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

An innovative book challenging the perceived view of chimpanzees as being aggressive and fiercely territorial.

Margaret Power (Author)

9780521400169, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 September 1991

312 pages, 8 b/w illus. 2 tables
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.57 kg

"Although many may take exception to the conclusions of the author, the book should be useful to a broad range of readers interested in human and nonhuman primate social organization and its evolution." Choice

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

Foreword A. Montagu
Acknowledgements
Part I. Methods and Prefatory Explanations
Part II. The Human Foragers
Part III. The Changing Social Order
Part IV. The Behaviour of Wild and Provisioned Groups: A Theoretical Analysis
Part V. The Mutual Dependence System
Part VI. The Egalitarian Chimpanzees
Part VII. Probabilities, Possibilities and Half-Heard Whispers
Notes
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Animal behaviour [PSVP], Social groups [JFS]