Socio-cultural anthropologists provide a crucial role in producing a unique kind of knowledge about societies and cultures. These scientists study cultures, practices, beliefs, values, ideas, economies and other forms of organization throughout a society, and their information is often gathered via firsthand experience. For example, Napoleon Chagnon lived among the Yanomamo for many years in order to gather some of the first information we had received on the people in the area. Additionally, Kristen Ghodsee’s Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life after Communism provided amazing insight about post-communistic Bulgaria, which also helped us to examine the process of economic and political transformation through a broader lens. Much of what we know about various cultures, and how they are …show more content…
Almost all of the preparation he had done was useless upon his arrival. At least ¼ of adult males died in the region that Chagnon lived in, and he quickly had to adapt and learn about their culture if he wanted to survive. He initially described them as looking like savages, but as the book progressed, both he and the Yanomamo began to see each other more as human. The Yanomamo clear gardens, plant crops, and hunt with bows and arrows. There is a shortage of women, and most of the violence in the village stems from this struggle. Many men have multiple wives, and sometimes men just outright steal other people’s women, causing great internal strife. Through his research, we have learned an incredible amount about the Yanomamo people. Since then, Chagnon has been able to gather extensive raw data and information, and many other anthropologists have studied the Yanomamo as well. His insight has helped us immensely, not only in learning about an entirely new culture, but it gives us useful knowledge on how to better communicate with people no matter what the context of the situation