Anthropology 101 in 2011
This post on Anthropology 101 in 2011 was a call to action for introductory courses to address the big themes of Human Nature, Race, & Evolution.
Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond is not an anthropologist or an archaeologist. Nevertheless, Diamond rose to fame as a popularizer of anthropology and archaeology. But for Living Anthropologically it is important to realize how Diamond promotes misguided ideas. I contend that Guns, Germs, and Steel displaced the much better and stronger account offered by Eric Wolf in Europe and the People Without History (see my Geographies, States, Empires for a longer discussion).
Pages on Jared Diamond
There are two critical pages on Jared Diamond: Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race examines the still-trendy 1987 article that in many ways launched Diamond as a popularizing science writer. Guns, Germs, and Steel: Against History takes up Diamond’s most influential book.
Also watch my interview on Diamond.
Teaching Jared Diamond
We need to be very careful when using Diamond’s work in the classroom. I still find it useful to assign the “Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” in my current Intro-to-Anthropology 2021 course. But that’s about it.
For Intro-to-Anthropology classroom resources, see this YouTube lecture on Worst Mistake. See also this attempt to critique Jared Diamond with a YouTube lecture on “Marketing Conquest” by Michael Wilcox. These lectures accompany the textbook Anthropology: What does it mean to be human?
The 2020 equivalents are this Worst Mistake and this lecture on Wilcox. Those classes are based on the textbook Through the Lens of Anthropology. It is true that both of those textbooks support some of Jared Diamond’s points. It’s not that his points are all wrong, it is that they are borrowed and distorted from anthropology, while missing some of the most important aspects of human history.