
the history of human cannibalism, and I'm sure they have convinced
themselves that they have very good reasons for doing so. The facts
don't seem to back them up, however.

The western love for the myth of the Noble Savage re-emerges under the
guise of progressive/post-modern cultural relativism; delightfully
quaint, actually.
--
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Disclaimer claims dat de claims claimed in dis are de claims of meself,
me, and me alone, so sue us god. I won't tell Bill & Dave if you won't.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=----   Gerold Firl @ ..hplabs!hp-sdd!geroldf

***********************************************************************

>In article <319A2924.3754@dur.ac.uk>, Trish Carter <p.a.carter@dur.ac.uk> writes:
>
>|> Read Arens: The Man-Eating Myth. Then stop asking silly questions

I was taught Arens' book as the first thing in my undergraduate 
Anthropology
degree, and was impressed by the reasoning to the point where I was
mouthing off left right and centre about how there was no canibalism and
how nasty old Europe was for believing the rumours. Now I feel a bit 
foolish.
Arens is good to a point, ie his idea that cannibalism is easy to accuse
the "other" of, however  I think he takes it to a bit of an extreme to 
say
that there has been no cannibalism ever. Accounts by Aztecs about their 
own
cannibalsitic rituals are difficult to refute. I've also heard rumours 
that
Arens was pretty selective about the pictures in his book, choosing only 
those
that had unidentifiable bits of flesh on them, and not the ones with 
heads
and hands.

It is quite an ethnocentric thing to assume that people from other 
countries
are the _same_ as us, as well as different. Assumptions should be 
avoided.


                   Duncan Drury
                   Anthropology II
                   University College London