Men in Groups / Lionel Tiger ; with a New Introduction by the Author

MENin GROUPS MENin GROUPS Lionel Tiger With a new introduction by the author Q Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK Originally published in 1969 by Random House Published 2005 by Transaction Publishers Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business New material this edition copyright © 2005 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2004049797 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tiger, Lionel, 1937- Men in groups / Lionel Tiger ; with a new introduction by the author. p. cm. "Third edition"—P. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7658-0598-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Men—psychology. 2. Sex differences. 3. Sex role. 4. Social groups. 5. Sociobiology. I. Title. HQ1090.T53 2005 305.31— dc22 2004049797 ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-00598-0 (pbk) Contents Transaction Introduction: Third Time Lucky vii Acknowledgements xxv Introduction xxix CHAPTER ONE Biology and the Study of Human Behaviour i CHAPTER TWO The Male Bond in Animal Communities 18 CHAPTER THREE The Male Bond and Human Evolution 41 CHAPTER FOUR The Male Bond in Human Communities: Politics and War $5 CHAPTER FIVE Work and Play 93 CHAPTER SIX Men Court Men: Initiations and Secret Societies 126 CHAPTER SEVEN Man, Aggression, and Men CHAPTER EIGHT Some Concluding Remarks 194 Bibliography 2 18 Index 246 To Harry Hawthorn Transaction Introduction: Third Time Lucky Surely no author can approach with any ambiguity the pleasure of writing an introduction to the third edition of a book that was first published thirty-five years ago. It gratifies and reassures that my first book has stood the test of its now-middle age during a period when the lives of too many books are as fleeting as September's magazine and February's too. It appears to continue to generate some value for folk trying to understand the inner story of hominid behavior, of sex differences, and also more recently of how to try to meld the disci plined study of social behavior with the startling genomic discover ies about the intricate coded mechanisms that may affect and underlie that complicated story. At least the book insisted these would be found to exist. Then why the ambiguity? Because the perfect form of male bonding - the social relation ships that are the basis of men in groups - which is the core subject of the book, has just accomplished a strikingly effective attack on the Spanish people. It killed hundreds and wounded thousands and prob ably affected a serious election. I write this in London about four days later. The grimly but plausibly realistic UK afternoon tabloids run headlines such as "Our trains, pubs, can be next." The Al Qaeda operation, or whatever consortium of ambitious middle managers of savage mayhem created the event, is a paradigmatic example of men in groups. For one thing, they operate without and even despite and against females. The leader of the September 11 bombings in the United States, Muhammad Atta, left a will that demanded that no woman touch his dead martyr's body - as if bits of it large enough remained for such defilement. This growing and energetic group is engaged in drastic and predatory aggressive behavior with the certainty, self- righteousness, and secrecy in which skilled male groups specialize. Such effectiveness is dangerous enough located in criminal gangs, mercenary troops, self-absorbed secret societies, reckless sports teams, cynical political cabals - the list is long. But this current rendition of male bonding is animated by a religious scheme that takes comfort viii TRANSACTION INTRODUCTION and pride and finds reward in the stark and unlamented death of non- believers. It succeeds in marrying the relatively recent evolutionary triumph of Homo sapiens - contemplative, symbolic, often elegant thought - with the utterly primordial knack for cooperative hunting, killing, defending, politicking, etc. This new merger of two forces facilitated by instant electronic communication and air travel has and will produce as much explo- siveness as unleashed by the splitting of the atom. Bomb Hiroshima totally? Level Nagasaki? Kill Madrilefios who live in suburbs? Barbeque bond traders and managers of bills of lading in the World Trade Center? Does social technology equal or surpass the power of nuclear physics in general lethality over time? Can it prevail in a miscellany of places? But let's set aside if we can the violent assertions of men bonded in religion. Perhaps they are confirmed in their actions by the sup portive joys of secrecy. Perhaps they are bitter about those with lives different than their own - perhaps if only because they are relaxed lives, more sensually interesting and economically powerful. As Ber nard Lewis has pointed out, "The Great Satan" translates precisely as "The Great Tempter." Now, second, in addition to this, we have added the power of grandly symbolic thought to the potency of cooperative hunting and killing. Not much could be worse than this alloy. Thus, again, my despair at the too-often destructive efficacy of the unruly colorful brilliant ape we were, became, and are. We are very talented in the lethal arts of now-planetary bellicosity. It's possible to understand readily and even sympathize with fea tures of the plight of these willful nihilists bemused by heaven. But they have defined themselves as enemies presumably to be faced and fought and if necessary killed. Otherwise, they will try to destroy those they consider their ungodly enemies whose lives intrinsically rebuke the piety they claim. They are not alone in defining their human value in terms of a superhuman God - they are players in an old story. However, the structure within which they are embedded and the dramatic clarity of their solution to the defiling existence of other faiths sharply leverage the gravity of their actions. Another feature of this particular event, and the larger pageant within which it is an episode, is the role of immigration in facilitat- TRANSACTION INTRODUCTION Ix ing the process. The protagonists of the Madrid bombings were pre dominantly Moroccan; on 9/11 they were Saudi. They were in their target countries because of a pattern of movement especially of young men from poor countries as immigrants or students to the wealthy. In Europe, their freedom of movement is enhanced because of the feck less Schengen agreements of the European Union that made it pos sible for any who entered one member of the Union to have passport-less access to all the others. But this is not a new pattern, of movement of young men from their difficult home nations to the plausibly easier or more lush ones elsewhere. For example, economist Jeffrey Williamson of Harvard and Essex University economist Timothy Hatton have indicated that between 1870 and 1910, 60 million mostly young European males emigrated to the United States, Canada, Australia, and Argentina. Labor forces in Europe were reduced by 45 percent in Ireland and 39 percent in Italy. In 1870, wages were 136 percent higher in the United States and the New World than in Europe.1 The current differential income situation is, if anything, more dramatic, especially since un employment rather than low-paid work is very common among young men. For example, at least 30 percent of Moroccans are unemployed. Presumably they see no empirically plausible remedy for the static lives they lead. Perhaps colorful symbolic solutions animated by theology such as bombing trains or gray American warships are as gratifying as anything else. Given the sharply reduced overall populations of that time a cen tury ago, immigration numbers recounted here are substantial in deed. They suggest the potency of the forces driving young men from homes they perceive as hopeless but whose memory they will cherish and whose inequality they may try to crush from afar. The same pattern has obviously repeated itself in the present time, though with less statistical drama. The fact is that at least some of the male factors - the Takfiris especially - who have come to the surface immi grate deliberately to populate sleeper cells that will erupt at some point against their hosts.2 Of course, this differs from the turn of the century, in 1900, in a basic manner. And yet it is instructive to be aware that the population movements animating the struggle have similar roots to other histo ries, though with far less traumatic results. The situation is an utterly grim one. But one humble redeeming factor that may be the work of a book such as this is that it may be x TRANSACTION INTRODUCTION somewhat easier to anticipate and manage or at least tolerate if its deep and durable roots in human nature are understood. This is nei ther to excuse or support the miserable behavior but to try to compre hend it. To change a system it is obviously best to understand it first. This is essential in dealing with the material world, as engineers do. The same is true in the social world. There is in fact an emerging literature on the possible responsible links between biosocial analysis and social policy, and it is likely such links will strengthen and become more interestingly complex over time.3 There is of course no reason for the introduction of bio logical materials into the social realm to be anything other than a bracing advantage to those seeking useful ways of helping organize human behavior.

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