ES3217: Loss of Childhood
Semester 1, 2011.
Sarah Blaffer-Hrdy’s
Human/Primate Sociobiology
As discussed last week, Wilson’s decision to include
human beings in his account of Sociobiology caused
an academic scandal in the United States: the
equivalent ‘scandalous’ publication in the U. K. was
Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, published
before Wilson’s and making much less specific
claims about humanity.
As a result of the furore, many academic authors
preferred to distance themselves from Wilson’s
‘synthesis’, although broadly accepting most of his
argument. This more palatable form of
sociobiology is now usually called evolutionary
development theory – or ‘evo-devo’ for short.
The principal change in theorising
about human beings, compared with
Wilson’s account, is that evo-devo
offers a specific substitution for the
difficulties of incorporating human
experiments in a Wilsonian synthesis.
It achieves this by incorporating the
fruits of speculative studies in human
evolution.
Whereas Wilson could identify thousands of
examples from which to base his theorising
about the social insects, human beings appear to
be unique in ways that seem highly significant!
Wilson tried to get round this difficulty by
making comparisons with other primates, using
what demographic and genetic information was
then available, but even he conceded that human
culture and language introduced a major stepchange that could not be simply ignored. In fact,
he made it even harder for himself: you may
recall that he had a particular notion of what
counted as ‘real’ theory.
The solution to the experimental problem of there
being no ‘real’ theory within anthropological study,
and no real comparison with related animals, was
solved by scientist working within the evo-devo
paradigm by making evidence-based conjectures of
our ancestors’ Pleistocene life style.
However, Sarah Blaffer-Hrdy has resolutely
insisted that her work is sociobiological. She
follows a long line of mainly American researchers
(predominantly female), who believe that the study
of the living primates and their social lives is a
powerful source of illustration and comparison –
one that Wilson did not fully appreciate at the time
he prepared his first version of Sociobiology.
Along with this deepening of the demographic
perspective, she includes three further sources of
information: physiology (see her account of
lactation), anthropology (see her references to the
!Kung), and selected items of evo-devo (see her
comments on concealed menstruation).
But it is at this very reasonable point that one has
to throw a spanner into the works! The science
historian, Donna Haraway, has written extensively
on the American fascination with primate study in
her 1989 publication, Primate Visions. Haraway is
not an ‘easy read’, but in this book she presents a
trenchant critique of the gender stereotypes that
characterise much of this work.
your Haraway photocopy argues that facts are
made, not simply found – Wilson said as much.
In relation to Blaffer-Hrdy, Haraway argues that
‘Hrdy’s map of differences*, her way of narrating
that females – and women – differ from each other
and are therefore agents, citizens, and subjects in
the great dramas of evolution and history, is
perhaps more a guide to the cultural logic of late
capitalism than to the prefigurative fictions and
material practices of international multicultural
feminisms’ (Haraway, 1987: 350).
*by ‘differences’ here Haraway is referring to
Hrdy’s liberal individualism ‘extracted’ from the
primate female body.
Haraway offers an analysis of sexual politics in
the United States, circa 1970-80, relating to
abortion, sterilisation, birth control, population
policy, high-tech reproductive interventions,
wife-beating, child abuse, family policy,
definitions of family, the sexual political
economy of aging, the science and politics of diet
‘disorders and regimes, the shift from nuclear
family-based patriarchy to the state in welfare
policy, divorce rates and the gender unequal
consequences thereof, sexual identity politics,
rape, pornography, trans-sexuality, foetal and
child purchase through surrogacy, racist sexual
exploitation, etc.
Her point is that since liberal individualism
has axes to grind in every one of these
contested debates, ‘What principle of order
could reduce such a list to coherence?’
So Haraway provides an overview of
Hrdy’s work, and the work of other
primatologists, but for our purposes, we
need only focus on a few aspects of Hrdy’s
project. The following extract introduces
these:-
If we recognise that a female’s reproductive
success can depend in critical ways on the
tolerance of nearby males, on male willingness to
assist an infant, or at least to leave it alone, the
selective importance of an active, promiscuous
sexuality becomes readily apparent. Female
primates influence males by consorting with them,
thereby manipulating the information available to
males about possible paternity. To the extent that
her subsequent offspring benefit, the female has
benefited from her seeming nymphomania’ (Hrdy,
1981: 174).1
1The Woman that Never Evolved.
Haraway’s concludes that essentially Hrdy is
identifying a number of ‘investment’ strategies that
imply the existence of a constant war between the
sexes played out, in the case of humans, through
language and social practice. But there is no
reason why her critique should be yours.
The three photocopies selected in order to give
you more detailed insight into Hrdy’s project are
as follows. From her earlier and more
comprehensive book, Mother Nature, selections
from chapter 1, ‘Motherhood as a Minefield’, and
chapter 23, ‘Alternate Paths of Development’.
From her later book, Mothers and Others, only
chapter 9, ‘Childhood and the Descent of Man’.