Capital punishment in tribal Montenegro: Implications for law,biology, and theory of social control

Clan execution among feuding tribal societies is proposed as a significant precursor to modern law. This form of ostracism is examined with respect to its social control functions and the indigenous assumptions about behavior, genes and demography that guide the behavior. It is suggested that there are very close parallels between modern legal systems and nonliterate ones based on “self-help”, when capital punishment is used by normal decision groups in the name of “national security”.     

Social rejection,exclusion, and shunning among the Gombe chimpanzees

From the observations at Gombe over the past 23 years it appears that group punishment of deviant behavior through ostracism, as practiced in human groups, has not yet evolved in a truly sophisticated way in chimpanzee society. However, cases of “social rejection or exclusion” have been observed in three different behavioral contexts. Most frequently, a chimpanzee is the target of hostility as the result of competitive interaction within the community; in such cases, social cohesion counterbalances rejection, typically leading to integration within a relatively stable pattern of dominance and social interaction. The occasional departure of an individual who has been the target of aggression —like the withdrawal of Evered after repeated attacks by Figan and Faban—seems due to persistent hostility by a few males rather than general “ostracism” by the group as a whole. A second form of exclusion concerns outsiders found in the home range of the group: in these cases, hostility is more generalized, particularly in response to the attempt of an adult female with offspring to join the community. Finally, there are the rarely observed instances of shunning a group member whose behavior seems abnormal the social rejection of Pepe and Old Mr. McGregor after they suffered from polio.     

Ostracism,voice, and exit: The biology of social participation

A bewildering variety of social patterns can be described and analyzed as manifestations of ostracism and social rejection. Ostracism can be viewed as a coerced or involuntary rupture of social bonds, as distinguished from voluntary exit; both appear to be characteristic ways that animals use in relating to other members of the group. Based on Albert O. Hirschman's Exit, Voice and Loyalty, a general theoretical framework can be built on the realization that ostracism is far from a strange aberration—but that its excesses strike most moderns as uncivilized. This analysis presumes that active participation, flight, and bonding are general categories intrinsic to social behavior. It follows that, in different social contexts, the implications of ostracism vary greatly. Modern democratic systems, in which voluntary exit remains a possibility, resemble our hominid past more closely than authoritarian societies that place individuals in the unenviable position of being trapped in silence (with no legitimate right to exercise political voice, yet no possibility of escape). At the risk of Charges of valuative bias, the argument is made that democratic regimes may be—all things equal—closer to the center of our species-typical range of behavior than other kinds of centralized states or governmental systems.     

Pukhtunwali: Ostracism and honor among the Pathan Hill tribes

The Pathan Hill tribes provide an example of the functional role of ostracism in a face- to-face, kin-based society. “Pukhtunwali,” the Code of the Pathans, regulates the uses of ostracism, as a response to the conflict between an individual's desire for freedom and the necessity of tribal unity. The most striking use of ostracism among the Pathans is the rejection by the tribe or clan of one of its own members whose behavior might lead to feud. If a member of a group has committed an act likely to provoke a reprisal, which may be directed against any individual of that group, the guilty person may be expelled. By ostracizing the person, the group is both punishing him, and withdrawing its support. In Pathan society ostracism functions simultaneously to deter behavior that violates customary legal norms, to punish specific acts that are culturally defined as improper, and to unify the primary reference group on which individuals depend for protection and economic support.     

Primate social behavior and ostracism

Ostracism, and its attendant processes, emigration and immigration, are now recognized as basic mechanisms intrinsic to the long-term adaptation of primate society. Ostracism, defined as socially determined exclusion from the resources and opportunities necessary to successful reproduction, is a basic mechanism by which individuals strive to maximize their own reproductive success at the expense of others. Among males this process most often involves exclusion from opportunities to fertilize females (zygote formation) whereas among females it leads to competition for the resources necessary to raise these zygotes to adulthood. Ostracism from intrasexual competition may be so intense that it leads to the migration of less successful individuals into social groups offering greater opportunity. The “passports” most often used in primate immigration are sexual affinity and kinship alliance. Migration carries high risk and is associated with increased mortality and morbidity. Nevertheless, ostracism, emigration, and immigration remain as the basic social processes by which the ratio of resources to individuals shifts and balances from one year to the next. Such adjustments are made through the process of individual “decisions” and “strategies” to optimize personal reproductive success, but their net effect is to constantly redistribute individuals in relation to resources vital to reproduction.     

Ostracism and the law of defamation

This article compares the classical political institution of ostracism with the modern law of the United States concerning defamation. The classical institution of ostracism was a political tool of very limited scope. In modern society the term “ostracize” generally means to exclude a person from all or some of the benefits of a group. The law of defamation is a rather limited means of protecting an individual's reputation, consequently protecting individuals from being ostracized. The article concludes that United States law concerning defamation is generally inadequate as a means of protection from certain social consequences that resemble ostracism, such as job and educational discrimination. In addition, the article concludes that “the law seems to foster an unarticulated public policy that drifts in accordance with the preferences of individuals who have a great deal of personal or institutional power.”     

Breaking Through Disciplinary Barriers: Human–Wildlife Interactions and Multispecies Ethnography

One of the main challenges when integrating biological and social perspectives in primatology is overcoming interdisciplinary barriers. Unfamiliarity with subject-specific theory and language, distinct disciplinary-bound approaches to research, and academic boundaries aimed at “preserving the integrity” of subject disciplines can hinder developments in interdisciplinary research. With growing interest in how humans and other primates share landscapes, and recognition of the importance of combining biological and social information to do this effectively, the disparate use of terminology is becoming more evident. To tackle this problem, we dissect the meaning of what the biological sciences term studies in “human–wildlife conflict” or more recently “human–wildlife interactions” and compare it to what anthropology terms “multispecies ethnography.” In the biological sciences, human–wildlife interactions are the actions resulting from people and wild animals sharing landscapes and resources, with outcomes ranging from being beneficial or harmful to one or both species. In the social sciences, human–nonhuman relationships have been explored on a philosophical, analytical, and empirical level. Building on previous work, we advocate viewing landscapes through an interdisciplinary “multispecies lens” in which humans are observed as one of multiple organisms that interact with other species to shape and create environments. To illustrate these interconnections we use the case study of coexistence between people of the Nalu ethnic group and Critically Endangered western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Cantanhez National Park in Guinea-Bissau, to demonstrate how biological and social research approaches can be complementary and can inform conservation initiatives at the human–primate interface. Finally, we discuss how combining perspectives from ethnoprimatology with those from multispecies ethnography can advance the study of ethnoprimatology to aid productive discourse and enhance future interdisciplinary research.     

The weaker sex: Is being male a legally cognizable defect,impairment, or disability?

Compared with women, men die from cancer and coronary artery disease in disproportionately higher numbers and are more susceptible to a host of emotional and developmental disorders. The authors of this article consider what scientific proof or evidence would be required to legally recognize “being male” as a disability, based on the overwhelming number of physical deficiencies to which males are genetically predisposed. The article summarizes major scientific findings on male health problems and explores various laws and policies that might be implicated by treatment of males as a special category recognized by the law. How the law creates categories of individuals and the reasons why these categories are created for legal classification are reviewed. In addition, the potential for a “maleness” defense in the context of criminal law and procedure is assessed. Lastly, the authors examine the policy implications of treating men as a disabled class, and consider how judges, juries, and legislators would view a scientifically based approach to the creation of a class. Given the many false starts in the past, in which the law had embraced what later was shown to be bad science, substantial historical baggage will have to be overcome to convince judges, juries, and legislators that science has now got it in the sense of having established a valid, causal, genetic or biological determinant for behavior. The consideration of a “male deficiency” theory under the law would have to rely on a more inclusive view of legal “disability” and a willingness to allow technologic advances in genetics to inform our understanding of criminal behavior.     

Exclusion and shunning as legal and social sanctions

It seems difficult to determine which behavioral propensities are part of human biology and which are the results of cultural influences. If specific behavior patterns occur (perhaps with some variations) in all or most cultures, one might assume that they are based on innate behavioral tendencies. Exclusion and shunning are part of behavior patterns that have occurred again and again in various cultures throughout all recorded history as a response to deviant or abnormal behavior. This article examines the particular origins of the practice of “Ostrakismos” in ancient Athens, and its relationship to exile or exclusion from the legal community in various human cultures. With primitive peoples, and as evidenced in the laws of ancient Rome and medieval European kingdoms, outlawry was long a formalized sanction; also both Catholic and Lutheran religious laws provided explicitly for excommunication. In contrast, modern legal communities are less likely to exercise such formal expulsion of a member except under relatively extreme circumstances. The various data examined here may contribute to a comparative analysis of the behavior pattern “Exclusion and Shunning.”     

Biology and law

The terms “biology” and “biological” are widely used in ways that confuse and denigrate possible contributions of biologists to human self-understanding. As with social scientists, biologists deal with learning, developmental plasticity, and strategizing in virtually all species they study. It is from theories about how human strategizing is molded by selection that biologists can contribute to understanding topics like law.     

Cultural transmission and biological markets

Active cultural transmission of fitness-enhancing behavior (sometimes called “teaching”) can be seen as a costly strategy: one for which its evolutionary stability poses a Darwinian puzzle. In this article, we offer a biological market model of cultural transmission that substitutes or complements existing kin selection-based proposals for the evolution of cultural capacities. We demonstrate how a biological market can account for the evolution of teaching when individual learners are the exclusive focus of social learning (such as in a fast-changing environment). We also show how this biological market can affect the dynamics of cumulative culture. The model works best when it is difficult to have access to the observation of the behavior without the help of the actor. However, in contrast to previous non-mathematical hypotheses for the evolution of teaching, we show how teaching evolves, even when innovations are insufficiently opaque and therefore vulnerable to acquisition by emulators via inadvertent transmission. Furthermore, teaching in a biological market is an important precondition for enhancing individual learning abilities.     

The “Normalization” of Intersex Bodies and “Othering” of Intersex Identities in Australia

Once described as hermaphrodites and later as intersex people, individuals born with intersex variations are routinely subject to so-called “normalizing” medical interventions, often in childhood. Opposition to such practices has been met by attempts to discredit critics and reasserted clinical authority over the bodies of women and men with “disorders of sex development.” However, claims of clinical consensus have been selectively constructed and applied and lack evidence. Limited transparency and lack of access to justice have helped to perpetuate forced interventions. At the same time, associated with the diffusion of distinct concepts of sex and gender, intersex has been constructed as a third legal sex classification, accompanied by pious hopes and unwarranted expectations of consequences. The existence of intersex has also been instrumentalized for the benefit of other, intersecting, populations. The creation of gender categories associated with intersex bodies has created profound risks: a paradoxically narrowed and normative gender binary, maintenance of medical authority over the bodies of “disordered” females and males, and claims that transgressions of social roles ascribed to a third gender are deceptive. Claims that medicalization saves intersex people from “othering,” or that legal othering saves intersex people from medicalization, are contradictory and empty rhetoric. In practice, intersex bodies remain “normalized” or eliminated by medicine, while society and the law “others” intersex identities. That is, medicine constructs intersex bodies as either female or male, while law and society construct intersex identities as neither female nor male. Australian attempts at reforms to recognize the rights of intersex people have either failed to adequately comprehend the population affected or lacked implementation. An emerging human rights consensus demands an end to social prejudice, stigma, and forced medical interventions, focusing on the right to bodily integrity and principles of self-determination.     

Culture,biology, and human behavior

Social scientists have not integrated relevant knowledge from the biological sciences into their explanations of human behavior. This failure is due to a longstanding antireductionistic bias against the natural sciences, which follows on a commitment to the view that social facts must be explained by social laws. This belief has led many social scientists into the error of reifying abstract analytical constructs into entities that possess powers of agency. It has also led to a false nature-culture dichotomy that effectively undermines the place of biology in social scientific explanation. Following the principles of methodological individualism, we show how behavioral explanations supported by data and theory from the neurosciences can be used to correct the errors of reificationist thinking in the social sciences. We outline a mechanistic approach to the explanation of human behavior with the hope that the biological sciences will begin to find greater acceptance among social scientists.     

Strong reciprocity, human cooperation, and the enforcement of social norms

This paper provides strong evidence challenging the self-interest assumption that dominates the behavioral sciences and much evolutionary thinking. The evidence indicates that many people have a tendency to voluntarily cooperate, if treated fairly, and to punish noncooperators. We call this behavioral propensity “strong reciprocity” and show empirically that it can lead to almost universal cooperation in circumstances in which purely self-interested behavior would cause a complete breakdown of cooperation. In addition, we show that people are willing to punish those who behaved unfairly towards a third person or who defected in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with a third person. This suggests that strong reciprocity is a powerful device for the enforcement of social norms involving, for example, food sharing or collective action. Strong reciprocity cannot be rationalized as an adaptive trait by the leading evolutionary theories of human cooperation (in other words, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, and costly signaling theory). However, multilevel selection theories of cultural evolution are consistent with strong reciprocity.     

Human Sexual Differences in the Use of Social Ostracism as a Competitive Tactic

An aspect of social systems that is similar between chimpanzees and humans is that males form larger groups than females do. Both chimpanzee and human studies suggest that large groups are costlier for females than for males, so females attempt to reduce group size. Social ostracism of female group members occurs in both species and may serve as a mechanism for group size reduction. We formed groups of female and male children to examine directly whether human females would be more likely than males to employ social ostracism. We asked 7 female and 7 male groups of 10-yr-old children to compose and perform a play about a topic of interest to them. Female groups engaged in social ostracism more than male groups did. Further, within female groups, cortisol levels remained higher for female perpetrators of social ostracism than for their victims, suggesting that social ostracism is costly. In contrast, more frequent 1:1 conflictual behavior occurred in male than in female groups, but cortisol was unrelated to frequencies of 1:1 conflicts. Our results support the theory that human females find groups aversive and seek to reduce their size via social ostracism. Coalitions minimize the risk of retaliation but may induce costs.     

The SER Standards,cultural ecosystems,and the nature‐culture nexus—a reply to Evans and Davis

Evans and Davis claim the SER Standards use a “pure naturalness” model for restoration baselines and exclude most cultural ecosystems from the ecological restoration paradigm. The SER Standards do neither. The SER Standards consider both “natural” ecosystems (that are unequivocally not cultural) and “similar” cultural ecosystems as suitable reference models. Furthermore, Evans and Davis propose assessing whether a cultural ecosystem exhibits “good, bad, or neutral impacts from humans on ecosystems” as the basis for reference models. We argue that such an approach would overlook the indispensability of native ecosystem benchmarks to measure human impacts and provide a springboard for social‐ecological restoration.     

Maintaining cooperation in social-ecological systems:

Natural resources are vulnerable to over-exploitation in the absence of effective management. However, norms, enforced by social ostracism, can promote cooperation and increase stock biomass in common-pool resource systems. Unfortunately, the long-term sustainable use of a resource is not assured even if cooperation, maintained by ostracism and aimed at optimizing resource use, exists. Here, using the example of fisheries, we show that for a cooperative to be maintained by ostracism over time, it often must act inefficiently, choosing a ‘second-best’ strategy where the resource is over-harvested to some degree. Those cooperatives that aim for maximum sustainable profit, the “first-best” harvest strategy, are more vulnerable to invasion by independent harvesters, leading to larger declines in the fish population. In contrast, second-best strategies emphasize the resistance to invasion by independent harvesters over maximizing yield or profit. Ultimately, this leads to greater long-run payoffs to the resource users as well as higher resource stock levels. This highlights the value of pragmatism in the design of cooperative institutions for managing natural resources.     

Competitive processes. II. Stability of random systems

In this work, by employing the concept of vector Lyapunov functions and the theory of random differential inequalities, the stability analysis of random competitive systems is initiated in a systematic and unified way. Furthermore, an attempt has been made to formulate and partially resolve the “deterministic vs. stochastic”, and the “complexity vs. stability” problems in stochastic competitive processes. Finally, the usefulness of the stability analysis of the competitive systems has been demonstrated by exhibiting several well-known examples of competitive processes in biological, medical, physical and social sciences in a coherent way.     

Conservation planning and Indigenous governance in Australia's Indigenous Protected Areas

Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) recognize that “country” constitutes land and waters that have enduring cultural, social, and economic linkages for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that extend over millennia, and which are critical to sustainable Indigenous futures. Within Australia's conservation system, IPAs become part of the National Reserve System (NRS) when Indigenous peoples voluntarily announce their intention to manage “country,” in accordance with their law, custom, and culture, and consistently with national and international conservation guidelines. The NRS requirement is that land is managed “in perpetuity” which highlights a potential tension between with the conservation goals and the voluntary character of IPAs. Ecological restoration in IPAs also raises contested ideas about what is “natural,” the relevant “baseline” for restoration, and what are the objectives to be achieved—ecological or cultural sustainability? Experience from Healthy Country Planning in IPAs indicates that restoration of traditional owner decision‐making, as well as respectful use and valuing community knowledge, is central to the sustainability of outcomes. Ecological restoration is most effectively achieved by restoring governance processes that support Indigenous peoples given the inseparability of cultural, social, economic, and ecological objectives.