Anthropology and the Search for the Enemy Within

By THOMAS A. GREGOR and DANIEL R. GROSS

The American Anthropological Association has just published the results of an extensive investigation into charges of abuse of the Yanomami Indians of Venezuela and Brazil that had been brought by its own members against their colleagues Napoleon Chagnon and James Neel. The AAA report is a 325-page document, dense with opinion papers, ethical pronouncements, vast but unbalanced background materials, even the panelists' résumés. When those materials are stripped away, what