Frans de Waal, THE APE AND THE SUSHI MASTER: Cultural Reflections by a Primatologist, Basic Books, 2001 Reviewed by Barbara J. King Department of Anthropology, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, 23187-8795, USA DEBATING CULTURE During a recent Wenner-Gren international symposium devoted to reexamination of the culture concept in anthropology, participants created a mock newspaper head-line to convey the spirit of their discussions: "Apes have culture; humans don't." This phrase neatly captures an irony evident in current scholarship about culture. Many cultural anthropologists (though by no means all; see Brumann 1999) now urge abandonment of the culture concept because they see it as hopelessly essentialized and politicized when applied to human groups.(1) That is, they reject the idea that discrete human groups have a distinct, bounded set of identifiable ideas, beliefs, or practices, and they worry that claims for such sets of bounded ideas, beliefs, or practices are too often made by suspect nationalist movements. They prefer historical analyses, life-history approaches, and other methods that reject engagement with the culture concept. Primatologists, by and large, embrace the culture concept. They insist that when behavioral variation across populations of certain species of monkeys and apes is shown to be social in origin, it must be treated as evidence of culture (e.g., Whiten et al. 1999). Culture exists, then, when behavioral variants are socially transmitted and not due only to ecological variation. By failing to label such phenomena as culture, we fall into the dualistic trap of implying that only humans are cultural beings while confining other animals to the realm of nature. Reading Frans de Waal's "The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist" within this intellectual framework is a fascinating experience. A well-known primatologist based at the Living Links Center, Emory University, de Waal writes that by accepting a broad definition of culture "we can make the necessary connection between animal and human culture without in any way devaluing" human achievements (p. 238). The key component of culture is "the nongenetic spreading of habits and information"; "the rest is nothing else than embellishment" (pp. 30-31). Culture, in this formulation, means learning from others. Chimpanzees in some populations groom others by assuming a hand-clasp posture; this posture is socially learned and thus cultural. When Japanese monkeys learn to wash potatoes in water after observing a young female do so and killer whales teach their young to hunt on beaches via a complex technique of self-stranding, they too are demonstrating culture. It is not, then, only humans and the apes, our closest living relatives, that have culture. Indeed, there are "so many cultural creatures surrounding us" (p. 363) that it is imperative to embrace animal-human continuity in the fullest sense. Granted, cultural capacity is found at varying levels within the animal kingdom; de Waal identifies a "gamut of cultural transmission" (p. 264) that ranges from making simple associations (as between potatoes and water in the Japanese monkey example) to imitating complex skilled techniques. For de Waal all the levels are cultural, but the notes that even if other anthropologists insist that the criteria for culture include the manipulation of symbols (2) in natural situations, it won't be long before chimpanzees are found to qualify. De Waal clearly expects resistance to his rationale for net-casting. He is convinced--rightly--that some people want to trumpet human uniqueness at the expense of kinship with other primates. Yet as a primatologist who has repeatedly stressed what unites humans with other animals, I raise questions for de Waal from two other directions, both divorced from any concern about animal-human continuity. First, why is it desirable to bestow upon nonhuman social learning a label, "culture," derived from the study of human social transmission? The Ape and the Sushi Master's chief lesson for anthropologists may be its portrayal of the passion with which some scientists strive for just this outcome, the attribution to other species of a term many of us now refuse to apply to human groups. For de Waal, it is not enough to discover the complex social learning of monkeys and apes and describe it in its own terms. A keenly observant primatologist, he has in the past broken new ground in the understanding of primate political striving, reconciliation and consolation, and the evolution of morality. In each case he has not only explored the implications of what monkeys and apes do for understanding the evolution of human behavior--surely an anthropological endeavor--but also applied a human framework to understanding the monkeys and apes, which is a very different matter. What do we gain by describing monkey and ape social learning as "cultural" in addition to "social"? Does calling a trait "cultural" instead of "group-specific" help us understand it? To his credit, de Waal notes that "whether we grant animals culture is ultimately a human cultural question" (p. 361). In writing about this theme, he gives deserved recognition to Japanese scientists who, now as well as in the days of the pioneering scholar Imanishi, find it wholly reasonable that individual monkeys should have personalities and monkey societies should have culture. De Waal is of course aware that he too is a cultural being, equally affected by his own assumptions and outlooks as the Japanese are by theirs. Taking this perspective a step farther, we might consider not only why the attribution of human terms to nonhumans is a useful methodology but also why that methodology is so compelling for some primatologists and so superfluous for others. Second, by contenting himself with accepting any kind of social learning as cultural, might de Waal be underemphasizing, ironically, the depth of what he calls culture in monkeys and apes? Casting the net more deeply, we could find out more about monkey and ape culture by looking at the everyday, intergenerational interactions of monkeys and apes. We might focus not just on the learning of tool-using, foraging, or grooming techniques but also on the emergence of the skills needed to negotiate routine transactions (when to approach another, how to request aid, and so on). Ape infants, for example, do not "acquire" communicational signals but rather help create shared meanings as they participate in social interactions with their older relatives and associates (King 1999). Might this kind of research, if brought into the culture debate, guide those who insist on the existence of ape culture, helping them to learn something about the link between shared meanings within families and groups, on the one hand, and shared meanings across groups, on the other (see Fogel 1993)? Whatever challenges may be raised about de Waal's view of culture, without question his book epitomizes superb scholarship presented in a delightful style. Anthropologists, biologists, and pychologists alike should read The Ape and the Sushi Master and assign it to their students. The fascinating reflections and anecdotes woven into the book guarantee the reader's enjoyment. In it one discovers not only why the now-discounted animal behaviorist Lorenz deserves to be read and honored but why scholars think Mozart wrote a piece of music to eulogize his pet starling, what happened when male chimpanzees were shown a film starring their long-dead rival, why anatomically correct elephant statues are considered scandalous in the United States but not in other countries, and how one bat tried to teach another bat how to give birth. More important, it is a most valuable and provocative volume on a topic anthropologists care deeply about. Whatever their take on animal culture, readers will learn a great deal from it.(3) 1. I came to understand this view through the work of cultural anthropologists, in particular Chris Hann and Michel-Rolph Trouillot, featured at the aforementioned Wenner-Gren symposium (September 2000). 2. Those familiar with the debate about language--whether language is unique to humans or shared by other animals--will note parallels here with the way linguists shifted the criteria for what "counts" as language precisely as enculturated apes were shown to have more and more complex linguistic skills. 3. I am grateful to Willow Powers and Stuart Shanker for comments that improved this review. References Cited Brumann, Christoph. 1999. Writing for culture: Why a successful concept should not be discarded. Current Anthropology 40:S1-27. Fogel, Alan. 1993. Developing through relationships: Origin of communication, self, and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. King, Barbara J . 1999. "New directions in primate social learning," in Mammalian social learning. Edited by Kathleen R. Gibson and Hilary O. Box, pp. 17-32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whiten, Andrew, Jane Goodall, William c . McGrew, Toshisada Nishida, Vernon Reynolds, Yu-Kimaru Sugiyama, and Caroline E . G. Tutin. 1999. Cultures in chimpanzees. Nature 399:682-85. **************************************************************************** Primate-Science Book Reviews are supported in part by grant RR15311-01 from the National Center for Research Resources, National Institutes of Health. P-S Book Reviews may be reposted or republished, but must cite the author and Primate-Science. This review should be cited as follows: Jolly, Clifford J. Review of Primate Ecology and Social Structure: Vol. 2, New World Monkeys, by Robert W. Sussman (2000), Primate-Science Book Reviews, Primate-Science List Serve [primate-science@primate.wisc.edu] (September 14, 2000). ****************************************************************************
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