ABSTRACT
Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel have been widely criticized for making many Eurocentric assumptions. The American anthropologist James Blaut argued that the book "is influential in part because its Eurocentric arguments seem, to a general reader, to be so compellingly 'scientific'". Diamond's critics suggested that he did not leave enough space for culture and self-determination in his theory. Diamond suggests that the approach of his critics is effective for asking specific questions about specific events at specific times. Diamond sees his academic mission as presenting a dispassionate, purely factual account of human history for 13,000 years. His critics, such as Errington and Gewertz, suggest he does not value societies that fail to become world-dominant, even though those societies may be the expression of the cultural preferences of those who live in them.
