The Egalitarians - Human and Chimpanzee: An Anthropological View of Social Organization

311 Pages·1991·7.66 MB·English

by  Margaret Power

This innovative book challenges the perceived view (based largely on
long observation of artificially fed chimpanzees in Gombe and Mahale
National Parks, Tanzania) of the typical social behavior of chimpanzees
as aggressive, dominance seeking, and fiercely territorial. In polar
opposition, all reports from 'naturalistic7 (nonfeeding) field studies are
of nonaggressive chimpanzees living peacefully in nonhierarchical
groups, on home ranges open to all. These reports have been ignored
and downgraded by most of the scientific community.
By utilizing the data from these studies the author is able to construct
a model of an egalitarian form of social organization, based on a fluid
role relationship of mutual dependence between many charismatic
chimpanzees of both sexes and other more dependent members. This
highly and necessarily positive mutual dependence system is character-
istic of both (undisturbed) chimpanzees and (undisturbed) humans who
live by the 'immediate-return7 foraging system.

The egalitarians - human and chimpanzee
An anthropological view of social organization

THE EGALITARIANS -
HUMAN AND CHIMPANZEE
An anthropological view of
social organization
Margaret Power
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge
New York Port Chester Melbourne Sydney
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521400169
© Cambridge University Press 1991
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1991
This digitally printed first paperback version 2005
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Power, Margaret, 1920-
The egalitarians - human and chimpanzee: an anthropological view
of social organization / by Margaret Power.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0 521 40016 3
1. Sociobiology. 2. Human behavior. 3. Primates — Behavior.
4. Social behavior in animals. 5. Social structure. 6. Behavior evolution.
I. Title.
GN365.9.P68 1991
304.5-dc20 90-48014 CIP
ISBN-13 978-0-521-40016-9 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-40016-3 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-01826-5 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-01826-9 paperback
Dedicated to the memory of my husband, John Power -
and to mature students everywhere

CONTENTS
Foreword by A. Mon tagu page xiii
Acknowledgments xvi
Part 1: Methods and prefatory explanations 1
Introduction 1
Attributes shared by humans and chimpanzees 7
Positive and negative behavior and emotive tone 7
The mutual dependence system: a model 8
Methods 11
Preferred use of early studies and methodological tools not
currently in favor 14
Direct and indirect competition 15
Charisma and dependence 16
The functional approach 17
Use of the term foragers 17
The (sometimes) harmless people, and the (normally) friendly
chimpanzee 18
The naturalistic studies: practitioners and methods 21
Feeding methods: the Gombe Research Center 28
Feeding methods: the Mahale Research Center 30
Part 2: The human foragers 37
General anthropological understandings 37
The immediate-return foraging system 39
Territoriality 43
Social kinship 45
Leadership 46
The foragers' sanctions 48
Part 3: The changing social order 51
Kortlandt's hypothesis 51