I’ve been told for years that Guns Germs and Steel is bad anthropology. On the whole, I still probably believe that, since a lot of people I respect intellectually say it, but Googling why it is bad history and/or anthropology wasn’t encouraging. I ran into a lot of:
“As anthropologists have extensively demonstrated, this book is full of shit” (with no links to, let alone recaps of, said demonstrations).
This book is simplistic and that means its bad (almost as if they haven’t read Fuck Nuance by Kieran Healy)
There’s no human agency in this! (Okay, maybe human agency just doesn’t play a large role in microhistory, we can’t rule that out a priori).
“A particular kind of racist might conceivably like it” (mostly unconvincing, and not really germane to the truth or falsity of the content).
“This totalizing book inscribes on the bodies of subjects a hegemonic biopolitics of the absolute which…” (I get it, this book either offends your pieties, or isn’t trendy, or both. I don’t care.)
“It’s environmental determinism. That’s an anthropology insult. It’s devastating. You’re devastated right now (…okay?)
“I have managed to create a vague, shapes in clouds style analogy between this theory and something some Germans said right before the Nazis took power.
What I wanted was lists of clearly documented factual errors and/or failures in logic or argument. It’s a sign of the intellectual flabbiness of too much of the humanities and social sciences that this doesn’t seem to be the first weapon of choice