Socioecology

Socioecology was developed in response to the discovery that animal
behaviour was not, as many Victorians had imagined,‘red in tooth and
claw’. A war of all against all was not the inevitable outcome of the
struggle for survival. Bees co-operate in the hive, as do chimpanzees
within their troop. Enlightenment thinkers, in their search for a rational
social order, had speculated about the origin of social life. Hobbes had
deduced that individuals would onlysurrender their freedom of action
if a leader could guarantee others would do likewise. Rousseau inferred
that social behaviour originated when people formed coalitions to
defend their property. Socioecology attempts to explain the evolution
of behaviour within a Darwinian framework and offers answers to
some of the issues raised by Hobbes and Rousseau.
Although Darwin recognised that the evolution of social behaviour
among insects should be explicable in terms of natural selection, he was
unable to find such an explanation (Maynard Smith 1982: 167). NeoDarwinian theory translates the notion of ‘the survival of the fittest’
into that of ‘reproductive success’. If bodily form and behaviour are
genetically determined, then natural selection will result in those genes
which produce the most adaptive forms and patterns of behaviour
being transmitted during reproduction more frequently than the alternative genes which prove less adaptive. Starting with Hamilton in the
late 1950s, biologistsdeveloped theories toexplain howsocial interaction
can contribute to an animal’s reproductive success,assumingat first that
social traits were under direct geneticcontrol.Twoquestions wereasked:
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158 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
1 Under what conditions may it be advantageous, in
evolutionary terms, for animals to co-operate with other
members of the same species, or to engage in reciprocal
exchanges? Forms of interaction were defined as
‘strategies’, drawing (as interactionism had done) on
games theory.
2 What mechanisms favour the spread of such behaviour
through natural selection?
Theseeminglyobviousanswer to thesecond question, that it is‘better
for the species’ (an answer analogous to the Structural Functionalist
arguments of Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown), was rejected. WynneEdwards studied the behaviour of red grouse on moorland, and found
that in any year some grouse did not breed. He argued that, because
there was insufficient food available for all to raise offspring, some
remained celibate to enable the others to breed successfully.The problem with this explanation is that, if the behaviour of the celibate grouse
is determined by a gene for ‘altruism’, this gene is not going to be transmitted to the next generation. An alternative gene for ‘selfishness’ will
quickly displace it (seeTrivers 1985: 79-85).
Sociobiology attempts to explain variation in patterns of human
behaviour in terms of the consequences of behaviour in particular
environments. These environments may be natural or social. Sociobiology follows the Darwinian rather than the Marxist or Spencerian
paradigm. It is not concerned with the idea of evolution as a cumulative process that causes societies or cultures to pass through certain
stages. There is no directionality in Darwinian evolution.
In order to make the individual rather than the population their unit
of study, sociobiologists looked at the behavioural strategies followed
by individual animals and considered the consequence for the individual when their strategy was played against other individuals pursuing
the same, or different strategies. The method was taken from games
theory, but using different aspects of the theory to those relied upon by
Barth in his analysis of social process in the Swat valley (see chapter 4).
Games theory, as originally applied to human economic behaviour by
von Neumann and Morgenstern, assumed that players acted ratio
nally, and in their self-interest. When applied to the Darwinian evolution of behaviour the criterion of rationality (that is, deliberately
seeking the strategy that will be best for the individual) is replaced by
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 159
the unintended outcome of acting according to certain genetically
determined strategies. The criterion of self-interest, that is, the utility
of the goal to the actor (which, in human cultures, might range from
honour to financial gain), is replaced by the single criterion of
Darwinian fitness: reproductive success or inclusive fitness (Maynard
Smith 1982: vii, 2).
Interactionist theories brought about a return to the study of society
in terms of interacting individuals, rather than treating society as a
supra-organic system in the tradition of Durkheim and RadcliffeBrown. Sociobiology offered a way of explaining patterns of interpersonal interaction within a Darwinian framework, accounting for
the appearance not only of competition, but also co-operation and
reciprocity in human social interaction. Some anthropologists have
applied sociobiology to human societies. The claim that a significant
proportion of customary human behaviour is under direct genetic
control has been convincingly rebutted by Harris,Sahlins and Durham
(Harris 1979, chapter 5; Sahlins 1976b; Durham 1991; see also Layton
1989a). In the remainder of thischapter the term Socioecologyis used in
preference to Sociobiology, to denote the application of adaptationist
models to the explanation of human social behaviour, without the
inference that such behaviour is under direct genetic control. Despite
his uncompromising attack on Sociobiology, Harris’ ‘cultural materialist’ approach is consistent with Socioecology. Harris argues that the
uniquely large amount of variability in human behaviour shows‘ Homo
sapiens has been selected to acquire and modify cultural repertoires
independently of genetic feedback’ (Harris 1979: 123, my emphasis).
The premise of Socioecology is that learned behaviour makes a large
contribution to the reproductivesuccess of human individuals. It is the
capacity for learning to construct social strategies that is selected for.
Harris further argues that, just as a species does not struggle to survive
collectively but persists as a result of adaptive changes in individual
organisms, so men and women respond opportunistically as individuals to ‘cost-benefit options’ in ways which have consequences for
patterns of social interaction (Harris 1979: 61). Harris, moreover,
draws attention to a point overlooked in simplistic adaptationist models: the greater the imbalance of power in a society, the more likely it is
that the weak will be forced to behave in ways which favour the survival
of the powerful.
Whereas Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown took the ‘function’ of a
160 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
custom to be itscontribution to the persistence of the social system, for
Socioecologists the function of patterns of behaviour is their contribution to the reproductive success of the individual. While Durkheim
and Radcliffe-Brown regarded individual behaviour as the expression
of norms, deviation from which was punished bysociety, Socioecologists
regard variation in the behaviour of individuals as the source of new
strategies whose success or failure will be determined by their effect on
the individuals who use them. Socioecology returns to issues raised by
Malinowski’s Functionalism. It asks how individuals pursuing their
own interests can benefit from living in society, but tries to explain the
variability of human behaviour in adaptive terms, and thus to overcome the weakness of Malinowski’s appeal to universal human needs.
The theories of Socioecology make it possible to put forward hypothesesabout the adaptive qualities of social behaviour which can be tested
bycomparing behaviour in different societies, or changes in behaviour
over time within a single community.
Socioecology finally dismisses the premise of evolution as progress
which lingers implicitly in Marxist anthropology. Recent huntergatherers can no longer be interpreted as survivors of the original
human condition. If they can throw light on the earlier evolution of
social behaviour, it is merely because they are living under similar ecological pressures to those which are inferred to have impinged on early
modern human populations in East Africa or Western Asia. Even the
‘original human condition’ is, moreover,an adaptation to a specific set ol
circumstancesand is therefore no more ‘natural’ than any other human
condition. It does not matter how long modern hunter-gatherers
have been living under those conditions. Populations whose ancestors
were herders or cultivators will be as informative as those whose ances
tors have always lived by hunting and gathering. Socioecology offers
a new approach to the sociological questions posed during t InEnlightenment.
Julian Steward
Julian Steward first applied an adaptive model to hunter-gathem
social groupings in the 1930s.Steward was a severe critic of the cullun
and personality school, and reacted against the historical particul.ii
ism of Boas and his pupils by searching for cross-culturally valid soi i.il
laws (Murphy 1977: 4). Sanderson has characterised Steward ‘*
approach as a compromise between the very general and highly
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 1 6 1
abstract formulations of Leslie White and the nineteenth-century evolutionists and the historical particularism of the Boasians (Sanderson
1990:92).
Steward criticised the culture and personality school for emphasising normative patterns (Steward 1977a [ I960]: 72) and, in Murphy’s
assessment, Steward’s most important break with the Boasian tradition was to turn from the study of cultural traits to the actual behaviour
of individuals (Murphy 1977: 24—5).Steward appears to have developed
his adaptive model of hunter-gatherer band structures over a long
period. His earliest paper on the subject identified three types of band
-patrilineal, matrilineal and composite-distinguished according to
whether membership was inherited from the father, the mother, or
whether both parents belonged to the same band (Steward 1936). In
this preliminary formulation, Steward attributed the prevalence of the
patrilineal band to innate male dominance and the greater importance
of the male as the hunter! Composite bands, however, occurred under
specific conditions such as those in which people relied on migratory
herds of game (Steward 1936: 334). Some Inuit communities, for
example, congregate in large bands at the time of the twice-yearly
caribou migrations but disperse during the remainder of the year. By
1960, Steward also attributed occurrence of the patrilineal band to
particular ecological circumstances, those which demanded the cooperative hunting of fairly sparse but no/i-migratory game. He justified this on the grounds that it was advantageous for men to remain in
their father’s territory, whose geography they were familiar with
(Steward 1977a [ I960]: 77). In 1968 Steward developed this model
further, writing ‘the factors that explain the patrilineal band are more
environmental than technological… large, highly mobile animals that
do not migrate long distances, where hunting exceeds collecting in
effort and sometimes in quantity, where population is sparse, and
where transportation is limited to human carriers’ (Steward 1977b
[1968]:123).
Steward’s interest in the patrilineal band stemmed from his failure
to find such an institution among the Shoshoni, with whom he had
worked in an attempt to reconstruct their pre-colonial social life.
Traditionally, the Shoshoni had no organised social groupings larger
than the family. In 1938 Steward argued this was due to scarcity of
game in the Basin Plateau of the south-west United States.The reliance
of theShoshoni on gathering sparsely distributed wild seeds during the
162 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
pre-colonial period caused each family to wander alone across overlapping ranges. In winter several families camped together at Finyon
pine groves but each grove bore fruit irregularly and different sets of
families assembled at different groves in successive years (Steward
1938). He noted that the Owens valley Paiute, who lived on the eastern
scarp of the Sierra Nevada, occupied a better-watered environment.
Patrilineal bands not only existed, but their members co-operated to
defend the band’s resources against outsiders.’ Steward recognised that
resources could be created through the social environment. Comparing the Shoshoni with the Carrier Indians of British Columbia,
Steward found that the introduction of the fur trade had created a
sufficient material surplus for the Carrier to transform their simple
lineage system into a status-based system sustained by the potlatch,
even though their natural environment was unchanged (Steward
1977a: 74).
Theselection of learned behaviour
Although Socioecological theories do not assume the actual strategies
people follow are in any direct way genetically programmed, it is
assumed that learned behaviour will be subject to selection in an analogous way to genetic behaviour. Successful strategies will tend to
spread through a population at the expense of alternative strategies
which do not contribute so much to the individual’s reproductive
success. The origin of a strategy in learned behaviour (culture), rather
than direct genetic determination, is relevant to the processes of
natural selection if it facilitates the survival and spread of that strategy
at the expense of alternative ones. Learned strategies have two advantages over those which are directly programmed genetically. They are
not dependent on parent-child links for their transmission. ‘Lateral’
transmission occurs where individuals learn from people other than
their parents. Further, strategies can be adopted and discarded in less
than one generation, which is the minimal time required for a new
transmissible genetic trait to be expressed (see Smith 1988; Dawkins
1980; Durham 1991;and Odling-Smee 1995).
This chapter will exemplify the application of Socioecological
theory to human behaviour in threeareas of research:optimal foraging
(which does not entail use of games theory and is an example ol
* In later papers, Steward modified this interpretation, and concluded that only‘proto-band **-
had existed in the Owens valley: see Steward 1977c [19701:393.
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 163
‘behavioural ecology’), reciprocity and territoriality. There are other
applications,such as Irons’and Borgerhoff Mulder’s work on marriage
strategies which will not be considered (but see Irons 1979; and
Borgerhoff Mulder 1987).
Optimal foragingtheory
The theory
Optimal foraging theory was developed to explain the foraging behaviour of animals, although it borrows from the formulae devised in
micro-economics to enable shopkeepers to calculate how many products they should stock on their shelves. Having been found to predict
animal feeding behaviour quite accurately (see Krebs and Davis 1984:
91-112), the theory was then reapplied to the study of human huntergatherers by several anthropologists (e.g. Hames and Vickers 1982;
Hawkes etal.1982; Jones 1980; O’Connell and Hawkes 1981). Imagine
a hunter-gatherer setting out for the day across a landscape he or she
knows well, in which a variety of potential foods will be encountered,
although the forager cannot tell when or where each will be found (a
so-called ‘fine-grained’ environment). Optimal foraging theory sets
out to predict which potential foods the forager should stop to exploit,
if (s)he is to make the best use of the available time and energy, and
which ones should be disregarded because exploiting them would take
up time that could better be used in obtaining other foods.
Theextent to which human reproductive success is affected byalternative strategies is often difficult to measure within the time-span of
anthropological field observation. Socioecologists such as Borgerhoff
Mulder and Smith have argued that the goals of behaviour studied by
Marxists, such as the search for wealth and power, are ‘proxy goals’
which help achieve the ultimate goal of enhancing the individual’s
reproductive success (Borgerhoff Mulder 1987;Smith 1988). Foraging
behaviour is assessed on the premise that those who obtain food most
efficiently will enhance their reproductive success.
In a Spanish provincial town studied by two friends of mine there
was a railway station. Several taxi drivers would wait for the arrival of
passengers on the trains. Most of the drivers were kept busy driving
people into town, or out to the surrounding villages, but one always
turned customers away. My friends once asked him why. He replied
that he was waiting for the customer who would ask to be driven to
164 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
Madrid and was unwilling to risk losing this customer while taking
someoneelse to a local destination.Unfortunatelyfor him, the customer
for Madrid was a rare, if not mythical creature, and he would have done
better to accept the many small fares he was offered (Mike and Nanneke
Redclift, personal communication).The problem for the hunter-gatherer
is similar. Should (s)he continue in the hope of encountering a giraffe,
or red kangaroo, or should (s)he divert some time by stopping to pick
berries? In order to find out the best solution, the costs and benefits of
exploiting each potential food must be calculated. Optimal foraging
theory does not assume that the forager actually makes these calculations; the extent to which they do so is an open question. The theory
merely predicts the best (i.e. optimal) solution and then investigates
actual behaviour to discover whether behaviour matches the prediction. If it does not, either the theory is inadequate, or the individual is
not making the most effective use of his or her environment.
While acknowledging that there may be numerous other qualities
such as vitamins, the benefits of each potential food are usually
measured in calories. Calories are the currency within which costs and
benefits are measured. The rate at which the forager profits by selecting
a particular food is measured in terms of the time taken to chase it (if it
is mobile), then to prepare it. Nuts must be cracked open, meat must be
butchered and cooked. The overall rate of profit to be gained from
including a certain food species in the diet will depend on how often it
is encountered. Despite the potential profit from driving someone to
Madrid, it was the taxi drivers failure to encounter customers for the
capital often enough that made hisstrategyso unsuccessful. If one food
species which gives a high yield is often encountered the human forager,
like some animal predators, may find it best to specialise wholly in
hunting that one resource, somewhat as the Native Americans of the
great plains did with the buffalo. Usually, however, the search time
required to locate a high-ranking resource, or the rate at which it is
randomly encountered, make it more profitable to include other foods
in the diet as well. Each can be ranked according to its relative costs and
benefits. If the rate at which higher-ranking resources are encountered
goes up, lower-ranking resources can be dropped from the diet. The
highest-ranked resources will always be exploited when they are
encountered.
The Ache provide one of the best examples of the application of the
theory to hunter-gatherers (Hawkes etal.1982). Table 6.1 gives a selci
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 165
Table 6.1 Ranking of foods in the Ache optimal diet

Profitability Rank
cals/hr
Collared peccary
Oranges
Honey
White-lipped peccary
Monkey
Palm fruit

2,746
1.215
1
355 0.07 4
3,037
1 ,950 0.69
1 ,300 0.97
0.02 7
0.10 11

tion of the calculations made by Hawkes and her fellow researchers on
foods which the Ache were seen to hunt or gather. Several interesting
points can be noted from these calculations. Although oranges give a
lower yield in calories/kilo than monkeys, the shorter processing time
makes them a more profitable food to exploit (and, since they don’t
run away, the pursuit time is zero).The collared peccary gives an equal
yield in calories/kilo to the white-lipped peccary but the latter is harder
to catch and therefore ranks lower in the hierarchy, because more time
must be devoted to its pursuit. Palm fruit is the lowest-ranked item in
the observed Ache diet.Although the Ache were not asked to rank their
various foods, they were observed to make the kind of decisions optimal foraging calculations predict. Several discussions on the merits of
hunting monkeys took place in the presence of the anthropologists.
It was generally said that monkeys were not worth hunting because
they were not fat enough. When encountered, however, monkeys were
usually hunted. They never disregarded reports from other Ache of
nearby orange groves in fruit, but only turned to the exploitation of
palm groves late in the day.
One of the best tests of optimal foraging theory is to study how
hunter-gatherers alter their strategies when circumstances change.
The Ju/’hoansi of the Kalahari gave Lee a long list of ‘famine foods’
which they would only eat when higher-ranking foods become scarce
(Lee 1968: 34). In high latitudes, many foods are only available seasonally, and during lean months additional items such as shellfish must be
added to the diet. Winterhalder found that the Cree of the North
American woodlands changed their hunting patterns once they were
able to buy guns and traps from the Hudson Bay Company. These
166 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
greatly reduced pursuit time, and made it profitable to hunt species
that otherwise would have taken too long to catch (Winterhalder 1981:
87). When large, migratory game were virtually extinguished by overhunting in the woodlands during the later nineteenth century, however, the Ojibwa had to relyentirely on smaller animalssuch as fish and
hare (Rogers and Black 1976). The introduction of guns and motor
cars to central Australia made kangaroo hunting more efficient and
hunting remains a popular activity despite the fact that beef can be
bought. On the other hand, low-ranking foodssuch as grassseeds which,
although common, are time-consuming to process, dropped out of the
diet once imported, milled white flour became available (O’Connell
and Hawkes 1981).
Most real environments are not fine-grained but more or less patchy.
Resources are concentrated in certain areas. In a highly seasonal environment, foragers know this in advance and can move camp to
exploit seasonally available patches. Many Inuit (Eskimo) traditionally
moved between coast and interior, exploiting seal, freshwater fish,
birds and berries according to the season. Even if a high-ranking patch
is encountered unexpectedly, as is more likely in tropical forest, it will
pay the forager to stop searching for other foods and stay in the patch
for a while. Optimal foraging theory predicts that (s)he should do so
until the rate of return drops to the aggregate rate already being
achieved. Hawkes et al (1982) calculate that the average return from
Ache hunting is 1,115 kilocalories per hour, per person. Upon entering
a grove of orange trees in fruit, the individual’s return rate rises to 4,438
kilocalories per hour. The best strategy for members of the band will
therefore be to stay in the orange patch until there are so few oranges
left, and those which remain are so hard to reach, that the return rate
for each member has dropped to 1,115 kilocalories per hour. A palm
grove, on the other hand, will only yield 810 kilocalories per hour. It
would therefore be best for the Ache to ignore palm patches except on a
bad day, when their average return has dropped to around 800 calories
per hour. This may be why Ache rarely turn to palm patches except late
in the day, when the chances of improving their return rate from
higher-ranking foods have diminished.
An interesting outcome of research into hunter-gatherer optimal
foraging is the realisation that the foods upon which cultivators relyare
generally low in a hunter-gatherer’s optimal diet, consisting of grass
seeds such as wheat or rice, tubers or the pith of palms such as sago.
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 167
This implies that cultivation originated not as a blinding insight into
the benefits to be gained from planting seeds, as nineteenth-century
progressive evolutionism contended, but as an adaptive response to a
decline in the availability of higher-ranked foods. Many recent huntergatherers in fact practise what can be termed ‘low-level’ husbandry.
Grass is regularly burned to promote new growth, the ends of tubers
are replanted so that they will regenerate (see Jones and Meehan 1989;
Layton et ai 1991; Winterhalder and Goland 1993). Hunting and
gathering tends to be practised in environments where it is more
efficient than the competing strategies of herding or cultivation, not
because hunter-gatherers have miraculously survived, untouched,
from the early period of human evolution.
The shortcomings
Those who use optimal foragingtheory are well-aware that it simplifies
actual situations. Food qualities other than caloriesare disregarded and
no account is taken of the fact that, in the case of humans, items such as
leaves and grasses may be obtained entirely as non-food resources to
make, for example, baskets or nets.Simplicity is, however,considered a
strength of the theory, as long as it is effective in predicting huntergatherer foraging behaviour.
The theory does not make any assumptions about the source of the
cognitive skills that enable foragers to operate efficiently. There is no
reason to suppose they are genetically determined in any simple way
and they are probably to a large extent learned. It is possible we have
developed cultural skills which mimic the more direct genetic determination of other species’ behaviour.Smith pointsout that,since optimal
foraging theory has its origin in micro-economics, it ‘humanises’
animals rather than ‘animalises’ humans (Smith 1983: 637-40). The
grocer should clear his shelves of low-selling lines (analogous to the
Ache’s palm pith), to make more room for lines which have a better rate
of profit. There is, however, a risk of developing a circular argument.
Evolutionary processes are first modelled on economics, but economic
behaviour is in turn explained through evolutionary models.
Sahlins and Douglas claimed, in their arguments against Marxist
determinism, that human dietary preferences are culturally determined.
Totemic food avoidances are a good example. According to Australian
Aboriginal legend, each local group was endowed with a territory containing the spirits of unborn children, given them by a heroic,ancestral
168 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
being who was at once human- and animal-like. People avoid eating
the animal species associated with their ancestral being, because this
would be tantamount to eating ones own kin. Such prohibitions are
instances of Levi-Strauss’‘totemic operators’, which translate structured
thought into action (see chapter 3). Like Levi-Strauss, Douglas (1966:
53-7) and Sahlins (1976a: 169-77) argue that food avoidances are
entirely predicated on the symbolic, rather than the economic value of
the species. Douglas proposes the Structuralist argument that the
Jewish food prohibitionsspecified in the Old Testament apply toanimals
which do not fit neatly within the cognitive categories of Jewish culture.
Animals which have front feet that resemble hands, but do not walk
upright; creatures such as eels and worms which crawl without limbs;
cloven-hoofed animals which are not ruminants,such as the camel and
pig, are forbidden because they challenge the structure of ancient
Jewish thought (see chapter 3). Although Sahlins is critical of Douglas
(Sahlins 1976a: 118-19), he puts forward a similar argument for food
avoidances in the United States today. Horse and dog are not eaten
because they are treated assentient creatures, named and loved by their
owners,and conceived of assemi-human. Eating them would bealmost
cannibalism.
As a criticism of optimal foraging theory, the argument is based to
some extent on a misapprehension. Horse-breeding is a less efficient
means of generating protein than cattle-ranching. The inefficient
stomach of the horse requires it to eat approximately four times the
quantity of grass required by a cow. Harrisargues that the rise of beef as
the favoured meat of United States consumers is entirely explicable in
economic terms: it was caused by the development of long-distance
railways providing refrigerated transport between the great plains and
the east coast (Harris 1979: 254-7; cf. Ross 1980). If present-day
Americans can readily satisfy their hunger without resorting to horse
or dog, then they can allow themselves to be sentimental. Hungei
changes people’s values.TheAustralian explorer Leichhardt was driven ,
on different occasions, to eat a raw baby kangaroo and the leathei
binding of his plant press. Many Australian totemic prohibitions
prove, in practice, to be less comprehensive than they seem. People can
eat their totemic animal if someone from another clan has caught it, oi
they can eat certain parts but must avoid the tail, the neck, or some
other part. In practice, the system of signification operates within I Inlimits imposed by the material conditions of existence.
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 169
Optimal foraging assesses the immediate costs and benefits of individuals’ behaviour to themselves. Each organism is assumed to be acting in isolation. Dwyer cites the case of a hunt organised by a man
(‘M2’) from the New Guinea village of Bobole, to show how misleading such an approach may be (Dwyer 1985). The man’s half-sister had
recently married into Namosado, a community several kilometres
away. He was indebted to another Bobole resident, who had given him
meat in the past. A third man, who helped bring back bridewealth from
Namosado, had slipped and injured himself as the party returned.
Although M2 subsequently paid compensation for the injury, ill-will
continued and he wanted to dispel the tension within the community.
He therefore went hunting with four other men who, between them,
returned with thirty game mammals and forty-nine fruit bats. Despite
their extraordinary success, M2 kept none of the catch for himself. The
meat was distributed widely through Bobole and Namosado, and not
just to those with whom M2 shared demonstrable genetic kinship.
Although Dwyer contends that his data can be used to question the
applicability of Socioecology to human behaviour, in doing so he draws
attention to ways in which the individual’s survival (and therefore
reproductive success) is conditioned by interaction with other people.
In the New Guinea highlands, people need to preserve unity of purpose
within their own community and they need allies in other communities (see the Wahgi example in chapter 5). Optimal foraging is what
Maynard Smith calls a ‘game against nature’ (Maynard Smith 1982: 2).
The behaviour of predator and prey will influence each other’s reproductive success, but their strategies are drawn from different ‘gene
pools’. Dwyer’s case study shows the importance of considering the
adaptive consequences of interaction with other members of one’s
own species.
The evolution of social behaviour
Theevolution ofsocial behaviour has been explored through the application of games theory to evolution. The aim of the evolutionary
theory of games is to show what will happen if particular strategies are
played against themselves and others, in order to measure the costs and
benefits for the reproductive success of the players. The theory does
not try to explain how particular strategies come into existence (they
are assumed to appear at random, like mutations), and their genetic
basis may be unclear. Unlike some varieties of interaction theory
170 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
discussed in chapter 4, strategies are taken to exist within an ongoing
pattern of social interaction, but the theory does develop aspects of
Interactionism, particularly those formulated by Blau. Maynard Smith
termed the strategy that wins against itself and all other existing strategies being played in that field of interaction an evolutionarily stable
strategy (Maynard Smith 1982: 10). Strategies may be evolutionarily
stable in one environment, but not in another. In some environments
none of the strategies being ‘played’ by members of a population
against one another will be evolutionarily stable.
Hawk and dove
One of the simplest models of a game applied to the evolution of social
behaviour is the ‘hawk-dove’ game. Although it is most immediately
applicable to territoriality, the game is not supposed to represent any
specific animal example, but to reveal the logical possibilities inherent
in all contests (Maynard Smith 1982: 6, 10ff.). The model supposes
there are two contestants to each encounter. It also supposes there is a
fixed set of alternative strategies, namely hawk and dove. Neither contestant knows in advance which strategy the other will adopt, or who
will win if they both opt to fight. A hawk escalates the contest and continues fighting for the resource both want until it is injured, or the
opponent retreats. Hawks are assumed to be evenly matched and each
therefore wins 50 per cent of their contests. Doves signal their willingness to fight, but retreat assoon as their opponent escalates the contest.
Imagine two animals are competing for a resource such asa territory
which, if won, will increase the winner’s reproductive success. The
loser may have to contend with a less good territory, which will lower
their reproductive success.These, together with the frequency of injury,
are the costs and benefits of the encounter. There are three possible
forms the contest can take. If it is between two hawks, each has a 50 per
cent chance of winning, but a 50 per cent chance of being injured and
losing. If hawk and dove compete, the hawk always wins. If dove plays
dove, the resource is shared between the two contestants and each
gains half as much as a successful hawk.
The dove strategy is not a stable one, because as soon as it is chal
lenged by a hawk it will be defeated. Hawk is a stable strategy if the
resource is so valuable that it is worth risking injury to obtain it. If tinresource is not that valuable, and the cost of injury is high relative to tinbenefits of winning, then the stable strategy may be to play hawk on
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 171
some occasions and dove on others. Maynard Smith considers other
strategies which may ‘invade’ the field of play. The bourgeoisstrategy is
to play hawk if the individual is on its own territory, but dove if it
intrudes upon another’s territory. Whenever two bourgeois strategists
meet one will therefore always play hawk and the other dove. Maynard
Smith shows that the cumulative cost of thisstrategy is less than that of
invariably adopting hawk or dove, regardless of the opponent’s strategy (Maynard Smith 1982: 22). It wins more often than dove and is
injured less often than hawk. It is therefore an evolutionary stable
strategy because it does best when played against itself and against the
other two.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
The ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ is a more complex game which provides
a model for the evolution of co-operation, particularly in the sense
of reciprocity, in which players make their moves alternately. The
Prisoner’s Dilemma is based on the situation in which two suspects
have been arrested by the police and are being interrogated in different
rooms (an alternative is to imagine two resistance fighters captured by
an invading army). Each prisoner is told that, if they alone implicate
the other in the crime, they will be given a token sentence. If both confess, both will receive a moderate sentence, since their confession
helped the police solve the crime even though they admitted guilt. If
they refuse to confess (that is, to ‘defect’), even though the other has
done so, the sentence will be heavier. Each prisoner knows that, if the
other has remained silent, the best strategy is to remain silent too,
because both will then be released without charge. If, on the other
hand, the other prisoner is suspected of having confessed, it will be
better to take the same course oneself (Trivers 1985: 389-90). It is a
non-zero sum game, because the scale of gain (or loss) to the players
depends on which strategies they adopt. At first sight, defection
appears to be the evolutionarily stable strategy, because it draws
against itself, and wins against remaining silent. Defection is, however,
a more costlystrategy than mutual co-operation, because it still earns a
small sentence.
The costs can be represented numerically as follows: if I defect and
the other remains silent, it costs me 1 and him 4. If both defect, it costs
each of us 2. If I remain silent and he defects, it costs me 4 (the so-called
‘sucker’s pay-off ). If both remain silent, the cost to each of us is 0. The
172 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
cost of me defecting is therefore 1 or 2, while the cost of remaining
silent is 0 or 4. The model will only be applicable to real-life situations
when the costs of the alternative strategies are ranked in thisorder.
Each prisoner faces the dilemma that, although ‘defection is less
risky than co-operation, if both defect they will both do worse than if
they had co-operated with each other. Axelrod points out that, whereas
Hobbes’ theory of the origin of co-operation supposed a sovereign had
to intervene to uphold co-operation, the Prisoner’s Dilemma can explain
how co-operation could evolve by direct interaction between equal
players (Axelrod 1990:6). It is true that, in the model, the captors playa
role rather like Hobbes’ Sovereign but in reality this role is played by
the blind forcesof natural selection. Axelrod realised that co-operation
can onlydevelop if the prisoners can anticipate each other’s intentions.
Since they are secluded from one another in the cells, this must derive
from prior knowledge. When the game is played repeatedly by the
same players the stable strategy may be to co-operate, but if it is played
once the stable strategy will be to defect.
Axelrod devised a computer program to test the most effective strategy for players to adopt if the game is played repeatedly, inviting people
to submit strategies which could be played on the computer against
their own, and competing strategies to discover which gave the best
long-term outcome. He discovered that the most stable long-term
strategy is one called ‘Tit for Tat’. In this strategy, each player begins
by anticipating the other will co-operate (that is, they do not confess)
and then, on subsequent moves, do what the other player did in their
previous move. In this way other players who co-operate are rewarded,
but those who defect are punished. Axelrod asks how such a strategy
could ‘invade’ a field of play in which everyone else adopts the
Hobbesian, selfish strategy of defecting. He argues that a single ‘Tit for
Tat’ player cannot win but, if pairs or small groups enter the field playing this strategy, their success against each other will result in them
doing better in the long run than the perennial defectors (Axelrod
1990: 50-1). There is, however, one more element to be taken into
account. If the players know they are playing for the last time, and do
not depend on each other for further co-operation, the best strategy
becomes, once more, to defect. Their ‘game plan’ will therefore have to
include an assessment of the probability they will meet again. The
higher they estimate this probability to be, the more they are likely to
co-operate (Axelrod 1990: 10-13;see also Ridley 1996).
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 173
Adaptationand social behaviour
Socioecologists recognise four types of social interaction: co-operation, reciprocity, competition and spite (Trivers 1985: 41-65). The
following paragraphs consider the evolution of co-operation and
reciprocity in humans.
In co-operation, both parties benefit immediately.
In reciprocity,I give to you, so that you benefit and
I lose, but in the expectation you will return the favour.
In competition,only one partycan gain, at the other’s
expense.
In spite, I hurt you, to hurt myself. Both parties lose.
Since the benefits of co-operation are immediate, and the other
players’ strategies are apparent, it is relatively easy to appreciate how
co-operation may evolve. Such co-operation has evolved in the hunting strategies of species such as wild dogs and lionesses. The Mbuti
depend on the co-operation of about thirty men and women to hunt
successfully with nets in the Ituri forest of central Africa and nethunting communities will only form smaller camps during the season
when wild honey can be collected (Turnbull 1965: 106-7). The Tiwi of
northern Australia need fifteen men to conduct a fire drive in the
savannah grassland, with women and children acting as beaters (Hart
and Pilling 1966: 42). The Netsilik Inuit camp on the Arctic coast in
winter. Seal meat is a vital part of the winter diet. Seals are speared
when they rise to the surface to breath through holes in the ice. Seals
have, however, evolved a way of reducing the risk of getting air. Each
seal keeps several blow holes open and moves between them. Hunters
must co-operate to ensure each of the seal’s breathing holes is guarded,
and thereby guarantee hunting success. Balikci estimates that a Netsilik
winter seal-hunting camp needs fifteen hunters to operate effectively,
and notes that when a man is successful his wife divides the seal into
fourteen portions, giving one to each of his hunting partners (Balikci
1970:58, 75).Smith, who calculates in detail the benefitsof co-operation
among the Inujjuamiut,found the optimum size for parties hunting at
seal breathing holes to be as low as three (Smith 1991:323-7). None the
less, in all three examples a single hunter will do less well than someone
who co-operates and co-operation is therefore an evolutionarily stable
strategy.
174 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
Altruism
The strategy of forgoing a resource to benefit others, observed after the
New Guinea hunt reported by Dwyer, is harder to explain. Similar
behaviour, such as a hunter sharing his game with other members of
the camp, or members of a band allowing other bands to forage on
their territory, has nevertheless been widely observed among huntergatherers. Such behaviour is known as altruism. Marxist anthropologists identified the lack of exclusive claims to territory as the basis for
egalitarianism among hunter-gatherers. Assuming it was the natural,
or original human condition they considered that it did not need to be
accounted for.
The first neo-Darwinian explanation for altruism was put forward
by Hamilton (1964; Hamilton’s theory is summarised in Trivers 1985:
45-7, 126-7). Hamilton showed that individuals who are closely
related geneticallycan benefit from altruism. In a bee or ant nest, all the
‘workers’ are children of the same queen. If, therefore, a few sacrifice
their lives to save the colony, the survivors are likely to carry the same
‘altruistic’ gene, or gene complex. This extension of the concept of
reproductive success is known as‘inclusive fitness’:sacrificing one’s life
for the colony does not increase one’s personal fitness, but it does
ensure one’s genes are transmitted to the next generation. Trivers cites
the case of Belding’s ground squirrel, a small North American mammal which frequently suffers from predation, in support of Hamilton’s
theory. Individual ground squirrels sometimes give an alarm cry when
they see a predator approaching but, if they do so, they draw attention
to themselves and are more likely to become the prey. Female ground
squirrels stay near their place of birth, but males move further away on
reaching sexual maturity. Once they have dispersed, males rarely give
alarm cries and they are unlikely to be feeding next to close kin. Adult
females were more likely to give an alarm call on those occasions close
kin were feeding nearby (Sherman 1980, summarised in Trivers 1985:
110-14). The gene(s) determining the inclination to give the alarm cry
will therefore be favoured by selection.
Hamilton’s theory has been applied to altruism in humans.Chagnon
argued that cross-cousin marriage among the Yanomamo (see chapter
3) results in members of allied lineages becoming increasingly geneti
cally related. Death in defence of the settlement would therefore have
the same effect as sacrifices among soldier ants or bees, perpetuating
the genes responsible for the behaviour through related individuals
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 175
(Chagnon 1982). The Sarakatsani are behaving as this theory of
altruism predicts, by refusing to behave altruistically to anyone more
distant than a second cousin (see chapter two). Beyond the level of
second cousin, the probability of sharing the same gene is too low to
compensate for the risk of sacrificing oneself.
Altruism andreciprocity
Sometimes, even among non-human species, altruism also occurs
between individuals who are not closely related. Trivers devised the
concept of reciprocal altruism to explain such behaviour. The best
non-human instance is found among vampire bats (Wilkinson 1984,
summarised in Trivers 1985:363-6). Vampire bats live in colonies, and
fly out every night to suck blood from cattle. Each bat must feed at least
once every three days to survive, but the cattle often brush the bats off.
A well-fed bat will regurgitate part of its meal and share it with one
which has been unsuccessful. Trivers argues that reciprocal altruism
will become an evolutionarily stable strategy where there is a risk of
death, such as from starvation, and where it is impossible to predict
which individual will be successful on any one occasion, yet those who
are successful in obtaining food get more than their immediate need.
When the once-successful individual is unsuccessful on another occasion, the debt can be repaid. Both partners will therefore survive
whereas, on their own, both would probably sooner or later have died.
This pattern of behaviour can be construed asa version of the Prisoner’s
Dilemma because when each participant co-operates by sharing its
food, it does not know for certain what the other player’s intentions
are.Sharing benefits both players in the long term, even though the best
short-term strategy would be the selfish one of not sharing. Axelrod’s
finding that co-operation will only develop when there is an indefinite
series of exchanges is supported by this study: bats regurgitate blood
most readily for those with whom they have been in contact for longest
(Trivers 1985:364).
The best example of such behaviour among hunter-gatherers is that
of meat-sharing. It is characteristic of hunter-gatherer bands that they
share the meat of large game animals throughout the camp while
vegetable foods are regarded as the property of the household whose
members obtained them. Vegetable foods are found regularly and
predictably. Although high in the optimal ranking of foods, large game
animals are only occasionally caught, yet when obtained they come in
176 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
large chunks with more meat than the hunter’s household can consume. Even if some hunters are better than others, no one can be sure
who will be successful on any given occasion. The IKung of southern
Africa, the Gidjingali of northern Australia and the Ache of Paraguay
all share the meat of large game animals throughout the camp, but each
womans foraging efforts normally go towards feeding her own family
(Altman and Peterson 1988; Kaplan and Hill 1985; Marshall 1976).
Reciprocal altruism is not confined to hunters and gatherers. Far
from treating it as symptomatic of a stage in human social evolution,
Darwinian theory predicts that such behaviour will be adaptive wherever the appropriate conditions are found. Reciprocal aid between
households, such as the reciprocal beer parties of the Fur, is very widespread in peasant societies. It is also found in shanty towns such as Los
Peloteros (see chapter 2). Every household needs to call on neighbours
for help when a member falls ill, or crops fail through accident, but
none can anticipate when it will need help in future (Erasmus 1955;
Scott 1976; Panter-Brick 1993). The same considerations encouraged
people to participate in the ‘friendly societies’ established during the
Industrial Revolution, only here the pattern of contribution is reversed.
As in the ‘subscription societies’ of Cameroon (see chapter 5), each
member contributes regular small sums in the expectation that all will
need to call to a larger extent on the society’s funds sooner or later.
Axelrod applies the model of the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ to the resolution of international conflict, where the players (nation states) must
anticipate each other’s intentions (Axelrod 1990: 186-91).
Weiner’sethnography, based on fieldwork close to where Malinowski
had worked fifty years earlier, suggests the Trobrianders act exactly as
they should if playing the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’. People construct
keyawa exchange partnerships so that they can get help to build up
resources when they need them most and, in return, must reciprocate
when any of their keyawa partners are in need (Weiner 1976: 57, 125).
Villagers read exchange events by treating the objects and styles of
exchange as evidences of attitudes and expectations…The transac
tion usually states an accomplished fact while allowing each partici
pant to subvert that fact. Exchange… gives scope to an ongoing
process wherein the donor and the recipient may continually re
evaluate the other’s and their own current condition or states of
being in the system (Weiner 1976: 213)
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 177
The‘Tit for Tat’ strategy which solves the Prisoner’s Dilemma explains
why reciprocity is, as Mauss and Polanyi had noted, embedded in social
relationships. Although earlier writers tended to assume that reciprocal exchanges were undertaken because people needed social relationships, the model of the Prisoner’s Dilemma suggests people need social
relationships to guarantee reciprocity. It is, however, common for
people to exchange small gifts as tokens of their continuing goodwill.
Reciprocity is a stable strategy under the conditions of uncertainty
outlined above but, under other circumstances, it maybe ‘invaded’ by
alternativestrategies.Smith considersseveralalternatives (Smith 1988:
233), one of which isstorage. In a highly seasonal environment,such as
the Arctic, the timing of food surpluses is highly predictable. The
Nunamiut, for example,obtain 80 per cent of their annual meat supply
during the fifteen days of the autumn and spring caribou migrations
(Binford 1979). All households who co-operate in a caribou drive
immediately receive a share of the meat, but it is more effective for
each household then to store surplus resources obtained during the
seasonal glut and eat their own stored food during leaner periods,
particularly since storage is easier in the Arctic than the tropics. The
heavy reliance of the native Americans of the north-west coast on
storage was outlined in chapter 4. It is probable that money’s capacity
to function as a store of value accounts for the decline of reciprocity,
and thesocial relationships it requires, in Western society. Ifso, Polanyi’s
analysis of the destructive effects of the market on social relationships
is supported by Socioecological theory.
Territoriality
A territory is an area occupied more or less exclusively by an individual
or a group, who use some means to announce their ownership and, if
necessary, physically to defend it. Socioecologists recognise three
forms of territoriality:
1 Defence of a small area in which an essential resource is
located, such as a bird’s nest site or, among humans, a
waterhole in the desert.
2 Assertinga superior right to all food resources over a wider
area.
3 Patrolling the boundary of the territory to prevent
outsiders from entering at all.
178 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
A home range is an area within which an individual or group habitually
move in search of food. A home range is not a territory if the individual
or group do not assert any rights over it against others.
Contrary to Rousseau and the Marxists, hunter-gatherers do generally claim rights over land. They do so most often by asserting a
primary right to all the resources within an area, even if neighbouring
bands are generally given permission to enter the area. One of the few
societies who seem to fit the image created by Rousseau and Marx are
the Batek De, who live in the forest of Malaysia. The Batek De consider
that land was created for all to use. While individuals may have a sentimental association with the area in which they were born, this does not
give them any rights of ownership over it (Endicott 1988: 113). There
are no lineages, bands or other semi-permanent groups larger than the
conjugal family (Endicott 1979: 10).
Hunter-gatherers living in both the tropics and the Arctic generally
allow neighbouring bands to forage over each others territories, at the
cost of allowing the current hosts reciprocal rights to enter the guests’
territory on future occasions (see Smith 1991: 110-13, for an Arctic
case study). Like the participants in the kula studied by Malinowski,
the value of owning something is the right which ownership brings
to give it to others. However, the kind of territoriality which huntergatherers practise varies according to the type of environment they live
in, and it is possible to study the circumstances in which reciprocal
access appears most adaptive. Casual boundary-crossing is tolerated
by the forest-dwelling Mbuti, but rights of mutual access are more
highly formalised among the desert hunter-gatherers of Australia and
southern Africa. Both procedures differ from that which traditionally
existed on the north-west coast of North America, where territorial
boundaries were forcefully defended, even to the extent of killing
trespassers.
The Ituri forest in which the Mbuti live is a relatively fine-grained
environment in which game and vegetable foods are quite evenly dis
tributed. Most game animals only move over short distances (Turnbull
1965: 173; Harako 1981: 503). Cashdan argued that groups living in
the richest areas of the Kalahari are least tolerant of visitors from other
groups entering their territory (Cashdan 1980) although she later also
described how those communities living in the harshest part of the
Kalahari could control access to resources by insisting that visitors gain
permission tocamp with the host band (Cashdan 1983).The Ju/’hoansi
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 179
or Dobe !Kung live in a much patchier environment than the Mbuti.
Regional drought occurs during three to four years every decade and,
in any one year, rainfall can vary bya factor of ten over a few miles.Each
band lives in a nlore (territory) centred on a semi-permanent waterhole and none could expect to survive indefinitely on the resources
within its nlore. Access across the boundary of such territories is not
defended, but visitors must approach the owners for permission to
camp at a waterhole or forage in the surrounding country. Footprints
are easy to spot in the desert and it is virtually impossible to hunt or
gather without being discovered. Visitors usually accompany residents
when foraging. Bands from two or more waterholes often join forces to
exploit a ‘major’ resource such as tsin beans or mongongo nuts (Lee
1979: 351). Lee was told, ‘It’s when they eat alone and you come along
later and you find them there, that’s when the fight starts’ (Lee 1979:
336).
The Yankunytjatjara of the Australian Western Desert occupy a
patchy environment somewhat similar to that of the Dobe region of
the Kalahari. According to traditional procedures which pre-date
colonial contact in the 1930s, visitors must seek consent to forage in
another group’s ngura (territory), but such consent is rarely, if ever,
withheld. Totemic avoidances express the special relationship with the
ancestral being who allocated each group the rights to its territory
(Layton 1986;cf. Myers 1986). Foraging parties traditionally lit regular
small fires to indicate their line of travel and parties encountered unexpectedly were suspected of having malevolent intentions, either wishing to steal food, or to make a revenge killing. Radcliffe-Brown’s failure
to study traditional daily life in Australia caused him to miss this whole
dimension of Aboriginal society and to assume, wrongly, that each
band claimed exclusive rights to the resources in its territory (see
chapter 2).
Contrary to the ‘hawk’ strategy of boundary defence practised on
the north-west coast of North America, low-latitude hunter-gatherers
are playing a genteel version of Maynard Smith’s‘bourgeois’ territorial
strategy. In the desert, rain can be seen falling many miles away. Noone
can conceal the temporary abundance of plant foods which follows
rain. If that abundance yields more than the local band need for their
immediate subsistence they can gain more, in the long run, by sharing
it with members of neighbouring bands than by overeating, thereby
gaining the right to share in others’ unpredictable abundances in future.
180 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
The strategy of reciprocity will be ‘invaded’ by that of boundary
defence when variation in the abundance of resources becomes synchronised over a wide area. In such an environment there is no longer
any need to insure against future shortage by allowing others to share
one’s good fortune.A model which predicts when it will payanimals to
defend territories was devised thirty years ago by Brown (1964).
As with optimal foraging theory, to which it is closely related, the
‘economic defendability’ model of territoriality assesses the costs and
benefits of defending a territory, and predicts the conditions in which
it will increase the individual’s reproductive success to practise territoriality. There are said to be three main costs in defending a territory.
There is a physical risk in patrolling the territory, if it results in challenges from other individuals, as represented in the hawk-dove game.
Patrolling a territory also takes time and energy which could be spent
in alternative ways such as foraging or raising young. Finally, there is a
risk that the resources within the territory might fail. The principal
benefit gained from preserving rightsover a territory is the elimination
of competition for its resources from other members of the species.
Not all individuals in the population may succeed in gaining a territory, or some may gain larger ones than others.
Claiming exclusive access over territories is most profitable when
resources are densely and evenly distributed, but in sufficiently short
supply to make it worthwhile competing for them. As resources become
more scarce, an increasingly large territory would be needed to guarantee self-sufficiency and the costs of patrolling its boundary would
therefore increase until eventually they outweighed the benefits. As
resources become more unpredictable, it becomes increasingly less
certain that the individual will be repaid for defending the territory
and, again, defence eventually becomes uneconomic. Cashdan was the
first to point out that low-latitude hunter-gatherers adapt to this constraint by allowing the kind of inter-access described above rather than
abandoning territorialityaltogether (Cashdan 1983).
Inspired by Steward’s original work with the Shoshoni and other
basin plateau groups, Dyson-Hudson and Smith applied Brown’s
model to several hunter-gatherer communities and one pastoral society, the Karimojong of East Africa (Dyson-Hudson and Smith 1978).
The Native Americans of the north-west coast such as the Tsimshian
(chapter 2) are the best example among recent hunter-gatherers of
groups who defended the boundaries of their territories against tres
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 181
pass. Territories were held by ambilineal or matrilineal descent groups,
who obtained all their food within the territory (Richardson 1986).
Any hunter who found another man trespassing on his group’s territory would challenge him and often one was killed (Boas 1966: 36).
The Western Shoshoni of the Californian basin plateau lived in a much
harsher environment. Steward established that, during the summer,
small families foraged independently, living on wild grass seeds and
small game. Because the game animals do not live in herds there was no
advantage to the Shoshoni from co-operating in the hunt. During the
winter the Shoshoni lived on the nuts of the pinyon pine. Although
several families camped together, each pinyon grove fruited unpredictable No consistent group of families would amalgamate into
a corporate lineage because there was no benefit from defending
particular groves (Dyson-Hudson and Smith 1978: 28).
Among cultivators such as the Yanomamo and Wahgi, the lineage
has a clear territorial function in co-ordinating defence of gardens and
their crops against raids. Rousseau’s hypothesis that warfare originated
with the appearance of cultivation is to some extent supported by the
prevalence of warfare among horticulturalists.Three levels of territoriality can be recognised among East African peoples such as the Nuer
and Karimojong. Like the Nuer, the Karimojong combine cultivation
with cattle herding. Dyson-Hudson and Smith found that households
defend their patches of crops against trespass and theft both because
they have invested time and effort in cultivation and because the patches
are small, concentrated and therefore easy to defend. Rights to cattle
are shared by the members of lineages. Their defence by the warriors
was described in the example of the Samburu (chapter 2). The most
scarce and unpredictable resources are pasture and pools of water.
These are so thinly spread and unpredictable it would be physically
impossible for a lineage, let alone a household, to defend the area its
members would need to support its livestock. Lefebure argues that by
sharing rights to pasture throughout a tribal community, households
are guaranteed access to the resources on which their herds depend
wherever they camp within the community’s territory (Lefebure 1979).
It is entirely consistent with Socioecological theory for different strategies to be adopted towards different resources.
Socioecological theory replaces the formalism of Structural
Functionalism and the implicit progressive evolutionism of some
Marxism with models which predict when both social networks built
182 I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E O R Y I N A N T H R O P O L O G Y
on reciprocal exchange and corporate lineages will become evolutionary stable strategies.
Signalling social intent
One of the most interesting of Axelrod’s discoveries was that reciprocity will only become a stable strategy when players anticipate continuing to interact for an indefinite period. Reciprocal exchange of
subsistence resources in human communities is accompanied by
frequent exchange of tokens which signal the individual’s willingness
to continue recognising reciprocal obligations. The constant flow of
gifts in many hunter-gatherer societies is striking. When Europeans,
even anthropologists, first encounter it they often mistake what is
really an invitation to enter into reciprocal relationships for begging.
Jean Briggs, speaking at the Association of Social Anthropologists’
1990 annual conference, described how she returned to an Inuit community wearing a new anorak. An Inuit friend promptly asked for it.
Jean refused, intending the anorak would help her survive the Arctic
conditions. Her friend fell silent for a while, then remarked: ‘I don’t
want to be thinking, when will Jean die,so that I can inherit her anorak.’
Not surprisingly, the anorak promptly changed hands (for other
examples, see Briggs 1970: 209-11). In the Western Desert of Australia,
nooneshould seek to belittleanyone else by making them feel indebted.
Myers writes that the immediate use-value of the tools, clothing anti
even food exchanged among the Pintupi of central Australia is noi
great. Anyone can easily obtain or make them. Exchange is important
because it expresses the moral basis for continuing to live together and
co-operate within the camp (Myers 1988).Among the Yankunytjatjara ,
one never says ‘thank-you’effusively. A simple‘ uwa, palya (yes, good ) ‘
is sufficient and people should not look each other in the eye when
giving or receiving gifts in case that is construed as domination. The
!Kung have an exchange system called Hxaro (see chapter 5), which
maintains an extensive network of friendships between people both
within the same band and in different bands (Wiessner 1982). When
partnerslive far apart, it is important to keep up a balanced flowof gi11
to let each partner know the other still values the relationship. Women
play the main part in maintaining these partnerships, going on long
journeys to visit Hxaro partners and giving them ostrich-shell m\ k
laces, water carriers etc. This form of gift-giving is very different to the
competitive exchanges of the potlatch, which aggressively assert the
S O C I O E C O L O G Y 183
rights of the giver rather than the receiver. It guarantees the right to
visit exchange partners when one’s own n!oreis stricken by drought.
Like baboons, chimpanzees signal mutual support by grooming
each other. Chimpanzees have gone further than baboons in developing rituals of embracing and kissing to reconcile relationships after a
dispute (de Waal 1982: 41). It takes time to groom another individual,
time which could be spent on other activities such as looking for food.
Dunbar argues that, as group size increased during human evolution,
language evolved to provide a less time-consuming way of signalling
positive intent, which could be used to communicate to several people
at once. For Dunbar the original function of language was akin to
greetings in the street, where one rarely waits to find out the answer
to one’s question, ‘how are you?’ He also notes that, among huntergatherers, the community rarely all meets in one place (Dunbar 1993:
865). It is possible that language was favoured as an adaptation because
of its unique capacity to express ideas about the past and future, and
people far away in space as well as time, such as Hxaro partners in other
camps, on whom one may depend in future, and who have been
indebted in the past.
Socioecology thus offers exciting opportunities for explaining variation
in human behaviour. Unlike Marxism, however, it tends to disregard
the long-term consequences of interaction, which result in differences
in wealth or power. The Achilles’ heel of Socioecology is its explicit
reliance on models derived from market economics when, as shown in
chapter 4, a pervasive market is unique to industrial society. How valid
is the analogical process that explains animal behaviour through models
designed to elucidate the policies of shopkeepers, and then reapplies
these models to non-Western human populations (cf. Maynard Smith
1982: 172)? Is the approach truly universal, or does it merely recreate
other societies in our own image? This puzzle has been taken up by the
Postmodernists, who have used it to cast doubt upon the validity of
general theories about human society. Postmodernist anthropology is
assessed in the final chapter.