Anthropology Friday: In the Shadow of Man, (4/5)

Hello! Today we are continuing with our discussion of Jane Goodall’s In the Shadow of Man, featuring the adventures of a family (or several families) of chimpanzees from The Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. Today’s focus is on social structure.

Social status:

“I began to suspect that Goliath might be the highest-ranking male chimpanzee in the area–and later I found that this was in reality the case. If William and Goliath started to move toward the same banana at the same time, it was William who gave way and Goliath who took the fruit. If Goliath met another adult male along a narrow forest track, he continued–the other stepped aside. Goliath was nearly always the first to be greeted when a newcomer climbed into a fig tree to join a feeding group of chimpanzees. One day I actually saw him driving another chimp from her nest to take it for himself. …

“William, with his long scarred upper lip and drooping lower lip, was one of the more subordinate males in his relationships with other chimpanzees. If another adult male made signs of aggression toward him, William was quick to approach with gestures of appeasement and submission, reaching out to lay his hands on the other, crouching with soft panting grunts in front of the higher-ranking individuals. … When I offered him a banana in my hand for the first time, he stared at it for several moments, gently shook a branch in his frustration, and then sat uttering soft whimpering sounds until I relented and put the fruit on the ground. …

Flo the chimpanzee, image from Jane Goodall’s website

“Even in those days, Flo looked very old. … We soon found out that her character by no means matched her appearance: she was aggressive, tough as nails, and easily the most dominant of all the females at that time.

“Flo’s personality will become more vivid if I contrast it with that of another old female, Olly … was remarkably different. Flo for the most part was relaxed in her relations with the adult males; often I saw her grooming in a close group with with two or three males out in the forest, and in camp she showed no hesitation in joining David or Goliath to beg for a share of cardboard or bananas. Olly, on the other hand, was tense and nervous in her relations with others of her kind. She was particularly apprehensive when in close proximity to adult males, and her hoarse, frenzied pant-grunts rose to near hysteria if high-ranking Goliath approached her. …

“Olly tended to avoid large groups of chimps and often wandered around with only her two year old daughter Gilka for company.

EvX: Gilka eventually became so lonely and isolated that she made friends with a baboon:

“One day when Gilka was again waiting while Olly fished for termites, I heard a baboon bark further down the valley. At the sound Gilka’s whole attitude underwent and immediate change. [from her previously depresesed state.] …

“A moment later I saw Gilka move out from the trees, and at almost the same time a small baboon detached itself from the troop and cantered toward her. … the two ran up to each other, and for a moment I saw their faces very close together. Each had one arm around the other. The next moment they were playing, wrestling, and patting each other. Goblina went around behind Gilka and, reaching forward, seemed to tickle the chimpanzee in the ribs. Gilka, leaning back, pushed at Goblina’s hands, her mouth open in a wide smile. …

“I watched Gilka and Goblina playing for ten minutes, and all the time they were amazingly gentle. Then the baboon troop started to move on and Goblina scampered after it.”

EvX: Olly may have been avoiding other chimps because she was lower status, and being around people of higher status than oneself is often unpleasant.

“Often, too, Olly and Flo traveled about together in the forests, and all four children were playmates of long standing. For the most part, the relationship between Olly and Flo was peaceful enough, but if there was a single banana lying on the ground between them the relative social status of each was made clear: Flo had only to put a few of her moth-eaten hairs on end for Olly to retreat, pant-grunting and grinning in submission. …

Fifi the chimpanzee, image from Jane Goodall’s website

“The adult females of the chimpanzee community are almost always submissive to the adult males, and and to many of the older adolescent males. But they have their own dominance hierarchy, of which Flo was for many years supreme. … Flo was exceptionally aggressive toward her own sex, and she would tolerate no insubordination from young adolescent males. Much of her confidence no doubt resulted from the fact that he was so often accompanied by her two eldest sons,and with the aggressive Fifi as well, the family was formidable indeed.”

EvX: Flo and Olly once they teamed up and literally beat the shit out of a strange female who had ventured into their territory. Perhaps not coincidentally, Flo was the most sexually popular female in the group.

As Jane observed the chimps over the decades, most of them received names that started with the same letter as their mothers. (It is usually difficult to know which chimp was an infant’s father.) So Flo is the matriarch of the “F-family.” According to Wikipedia:

The F-family has produced at least four alpha males for the community, and the matriarch, Flo, played a particularly important role in acknowledging Dr Goodall’s acceptance as a human observer by the community. The G-family has produced at least one alpha male, and also the birth of several twins, which are rare among chimpanzees. There are other families as well which include the T-family and S-family (which has produced one alpha male).

In other words, Flo’s children and grandchildren did very well for themselves. If you were a male chimp in the Gombe, you would want to mate with Flo.

Frodo the chimpanzee, image also from Jane’s website

The Wikipedia also tells us about the lives of some of the chimps born after the book ends, such as Frodo, Flo’s grandson:

Frodo (June 30, 1976 – November 10, 2013) was Fifi’s second oldest son.^[39] His father was the relatively low-ranking male Sherry. Even from a young age, Frodo was large and aggressive. He learned to throw rocks as a juvenile, sometimes throwing them at and hitting and bruising his human observers.^[40] As an adult, he was one of the largest chimpanzees ever observed in the community, at about 113 pounds (51 kg) and remained aggressive.^[37][39] He also became an excellent hunter of red colobus monkeys, and was also able to intimidate other chimpanzees into sharing their kills with him if he was unsuccessful.^[22][41] His large size and aggressive nature allowed him to attain high status…

As alpha male, Frodo maintained his position largely through intimidation.^[22][37][41] He rarely groomed other males, and often demanded that other males groom him.^[22][37][41] Frodo maintained his alpha position until becoming ill himself in 2002.^{[22][33][41][42]} He was then defeated by a coalition of several males and spent most of the next two years on his own recovering from his wounds and illness.^{[22][33][41][42]} …

Frodo’s aggression was not limited to Colobus monkeys and other chimpanzees. In May 2002, he killed a 14-month-old human baby that the niece of a member of the research team had carried into his territory.^[43] … In 1988, he attacked cartoonist Gary Larson, leaving him bruised and scratched.^[43] In 1989, he attacked Goodall, beating her head to the point of nearly breaking her neck.^[43]

Frodo fathered at least eight infants, second most of any group male (Wilkie fathered ten).

Perhaps if Frodo’s father had been high-status, he could have solidified his position via grooming and social coalition rather than violence, and thus perhaps avoided being violently deposed.

The entry on Wilkie notes his very different approach to dominance:

In 1989 Wilkie defeated Goblin and attained the alpha position.^[53] Wilkie, attained this position despite being one of the smallest males in the community, at 37 kilograms (82 lb).^[85] According to researchers at the University of Minnesota‘s Jane Goodall Institute Center for Primate Studies, Wilkie attained his position primarily by becoming popular by obsessively grooming other males.^[79][85] Unlike most males, Wilkie also groomed females.^[85] Wilkie also made effective use of charging displays.^[79]

Mike’s rise:

“Mike‘s rise to the number-one spot in the chimpanzee hierarchy was both interesting and spectacular. In 1963, Mike had ranked almost bottom in the adult male dominance hierarchy. He… had been threatened and actually attacked by almost every other adult male. …

“A group of five adult males, including to-ranking Goliath, David Graybeard, and the huge Rodolf, were grooming each other. The session had been going on for some twenty minutes. Mike was sitting about thirty yards apart from them, frequently staring toward the group, occasionally idly grooming himself.

“All at once, Mike calmly walked over to our tent and picked up an empty kerosene can by the handle. Then he picked up a second can and, walking upright, returned to the place where he had been sitting. … After a few minutes he began to rock from side to side. … his hair slowly began to stand erect, and then, softly at first, he began a series of pant-hoots. … suddenly he was off, charging toward the group of males, hitting the two cans ahead of him. The cans, along with Mike’s crescendo of hooting, made the most appaling racket: no wonder the erstwhile peaceful males rushed out of the way. …

“Mike set off again, but he made straight for Goliath–and even he hastened out of the way like the others. Then mike stopped and sat, all his hair on end, breathing hard. …

“Rodolf was the first of the males to approach Mike, uttering soft pant-grunts of submission, crouching low and pressing his lips to Mike’s thigh. Next he began to groom Mike. … Finally David Greybeard went over to Mike, laid one hand on his groin, and joined in the grooming. Only Goliath kept away, sitting alone and staring toward Mike.”

EvX: So Mike becomes dominant.

“… it was fully another year before Mike seemed to feel quite secure in his position. He continued to display very frequently and vigorously, and lower-ranking chimps had increasing reason to fear him, since often he would attack a female or youngster viciously at the slightest provocation.”

The observance of human customs:

“Christmas that year at the Gombe Stream was a day to remember. I bought an extra large supply of bananas and put them around a small tree I had decorated with silver paper and absorbent cotton. Goliath and William arrived together on Christmas morning and gave loud screams of excitement when they saw the huge pile of fruit. They flung their arms around one another and Goliath kept patting William on his wide open screaming mouth while William laid one arm over Goliath’s back. Finally they calmed down and began their feast, still uttering small squeaks and grunts of pleasure.”

Friendship:

“Firm friendships, like that between Goliath and David Graybeard, seem to be particularly prevalent among male chimpanzees. Mike and the irascible, testy old J.B. traveled about in the same group very frequently. … The only two adult females we know of who enjoyed this kind of friendship were almost certainly sisters.”

EvX: J.B. uses his relationship with newly ascended Mike to raise his own social status and get more bananas.

Illness and Death:

“Shortly after Christmas, I had to leave the Gombe stream myself for another term at Cambridge. My last two weeks were sad, for William fell ill. … When he climbed down in the morning I saw that every few moments his body shook with violent spasms of shivering. … One morning, two days before I had to leave, William stole a blanket from Dominic’s tent. [Dominic was the camp cook.] He had been sitting chewing on it for a while when David Greybeard arrived and, after eating some bananas, joined William at the blanket. For half an hour or so the two sat peacefully side by side, each sucking noisily and contentedly on different corners. Then William, like the clown he so often appeared to be, put part of the blanket right over his head and made groping movements with his hands as he tried to touch David from within the strange darkness he had created. … Presently the two wandered off into the forest together, leaving me with the echo of a dry, hacking cough and the blanket lying on the ground. I never saw William again. …

To be continued…

 

 

Is Southern Hospitality a Myth?

It’s tough coming up with a more solidly Southern lineage than mine–General Sherman’s troops literally burned down my great-great-great grandparent’s farm–and yet, I don’t actually know what “Southern Hospitality” is. This may just be a quirk of the people who raised me, who perhaps simply forgot to explain it to me, expecting me to pick up cultural values via osmosis instead.

At any rate, I started thinking more about Southern Hospitality after conversations with two friends–one a Southerner who has moved to Yankeedom, and the other a non-Southerner who recently sojourned through the South. The Southerner reports that the Yanks are rude, unfriendly, and decidedly lacking in Southern Hospitality. The non-Southerner reports that the Southerners they encountered were rude, unfriendly, and really not hospitable at all. Intrigued, I went searching online and discovered many similar accounts. Southerners swear up and down that “Southern Hospitality” is real and Northerners are rude; Northerners swear up and down that Southerners are fake-friendly, un-hospitable, and aggressive.

How could this be?

When faced with a conundrum like this, I find it useful to assume that both sides are truthfully reporting their impressions, at least as far as humans can, and then find a theory that fits both. In this case, obvious things that come to mind:

1. Different cultures define “hospitality” differently, and your own culture, of course, is the one doing it right
2. People don’t generally notice whether or not they are being hospitable to others, but they notice right away if people aren’t being hospitable to them, and this tends to only come up while traveling
3. Some people or places in the South are more hospitable than others
4. Southerners are more hospitable to some people than others
5. All of the above

The Wikipedia has a hopefully helpful page on “Southern Hospitality“:

Southern hospitality is a phrase used in American English to describe the stereotype of residents of the Southern United States as particularly warm, sweet, and welcoming to visitors to their homes, or to the South in general.

Well, that wasn’t my experience growing up in the South. I found my classmates generally hostile and aggressive, and I don’t even know the names of the people who lived next door to us because they never said hello.

I have traveled (albeit quickly) through much of the country, including the South. From that perspective, few states really stand out (not counting geography,) except for Mississippi. No one smiled at us in the entire state of Mississippi. The one time random strangers stopped to help me out, I was in New England.

The friend who recently traveled through the South reported unfriendliness from strangers, lack of smiling, people staring at them, hostility, etc.

The Wikipedia quotes a very different perspective, from Jacob Abbott (1835):

[T]he hospitality of southerners is so profuse, that taverns are but poorly supported. A traveler, with the garb and the manners of a gentleman, finds a welcome at every door.

This reminds me of Soviet propaganda trying to convince people that American grocery stores had so much food because Americans couldn’t afford to buy food, and that Soviet grocery stores were empty because Soviet citizens were buying up all of the food.

As far as I know, the South was more sparsely populated than the North, especially before the advent of air conditioning, the full eradication of malaria, and anti-hookworm campaigns, and the like. The economy hasn’t been all that robust, either. Few well-off travelers in a sparsely populated area => not many inns, so a social norm of local hospitality for travelers may, without which any travel would be quite difficult, may have been the most sensible outcome. We see this in other areas where people must depend on each other due to lack or uncertainty of local resources–the Eskimo were traditionally so hospitable, a traveler might even enjoy the loan of a man’s wife for an evening. Muslims also pride themselves on hospitality; a friend who has traveled extensively in Muslim countries claims that folks there are extremely friendly and hospitable, (except for that unfortunate time terrorists blew up his hotel. And afterwards, the rescue workers were extremely apologetic and embarrassed that such a bad thing could happen to a guest in their country.)

I suspect that the desert, like the arctic, is particularly fraught with dangers and scarce of people, and so cultural norms popped up about helping strangers.

And [Abraham] lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, and said, My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said.

And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth. And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetcht a calf tender and good, and gave it unto a young man; and he hasted to dress it. And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat. (Genesis 18:2-8)

Of course, directly after this story, these same visitors went to the city of Sodom, where they were treated most inhospitably by the mob. So Sodom, for its poor treatment of guests, was wiped from the map, while Abraham’s wife conceived her first child and he became father of a nation.

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.

Ezekiel 16:49

The most common defense I have seen of Southern hospitality is that it is a waning norm, not found in all areas of the South, and more common in the countryside than the city. This is a very reasonable defense (and would explain why I didn’t encounter it.) Cities are a relative novelty in the South, and have a lot of recently arrived migrants from other parts of the country, (who are therefore not culturally Southern,) and cities generally aren’t great places to be hospitable, just because they have too many people and too much crime.

Come to think of it, “stranger danger” was a big deal when I was a kid, so not only was I not raised to be hospitable to strangers, I was told that strangers would rape and murder you and to run away screaming if anyone tried to talk to me. Sure, it sounds paranoid now, but when I was little they found a dead kid in the dumpster at my apartment complex, so I think my parents were really doing the best they could.

Getting back to Jacob Abbott, note that he specifies that the traveler is a gentleman. He does not tell us what reception a black man or a poor farmer would receive. Southern society has traditionally been more hierarchical than Northern society, not just in the form of rigidly enforced class distinctions between aristocratic whites, poor whites, and blacks, but also in the relations between strangers and of children to their relatives.

Many Southerners, for example, report believing that children should not call relatives by their proper names, but by their familial position–eg, “Grandpa” instead of “Grandpa Joe” or just “Joe.” It is my impression that most children do this, but here the justification is that it is improper for children to use adults’ names. When my dad talks to me about something my mom has done, he doesn’t use her name, he calls her “mom,” because this is the only name I am supposed to call her by. I actually don’t know the names of some of my relatives because no one uses them with me.

(I know some Northerners who call their family members simply by their names, but I don’t know if that is a common thing in the North.)

Within this code of formality and class distinction, whether a Southerner calls someone “Sir” or “John” or “Mr. Smith” may (I am speculating) have great meaning, even if it means nothing at all to an outsider unfamiliar with the social norms. So a Southerner might in fact be acting “hospitably” in their mind by observing proper, polite social etiquette with a stranger (and yes, there is a problem with calling “etiquette” “hospitality” and expecting people to know what you mean, but inexactness of language is pretty common among humans,) and the stranger might not even notice, having no awareness of such distinctions of manners.

It’s like giving perfume to someone who can’t smell.

Ultimately, I suspect that “Southern Hospitality” may be inexactly named, because it primarily isn’t about hospitality per se, but about the conduct of relations between people, enforced perhaps among the middle to upper class, where folks (particularly strangers) at or above one’s social class are treated formally and deferentially. This includes hospitality norms, among other things, but does not necessarily mean that hospitality is extended to all classes of people or that it means what non-Southerners think of as hospitality.

I suspect that Southern “hospitality” did not traditionally extend to people lower class than oneself–Southern plantation owners were not opening their kitchens and bedrooms to every passing vagrant. Northerners who expect to be treated well regardless of their social class may find that they do not rate very highly on the Southern totem pole.

Northern society is supposed to be less hierarchical, (at least in theory,) and as a result, there are (I suspect) fewer socially observed norms of formality. (Business contexts may be different, though.)

And this explains why Southern Hospitality feels “fake” to Northerners. Northerners tend only to be overtly friendly toward people they actually regard as friends, while to Southerners, overt friendliness toward strangers (whom they may never be friends with,) is  simple politeness. The politeness is genuine politeness, but it is not friendship, which Northerners mistake it for. When they discover that it really wasn’t friendship, they feel deceived. To the Southerners, of course, Northerners come across as ill-mannered and rude, due to their disregard of formalities.

Indeed, many of the things Southerners consider “normal” in the hospitality department are (I gather) considered rude or offensive in the North. For example, I think Northerners tend to expect their guests to stay at hotels, and Southerners expect to be put up in people’s houses. The Northerners believe it rude to inflict oneself overmuch onto another’s company and invade their home and disrupt their routine, while Southerners believe that being with others is a great joy and helping their relatives save money by opening up their homes is a moral good.

Which, of course, leads to both sides referring to the other as “rude.”

Still just a theory, though.