#32

That's exactly my point--but Diamond paints culture that way, as being basically bounded by environment or geography, and without much internal differentiation. It's a kind of conflation of "States" with "Cultures"--the Spanish state may have invaded the Aztec and Maya peoples in the 15th and 16th centuries looking for resources and slaves, but that doesn't mean that European "culture" (a product of environment, for Diamond) conquered meso-american "culture". Even saying "Aztec" and "Maya" covers up enormous differentiations of language, means of subsistence, ethnicity, and inequality--I'm just not enough of an expert on the region to be more explicit than those two terms.

By painting the world this way, Diamond has no way of explaining why the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch began colonizing the Americas 100 years before the English got involved, and two hundred years before the Italians and Germans, even though these regions have ~relatively~ similar ecological conditions (as compared to, say, southeast asia, sub-saharan africa, or the North pole).

Personally, I think that debating the merits of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" is far more interesting than determining whether or not Jared Diamond an anthropologist, an evolutionary biologist, a geographer, a historian, or whatever else people want to call him. My initial comment was only meant to address what I thought was a mis-characterization of him--I've never heard him referred to as an anthropologist, nor (more importantly) have I ever heard him self-identify as such.

Back to "GGaS"--

>It is homogeneous enough that when it pushes up against an alien culture that it behaves in a consistent way. While I am sure there were some Conquistadors who were no where near as bloodthirsty and ruthless as most.

There were HUGE debates in Spain about whether or not the conquest of the Americas was a good or a bad idea, and whether or not the Mayans, Tainos, Caribs, and other indigenous groups should be treated as a foreign power, the same way Spain treated the French, the English, and other European nations. For a good summary, see Immanuel Wallerstein's recent short book "European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power". The Spanish nation did not have a consistent, homogenous culture that universally viewed indigenous peoples of the Americas as ripe for conquest.

>In the end it didn't matter. The Aztecs were wiped off the map and their culture replaced by a foreign one.

Tell that to indigenous folks in Central America who still speak their indigenous languages and fight for their indigenous rights. The relatively EZLN "uprising" in the mexican State of Chiapas (Mayan, I know) makes clear that indigenous people were not conquered but continue to resist and struggle against more recent "immigrants".

re: criticisms....I am personally convinced by the argument made in the book "Yali's Question" by Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz--namely that Diamond misunderstood the question posed to him in the beginning of his book, and to which his book is an answer. Definitely worth a look.

More generally, I guess I find problematic the idea of history and culture presented in Guns, Germs, and Steel--namely that culture is bounded and homogenous (is there a unified "American culture"?), and that history is primarily determined by ecology, and not human action. Both of these ideas are fairly commonplace in western thinking, in one form or another, and Diamond's book essentially recapitulates them.

I never said he should "stay in his place", only that it mis-characterizes him and anthropology to call him an anthropologist.

>It is born of jealousy and inadequacy.

Classy....

>Does Diamond's work serve to further anthropology?

Maybe, maybe not. Somehow I doubt it, though it'd be tough to prove it pro or con.

>Does it further the common man's understanding of human nature?

No, it reifies the understanding most people have, which is that culture is bounded and internally homogeneous. For Diamond, there is "European culture", which spread to, and conquered "Mayan" and then "Aztec" cultures, for example. It's what the anthropologist Eric Wolf called a "billiard ball" theory of culture, and whose book "Europe and the People without History" is a MUCH better version of the story Diamond tries to tell.

>Does it matter if he fails to follow the conventions and language of inaccessible 'insiders' of the anthropological world?

Again, classy... Plenty of anthropologists write in clear, concise language, as does Diamond. It doesn't make them less academic. Just like writing about human beings doesn't make Jared Diamond an anthropologist.

None of which makes him an anthropologist.

At the risk of sounding overly provincial, I want to state that Jared Diamond is NOT an anthropologist. To my knowledge, he was primarily trained as an ornithologist, and has no formal training in anthropology. Most of my colleagues in the anthro department don't like his work very much either. Just a heads-up...