The Sociality of Animals

Author(s): A. P. Cheater and Tim Ingold

Source: Man, New Series, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Dec., 1985), pp. 743-746
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2802761
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 CORRESPONDENCE
The cattle complex
This mouldering cliche has recently been dis-
interred, independently, by Robert Chambers
(I983: 77) and George Lako (I985: 28). Both,
naturally, object to it. But neither knows, and
hardly anyone has ever known, what Melville
Herskovits meant by 'cattle complex' in his long
article on the subject (I926) and how the phrase
came completely to change its meaning. May I
have a little space to tell the story?
Herskovits was one of the first American
anthropologists to work in Africa, and his visit
to Kenya was his first. At that time, American
anthropology concentrated on problems of cul-
ture conceived as a sum of items of behaviour
(traits), and its practitioners were interested
either, like Ruth Benedict, in contrasting total
cultures on Nietzschean lines, or in asking
whether culture as such evolved in different
places or spread from a single source. The
identification and location of complexes of
culture traits could clearly throw light on
questions of this kind; and it is a well observed
fact that one such complex, with minor differ-
ences, is widely characteristic of transhumant
pastoralists.
This then was what Herskovits observed and
recorded in East Africa; and as he was one of the
first to call himself an 'applied anthropologist',
he remarked also that the way of life in question
had its disadvantages in modern conditions. He
published his article at a time when Freud's
work was belatedly becoming known to-
though rarely read by-the general public in
Britain, and it was among those Whites in
Kenya who understood the Herskovitsian as
little as the Freudian meaning of the word that
the phrase 'They have a cattle complex' became
current. This at least cannot be laid at the
anthropologists' door.
Lucy Mair
London
Chambers, R. I983. Rural development:putting
the lastfirst. London: Longman.
Herskovits, M. J. I926. The cattle complex in
EastAfrica,Am. Anthrop.28, 230-72, 36I-
88, 494-528, 633-64.
Lako, G. T. I985. The impact of the Jonglei
scheme on the economy of the Dinka, Afr.
Aff, 84, 334, 15-38.
The sociality of animals
Radcliffe-Brown (1952: I89) described the
'relations of association' among queen, workers
and drones in a hive, among animals in a herd,
between a mother-cat and her kittens, as 'social
phenomena'. Ingold (I983: 5) dismisses this
assertion as 'pure Spencerian utilitarianism'.
Later (1983: 6), Ingold accuses Radcliffe-Brown
of 'magnificently contradicting his initial con-
ception of the social', described above, by the
use of the Durkheimian conception of 'person',
rather than 'individual', to refer to the locus or
node from which the 'complex network of so-
cial relations' (Radcliffe-Brown I952: I90) radi-
ates out to compose the social structure.
I should like to dispute Ingold's understand-
ing of Radcliffe-Brown. In the first place, I see
no reason to assume that in his paper 'On social
structure', Radcliffe-Brown was using the term
'person' in its specifically Durkheimian mean-
ing, although I grant this usage could be re-
garded as probable. In the early pages of this
paper, Radcliffe-Brown uses 'human being' to
refer to the same nodal position in the structural
lattice. We might equally use 'role' as a
synonym. The word, I would argue, is less
important than the fact that, in Radcliffe-
Brown's view, whatever it denotes must reflect
the standardised behaviour patterns accepted by
the society in question for those nodal positions.
On this reasoning alone, Radcliffe-Brown's
conception of 'social relations' and 'social struc-
ture' as 'this network of actually existing rela-
tions'(I952: I90), couldequallyapplyto animal
or human behavioural systems. Ingold argues
that it does not, and that Radcliffe-Brown's
early use of animal examples was, in effect, a
careless choice which he was later to contradict.
I think Ingold is, in this respect, wrong.
Perhaps Ingold's position is derived from
Kuper's (I973: 54) belief that Radcliffe-Brown
experienced 'conversion to a new paradigm' in
switching his interests from the ethnological
approach of his Cambridge teachers, especially
Rivers, to Durkheimian sociology. Kuper
admits that Radcliffe-Brown 'never published a
record of his conversion', but nevertheless
places considerable and perhaps unwarranted
emphasis on the latter's 'remark that his switch
... was quite sudden', attributing to this
 744 CORRESPONDENCE
change the lack of detailed logical analysis that
Kuhn(I970) arguesis characteristic
of paradigm is open to dispute. In other words, Ingold's own
switches.
I do not wish to debate here the issue of
whether ethnology and sociology might be re-
garded as different paradigms in Kuhn's various
meanings of this term, but I do wish to suggest
that Radcliffe-Brown carried over into his
newly acquired Durkheimian perspective one
important residue of his early intellectual ex-
perience. This residue was not directly a feature
of River's ethnological approach, but was not
totally unconnected to it. 'Anarchy Brown', as
an undergraduate student, was interested in
the specific variant of anarchism espoused by
Kropotkin (Kuper I973: 54). I therefore assume
that Radcliffe-Brown would almost certainly
have read Kropotkin's Mutual aid, published in
I902 during his English exile. This probability
is perhaps increased by Kropotkin's own per-
sonal ties with Robertson-Smith, Cantabrian
professor and editor of the EncyclopaediaBritan-
nica, to which Kropotkin contributed (Miller
I976). In Mutual aid exists the probable resol-
ution of what Ingold regards as internal contra-
dictions in Radcliffe-Brown's view of 'the so-
cial' and his use of the concept 'person'.
'Societyhas notbeencreatedbyman;ltls anterior
to man' (Kropotkin I9I4 (I902): 54, footnote i).
'Societies, bands, or tribes-not families-
were thus the primitive form of organisation of
mankind. . . . The very first human societies
simply were afurther developmentof thosesocieties
which constitutethe very essenceof the life of the
higheranimals'(I9I4: 79-80, my emphasis). The
early chapters of Mutual aid argue, contrary to
the then prevailing 'survival of the fittest' type
of Darwinism, that the real key to evolutionary
survival and success is social co-operation,
which is very widespread in the animal king-
dom for this reason. Kropotkin cites many ex-
amples of such social co-operation, some from
his own fieldwork experience in the i86o's in
Siberia. Inter alia, he discusses marriage rules
among bird species. I suggest that it is from this
background that Radcliffe-Brown quite de-
liberately begins his exegesis of social structure,
starting with animal behaviour as part of a
continuum of social co-operation that links man
to other social species. And for Kropotkin, in-
tentionality, or what Ingold describes as 'aware-
ness of the self as the predicate of one's relations
to others or to the collectivity' (I983: 6), is the
very essence of social co-operation, among
animals as among men. It is necessary to be
socially conscious in order that co-operative
rather than antagonistic behaviour is selected as
appropriate, particularlyin a situation of threat.
If I am correct in making these connexions
between Radcliffe-Brown's structuralism and
Kropotkin's earlier work, then regrettably
Ingold's view that anthropologists following
Radcliffe-Brown deny the sociality of animals,
argument is somewhat older and less novel than
he allows.
A. P. Cheater
Universityof Zimbabwe
Radcliffe-Brown was exceptionally well-versed
in a whole variety of subjects, and it is more than
likely that he read Kropotkin's Mutual aid.
Whether this presumed reading had a decisive
impact on his thought is another matter. Whilst
the only evidence that Cheater can adduce is
purely circumstantial, there has never been any
doubt about Radcliffe-Brown's debt to the
writings of Herbert Spencer. Now Radcliffe-
Brown's 'preliminary definition of social phe-
nomena' as 'relations of association between
individual organisms' (I952: I89) is directly de-
rived from Spencer who, in the opening pages
of his Principlesof sociology,dwelt at some length
on the 'societies' of ants and bees, birds, and a
range of mammalian species (I876, I: 4-8).
Moreover cooperation, for Spencer, was the
very essence of sociality, being 'at once that
which cannot exist without a society, and
that for which society exists' (I882, II: 244).
Radcliffe-Brown, in characterising the social
life of animals, makes explicit reference to
Spencer's use of the term 'co-operation' (I952:
8-9). It is perfectly true, as Cheater says, that
Radcliffe-Brown begins his account of social
structure with the co-operative behaviour of
nonhuman animals: this is part of his strategy
for demonstrating the independence of society
and culture-thus bees in the hive, he says,
are social but lack culture. But it is not at all
clear why we should look for the source of his
ideas about animal co-operation in the work of
Kropotkin rather than Spencer, given his fre-
quent acknowledgement of the latter and the
complete absence of any reference to the for-
mer.
Kropotkin was not alone in elaborating a
theory of altruism based on Darwinian prin-
ciples. Spencer did the same, in The dataof ethics
(I907). Like Kropotkin's, his theory was in-
tended to be applicable right across the animal
kingdom, from insects to humankind, and he
anticipated much of the current sociobiological
theory of parental, nepotistic and reciprocal
altruism. I expect that if one were to compare
Spencer and Kropotkin on altruism, the differ-
ences would turn out to be almost precisely
those that presently divide advocates of 'kin-
selection' and 'group-selection' respectively.
Both can find support for their views in the
writings of Darwin, and without seeking to
underestimate their differences, it would be true
to say (contraCheater) that for neither is the
conscious awareness of self in society a precon-
 CORRESPONDENCE
dition for co-operation (rather than conflict) or
altruism (rather than egotism). The social in-
sect, performing a co-operative or altruistic act,
does so in the fulfilment of innate disposition;
thus the characterisation of the act has nothing
to do with the intention of the agent, but with its
beneficial consequences for the fitness of other
individuals or of the group as a whole. In this
view the role of consciousness, most highly
developed in the human species, is not to direct
but to monitorconduct performed according to
rules already built into the natural constitution
of the individual. Man, as Darwin wrote, did
not create the rules of social life, he merely
became aware of them.
For Durkheim the situation was quite other-
wise. Far from issuing from the nature of indi-
viduals, the rules of conduct belong to an im-
posed, institutional order, and their function is
to curbthe free expression of innate disposition.
The moral conscience does not work to achieve
a viable balance among the many competing
demands of human nature, but to enforce an
external code: in short, its role is no longer that
of judge but of governor. To this view there
corresponded a quite different understanding of
altruism, which still divides anthropologists
and sociobiologists today. As Durkheim ex-
plainedin Suicide(I952 [I897]), actionis altru-
istic only in so far as it conforms to the dictates
of society as opposedto those of human nature.
Thus it is the social motivation rather than the
physical consequence of the act that makes it
altruistic. All the co-operation and mutual aid in
the animal kingdom, about which Spencer and
Kropotkin wrote so extensively, does not
amount to a single instance of altruism, since
society-conceived as an external regulative
order-was for Durkheim uniquely human.
Nonhuman animals, he wrote, associate and
co-operate spontaneously in the fulfilment of
internal dispositions; but in human society we
deal with a phenomenon of an entirely different
kind, 'which consists in the fact that certain
ways of acting are imposed, or at least suggested
from outsidethe individual and are added on to his
own nature: such is the character of "insti-
tutions" (I982 [I9I7]).
I do not 'dismiss' Radcliffe-Brown's initial
definition of the social, nor do I deny that a
definition of social structure as a 'network of
actually existing relations' could be applied to
animal behavioural systems generally, nor again
do I regard Radcliffe-Brown's use of animal
examples as a 'careless choice'. On the contrary,
given his explicit commitment to a Spencerian
view of the adaptation of individuals to life in
society, it was a choice he was boundto make.Nor
was the subsequent contradiction any less in-
evitable. As Stanner has pointed out his work
was an attempted synthesis of 'extraordinarily
diverse elements: he drew his theory of reality
745
from Heraclitus, his theory of process from
Herbert Spencer, and hss theory of epistemol-
ogy from Durkheim' (I968: 286). The synthesis
failed simply because Durkheim and Spencer
meant completely different things by society.
To see this we have only to follow Radcliffe-
Brown's reasoning through the crucial pages of
his paper'On social structure'(I952: I89-94).
First introduced as the 'network of actually
existing relations' between 'individual human
beings',social structure is presented as a snapshot
or transect, 'at a given moment of time'
(p. I92), of a reality which-like the river of
Heraclitus-is all process and flux, constituted
by 'an immense multitude of actions and in-
teractions of human beings' (I952: 4). All this is
perfectly consistent with his initial definition of
social phenomena, and could be applied just as
well to ants and bees.
Out of the continuous flux of social life,
however, we can derive by abstraction certain
regularities of behaviour, which are the lin-
eaments of what Radcliffe-Brown calls structural
form, a putatively persistent arrangement of
parts or positions. He uses the term 'person' to
denote each constituent position of the form, in
explicit contradiction to the individual, who is
but a biological organism (p. I93). But by this
stage of the argument, the abstract form has
already hardened into a concrete, enduring en-
tity which, moreover, he proceeds to identify
with social structure itself. 'I regard as a part of
the social structure', Radcliffe-Brown writes,
'all social relations of person to person' (p. I9I).
Now if social relations are construed to exist
between generic persons as parts, they cannot
exist as such between specific individual organ-
isms; yet it was precisely with interactive asso-
ciations of the latter kind that Radcliffe-Brown
began, in defining both social relations and
social structure. If that is not contradictory, I do
not know what is! Moreover Radcliffe-Brown
must have been aware of the contradiction,
since in retrospect he admitted that his address
on social structure 'is not as clear as it might be'
(I952: 4). In hindsight it is possible to pinpoint
the precise moment at which he switches from
the Spencerian to the Durkheimian mode, when
he writes that 'the social phenomena which we
observe in any human society are not the im-
mediate result of the nature of individual human
beings, but are the result of the social structure
by which they are united' (I952: I90-I). With
this, structure promptly ceases to be an inter-
actional network and reappearsas a higher-level
arrangement of normative institutions, unique
to mankind, imposing a determination of its
own on human relations.
Most of Radcliffe-Brown's followers, ignor-
ing the distinction between social structure and
structural form, and preferring to pursue the
Durkheimian rather than the Spencerian strand
746 CORRESPONDENCE
in his thought, have been content to adopt the
view of social structure as an externally imposed
system of rules, more often equated than con-
trasted with culture. In so doing, they have
excluded from the realm of social phenomena
the entire field of so-called altruistic and co-
operative behaviour among nonhuman animals.
According to Cheater, my view that anthropo-
logists following Radcliffe-Brown deny the
sociality of animals is open to doubt. I do not
think that it is. Nobody of course denies that
nonhuman animals co-operate, and perform
acts which can have beneficial consequences for
other individuals. But most anthropologists
deny the intentionality of such acts and, being
inclined to regard as social only those acts
directed by a conscious self towards others, they
reserve social relations for man (cf. Fortes, I983:
29). I too take intentionality to be the predicate
of social relations, but conceive such relations as
existing between persons as conscious subjects
rather than as parts in an ideal structure of rules.
In the light of recent discussions of animal
awareness (e.g. Griffin I976), there is reason to
believe that many nonhuman animals may also
be social in this sense (though I would not go so
far as to include ants and bees). If this had been
obvious to anthropologists all along it would be
a matter not of regret but of rejoicing, but I am
afraid it has not.
Tim Ingold
Universityof Manchester.
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sociology. London: Routledge & Kegan
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I982 [I9I7]. 'Society', reprinted in The
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