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"Chapais, Bernard"
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Primeval kinship : how pair-bonding gave birth to human society
\"In this book Kenneth Abraham explores the development and interdependency of the tort liability regime and the insurance system in the United States during the twentieth century and beyond, including the events of September 11, 2001\"--Jacket.
Book
Competence and the Evolutionary Origins of Status and Power in Humans
In this paper I propose an evolutionary model of human status that expands upon an earlier model proposed by Henrich and Gil-White
Evolution and Human Behavior
, 22,165–196 (
2001
). According to their model, there are two systems of status attainment in humans—“two ways to the top”: the
dominance
route, which involves physical intimidation, a psychology of fear and hubristic pride, and provides coercive power, and the
prestige
route, which involves skills and knowledge (competence), a psychology of attraction to experts and authentic pride, and translates mainly into influence. The two systems would have evolved in response to different selective pressures, with attraction to experts serving a social learning function and coinciding with the evolution of cumulative culture. In this paper I argue that (1) the only one way to the top is
competence
because dominance itself involves competence and confers prestige, so there is no such thing as pure dominance status; (2) dominance in primates has two components: a competitive one involving physical coercion and a cooperative one involving competence-based attraction to high-ranking individuals (proto-prestige); (3) competence grants the same general type of power (
dependence-based
) in humans and other primates; (4) the attractiveness of high rank in primates is homologous with the admiration of experts in humans; (5) upon the evolution of cumulative culture, the attractiveness of high rank was co-opted to generate status differentials in a vast number of culturally generated domains of activity. I also discuss, in this perspective, the origins of hubristic pride, authentic pride, and nonauthoritarian leadership.
Journal Article
Complex Kinship Patterns as Evolutionary Constructions, and the Origins of Sociocultural Universals
Human societies share a large number of complex social traits relating to kinship, which together constitute what is called here thehuman kinship configuration. I use a comparative phylogenetic approach to show that each of the traits making up that configuration has an evolutionary history and hence a biological foundation. The origin of many complex traits may be explained in terms of emergent products of the combination of more elementary features present in other primate species, whereas other traits appear to emerge from the combination of primate features with uniquely human cognitive abilities. The resulting composite traits thus have a compounded biological foundation, but at the same time they are always manifest under specific cultural—formal and semantic—expressions in any society. The traits may thus be seen as open-ended, culturally polymorphic and polysemouscategories, or sociocultural categories, with the categories themselves having a biological foundation while their contents are culturally defined. Importantly, those categories need not be cross-culturally universal even though they are natural; their presence or absence in a given society is culturally modulated. I argue that a large number of such categories operate as an interface that helps bridge the gap between human biology and the sociocultural realm and that information on that interface is required for understanding how human nature structures cultural diversity.
Journal Article
The Deep Social Structure of Humankind
Primatology and anthropology converge on the uniqueness of human society. Despite the variability of chimpanzee groups, it is possible to identify some common features that characterize a unique “chimpanzee society.” The same is possible with other social species except, apparently, our own. Given the extreme diversity of human societies, defining a common denominator—or “deep structure” ( 1 )—has appeared unrealistic. The problem lies in cumulative cultural evolution. Culture has generated so many elaborations of that deep structure that, now, it is hardly discernible, as if heavily embellished versions of the same alphabet letter now mask the letter itself. Two sources of data, however, can help circumvent this problem: comparing hunter-gatherer societies, which are the most informative groups for understanding the social evolution of humans; and comparing human hunter-gatherer societies to nonhuman primate societies. Together, these analyses enable us to identify the unique attributes of human society. Hill et al. ( 2 ) nicely illustrate this process on page 1286 of this issue by providing quantitative data on the social structure of hunter-gatherers that support a model of humankind's deep social structure that was derived from a comparison with primate societies ( 1 ).
Journal Article
Primate Nepotism: What is the Explanatory Value of Kin Selection?
Kin selection theory (KS) is widely invoked to account for the preferential treatment of kin--nepotism--in primate societies. Because this idea is so pervasive the role of KS is often unquestioned and optional mechanisms are often ignored. I first examine the potential role of some other nepotism-generating mechanisms by concentrating on the effect of the proximity correlate of matrilineal kinship. This correlate of kinship may bias the development of mutually selfish interactions among relatives--kin-biased mutualism--and that of reciprocally altruistic interactions--kin-biased reciprocal altruism--two mechanisms that have been given little weight compared to KS and whose impact on the evolution of nepotism is therefore unknown. However, these two options to KS cannot account for the existence of unilaterally altruistic interactions among kin, which provide, therefore, the best type of evidence to test KS. But such evidence is difficult to obtain because many behaviors considered altruistic may in fact be selfish, and because kin altruism is seldom unilateral; it is most often bilateral, as expected by reciprocal altruism theory. For these reasons, one should be extremely cautious before equating nepotism exclusively with KS. Next, I examine the predictions of KS regarding the deployment of altruism according to degree of kinship by considering, in addition to the variables of Hamilton's equation, the duration of behaviors, the size of kin classes and their differential availability. In general, altruism is expected to be allocated at a fairly constant rate among kin categories and to drop markedly past the degree of relatedness beyond which altruism is no more profitable. Very little data allow one to test conclusively this prediction, as well as some other significant predictions. Overall, there is ample evidence for the role of KS in shaping mother-offspring interactions in various areas. But the evidence for kin-selected altruism beyond the mother-offspring bond (r < 0.5), though qualitatively solid, is much less abundant. Kin altruism drops markedly beyond r = 0.25 (half-siblings and grandmother-grandoffspring dyads).[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
Journal Article
Dominance as a competence domain, and the evolutionary origins of respect and contempt
The hypothesis of a phylogenetic connection between protorespect in primate dominance hierarchies and respect in human prestige hierarchies lies in the principle that dominance is a domain of competence like others and, hence, that high-ranking primates have protoprestige. The idea that dominant primates manifest protocontempt to subordinates suggests that “looking down on” followers is intrinsic to leadership in humans, but that the expression of contempt varies critically in relation to the socioecological context.
Journal Article
Evolution of Multilevel Social Systems in Nonhuman Primates and Humans
Multilevel (or modular) societies are a distinct type of primate social system whose key features are single-male–multifemale, core units nested within larger social bands. They are not equivalent to fission–fusion societies, with the latter referring to routine variability in associations, either on an individual or subunit level. The purpose of this review is to characterize and operationalize multilevel societies and to outline their putative evolutionary origins. Multilevel societies are prevalent in three primate clades: papionins, Asian colobines, and hominins. For each clade, we portray the most parsimonious phylogenetic pathway leading to a modular system and then review and discuss likely socioecological conditions promoting the establishment and maintenance of these societies. The multilevel system in colobines (most notably
Rhinopithecus
and
Nasalis
) has likely evolved as single-male harem systems coalesced, whereas the multilevel system of papionins (
Papio hamadryas
,
Theropithecus gelada
) and hominins most likely arose as multimale–multifemale groups split into smaller units. We hypothesize that, although ecological conditions acted as preconditions for the origin of multilevel systems in all three clades, a potentially important catalyst was intraspecific social threat, predominantly bachelor threat in colobines and female coercion/infanticide in papionins and humans. We emphasize that female transfers within bands or genetic relationships among leader males help to maintain modular societies by facilitating interunit tolerance. We still lack a good or even basic understanding of many facets of multilevel sociality. Key remaining questions are how the genetic structure of a multilevel society matches the observed social effort of its members, to what degree cooperation of males of different units is manifest and contributes to band cohesion, and how group coordination, communication, and decision making are achieved. Affiliative and cooperative interunit relations are a hallmark of human societies, and studying the precursors of intergroup pacification in other multilevel primates may provide insights into the evolution of human uniqueness.
Journal Article
Kin Selection and the Distribution of Altruism in Relation to Degree of Kinship in Japanese Macaques (Macaca fuscata)
Using kin selection theory and Hamilton's equation (B/C > 1/r) to determine how group-living individuals should allocate altruism among their various categories of kin has proven extremely difficult. Among the factors responsible are: (1) the unclear altruistic status of many behavioral categories, (2) the difficulty of assessing the values of B and C, and hence their impact on the distribution of altruism according to relatedness, (3) the potentially confounding effect of reciprocal altruism on kin selection, and (4) the various time constraints limiting the ability of individuals to favor distant kin. We report experiments on Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) which made it possible to assess or control the effect of these factors on the distribution of altruism in relation to degree of kinship. We concentrated on a clearly altruistic behavioral category with a particularly large B/C ratio to maximize the distribution of altruism according to relatedness. The behavior was unilaterally distributed between kin, hence minimizing the confounding effect of reciprocal altruism on its distribution. Time constraints were eliminated by giving potential donors equal opportunities to behave altruistically with every kin tested. In each experiment, an adult female was given an opportunity to help at low cost one of her juvenile kin outrank its dominant peers. In previous experiments of this sort carried out on juveniles females, we had tested the impact of four categories of adult female kin. In the present experiments carried out on juvenile males, we tested new categories of adult female kin and increased our sample of kin dyads considerably. Altruism toward young males extended to r=0.125 among direct kin (great-grandmother/great-grandson dyads), and to r=0.25 among collateral kin (siblings), or inconsistently to r=0.125 (aunt-nephew dyads). These relatedness limits of nepotism may reflect the limit of the profitability of altruism as defined by the terms of Hamilton's equation and/or the limit of kin discrimination in our group.
Journal Article
Kinship and Behavior in Primates
This book presents a series of review chapters on the various aspects of primate kinship and behavior, as a fundamental reference for students and professionals interested in primate behavior, ecology and evolution. The relatively new molecular data allow one to assess directly degrees of genetic relatedness and kinship relations between individuals, and a considerable body of data on intergroup variation, based on experimental studies in both free-ranging and captive groups has accumulated, allowing a rather full and satisfying reconsideration of this whole broad area of research. The book should be of considerable interest to students of social evolution and behavioral ecology.
eBook