Aspects of the Cannibalism Controversy: Comments on Merrilee Salmon

Abstract

Professor Salmon argues that the controversies about Mead’s work and about cannibalism encourage healthy discussion of anthropological standards of evidence and definition, and provide an opportunity to consider the scientific status of anthropology. Her paper is broad in scope, concerned as it is particularly with how Arens’s criticisms make an impact across the discipline and apply to a number of general theoretical controversies. I would like to look in somewhat more detail at some of the issues on which her discussion of the cannibalism controversy touches.