On Human Egalitarianism: An Evolutionary Product of Machiavellian Status Escalation? STOR ® David Erdal; Andrew Whiten; Christopher Boehm; Bruce Knauft Current Anthropology, Vol. 35, No.2. (Apr., 1994), pp. 175-183. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0011-3204%28199404%2935%3A2%3CI75%3AOHEAEP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V Current Anthropology is currently published by The University of Chicago Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR' s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/aboutiterms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www .j stor .org/journals/ucpress .html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www .j stor.org/ Tue Aug 811:26:422006 Volume 35, Number 2, April I994 I I75 shaped elements" rather than a "dense tapestry." He is here), "because," "wider implications," "prompt or con­ ambivalent about Marx, first dismissing him, then ele­ strain," "the how ... but not yet the why," "organiza­ vating him as "an older anthropologist" and reasserting tional armatures around which cultural forms ... form," the core proposition that "men make their own history, "agency," "feeds back," "produces." Is this rich plethora but they do not make it just as they please." He escapes justified by meaning, rhetoric, or e!lphony? from "modes of production" by concrete reference to The public horror of racial-cultural-ethnic terrorism slaves and peasants, warriors and priests. This avoids in Bosnia, however much media-manipulated, demands controversy without advancing understanding. a responsible and theoretically coherent approach from He opens with race, culture, and people (ethnicity) as anthropology. It is a geopolitical and religious situation three notions on the same dimension but treats them bearing a close analogy with that of the small states in very differently. He traces race through "the great ar­ Germany which Engels said it would be ridiculous to chaic civilizations of the Old and New World," empha­ explain in terms of economics even though Prussia arose sizing "differential location on a spatial continuum," from historical, ultimately economic causes. It is only with differentiation of life-styles and physical appear­ the ultimately determining element in history which is ance in the "dominant civilizational schemata." The the "production and reproduction of real life," perhaps Yanomami, introduced for contrast, lack the latter but a yet more perilous idea than the others. Political and share the former and surprisingly, in Wolf's version, philosophical ideas, religious beliefs, and the "traditions make finer discriminations than the archaic civiliza­ which haunt human minds" (culture and ethnicity) also tions do. Dubbing the Yanomami "egalitarian tribal" influence historical struggles "and in many cases pre­ clearly has evolutionary implications, despite the em­ ponderate in determining their form" (Marx and Engels phasis on spatial continuum, and cannot but suggest the 1977:487). We follow writers such as E. P. Thompson discredited Service evolutionary scheme that the latter and Raymond Williams in their understandings of deter­ himself was forced to abandon. minism, base and superstructure, productive forces, and Instead of treating culture and ethnicity on this wide means of communication as means of production (Wil­ canvas, Wolf returns to the professional categories liams 1980:32, 34, 50). This approach in no way margin­ which at first he avoided. After briefly contrasting alizes culture in human life. If it is in any way made French Enlightenment universalist rationalism and Ger­ secondary, it is only in the ultimate perspective. Culture man romantic uniqueness in Volksgeist passion and remains potentially preponderant in the ethnographic emotion, he seems to conflate the two by tracing the present. Greek Volksgeist through Winckelmann's beguiling po­ esy to the model of Western Classical education, ideal­ References Cited ized as a wholly integrated culture of perfection. So flowed the intellectual tradition of an "ideational ho­ CARRIER, J. Editor. n.d. Occidentalism. MS. lism at the root of culture," according to Wolf, through MARX, K., AND F. ENGELS. 1977. Selected works. Vol. 3. Mos­ von Humboldt, Hegel, Nietzsche, Arnold, Frobenius, cow: Progress Publishers. WILLIAMS, RAYMOND. I980. Problems in materialism and cul­ and Spengler to Ruth Benedict, as the very approach ture. London: Verso. which Boas opposed. Such a glittering genealogy defies WOLF, ERIC R. I982. Europe and the people without history. brief analysis and so is hardly open to question. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Wolf sees discourse on race predominant in the 19th --. Perilous ideas: Race, culture, people. CURRENT ANTHRO­ POLOGY 35:1-I2. century and discourse on culture increasingly so in the 20th, with ethnicity emerging as a "hot topic" in the eighties and nineties as world events also forced re­ newed attention to it. The trouble is that he introduces On Human Egalitarianism: ethnicity first simply as "people," then as "peoplehood/ An Evolutionary Product ethnicity," conflating abstract and concrete but no­ where even broaching the vexed question of how culture of Machiavellian Status and ethnicity are differentiated. Doing so would precipi­ tate theories of political economy which he seeks to Escalation? avoid. He sees definitions of ethnicity shifting to "for­ mulas of cultural distinctiveness" as though the two DAVID ERDAL AND ANDREW WHITEN were almost synonymous. Tracing these notions in the School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews, public arena seems to leave the anthropologists' own St. Andrews, Fife KYI69TU, Scotland. 8 IX 93 ideas hopelessly confused. Fearing charges of determinism, writers now employ Egalitarianism in hunter-gatherer societies continues to a bewildering variety of evasive metaphors for what present an evolutionary puzzle. It is not yet clear what might be in danger of being thought to be causation. social-psychological processes are responsible for keep­ In the present piece we find "shape," "reshape," and ing egalitarianism in place or how they evolved. The "shaped," "laying down," "preside over," "gave rise to," papers of Knauft (CA 32:391-428) and Boehm (CA 34: "has implications for," "prompted by," "limited by," 227-54) represent important advances in understanding "permitted," "one of the main causes" (great boldness both in their recognition of the unique puzzle repre- ry6 I CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY sented by human egalitarianism from evolutionary and of which is characteristically descriptive of hunter­ comparative perspectives and in the solutions they offer. gatherers. Their initiatives, however, fall short of what we believe Boehm's great contribution is to establish clearly from an adequate evolutionary analysis must consider. We of­ the ethnographic literature that counterdominant be­ fer a critique of Boehm's thesis in particular which leads haviour is a widespread characteristic of humans. His us to theoretical and empirical extensions of the endeav­ model is static, offering an explanation of how egalitari­ our these authors have begun. anism is sustained rather than how it is generated in An evolutionary model will seek to explain stable the first place. Yet the universality of egalitarianism in tendencies in human social behaviour as adaptations to hunter-gatherers suggests that it is an ancient, evolved specific aspects of the ecological and social environment human pattern. in which Homo sapiens evolved. Archaeological data We had reached a conclusion similar to Boehm's about suggest that the ecological environment included vari­ the significance and ubiquity of counterdominant be­ ous mixtures of forests and savannahs, with scattered haviour, but our explanatory model is an evolutionary vegetable and prey resources which sustained a hunter­ one. An evolutionary hypothesis must explain why it gatherer mode of subsistence, at least for anatomically became adaptive for the hierarchically oriented ances­ modem humans (Foley 1987). Hunter-gatherer ethno­ tors of H. sapiens to behave in an egalitarian way and graphic data suggest that the social environment was will seek the source of that egalitarianism in the repro­ one of small mobile foraging groups in which most peo­ ductive consequences for individuals exhibiting that be­ ple were related, people knew each other intimately, haviour. In our model, counterdominant behaviour is a strangers rarely being encountered, and food and other stable tendency, an adaptation to the social and physical resources were shared. environments of the Plio/Pleistocene. It represents a There are well-rehearsed problems in taking data from pattern which structures the cognitive and motivational modem hunter-gatherers and using such data as indi­ psychology of each individual. It may only be manifested cative of conditions