Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes |  | Author: Frans de Waal
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 127831
Media: Paperback
Edition: 25th anniversary
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 6.8 x 0.8
ISBN: 0801886562
Dewey Decimal Number: 599.885
EAN: 9780801886560
ASIN: 0801886562
Publication Date: August 30, 2007
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Amazon.com Review
The great apes, like humans, can recognize themselves in mirrors. They communicate by sound and gesture, form bands along what can only be called political lines, and sometimes engage in what is very clearly organized warfare. (Less frequently, too, they practice cannibalism.) In Chimpanzee Politics Frans de Waal, a longtime student of simian behavior, analyzes the behavior of a captive tribe of chimpanzees, comparing its actions with those of ape societies in the wild. What he finds is often not pleasant: chimps seem capable of astonishing deviousness and savagery, which has obvious implications for the behavior their human cousins sometimes exhibit.
Product Description
The first edition of Frans de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics was acclaimed not only by primatologists for its scientific achievement but also by politicians, business leaders, and social psychologists for its remarkable insights into the most basic human needs and behaviors. Twenty-five years later, this book is considered a classic. Featuring a new preface that includes recent insights from the author, this anniversary edition is a detailed and thoroughly engrossing account of rivalries and coalitions -- actions governed by intelligence rather than instinct. As we watch the chimpanzees of Arnhem behave in ways we recognize from Machiavelli (and from the nightly news), de Waal reminds us again that the roots of politics are older than humanity.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
 Chimpanzee politics--brutal and all too familiar August 11, 2009
Steven A. Peterson (Hershey, PA (Born in Kewanee, IL))
This is a revised version of Frans de Waal's widely read work "Chimpanzee Politics." At the outset, de Waal notes that he uses the term "politics" very consciously. He says: "If we follow Harold Lasswell's famous definition of politics as a social process determining 'who gets what, when, how,' there can be little doubt that chimpanzees engage in it. The events depicted in this volume come from the Arnhem Zoo chimpanzee colony. That itself is problematic, since chimpanzees (and other animals) in artificial environments can have their behavior altered thereby (still, similar things have happened in "the wild," so de Waal's work is probably of value and relevance).
One of the threads of this work is the ongoing triangular relationship among three adult males--Luit, Yeroen, and Nikkie. The record of their shifting alliances and the gruesome murder of one of these three later on makes telling and chilling reading.
The arc of the trio's relationship begins with Yeroen as the dominant (alpha) male. Over time, Luit began to ally with Nikkie to undermine Yeroen's authority. Finally, the coalition of Luit and Nikkie prevailed and Yeroen was dislodged as the top male in the troop. However, with time, Yeroen and Nikkie began to explore an alliance and, in the end, the two united to "overthrow" Luit, with a ghastly ending.
There is much more to this book than the slow dance among the three males, but that tale typifies the calculated behavior of chimpanzees. This is a well written and even compelling read. The problems with the artificial setting and de Waal's treatment of the chimpanzees as cost-benefit calculators may give them too-human qualities. But the arc of this book is fascinating and still worth reading years after the first version was published.
 An attractive anniversary edition of a classic book November 25, 2008
Arthur Digbee (Indianapolis, IN, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In this classic work, Frans de Waal introduces us to the social life of chimpanzees. It's based on his studies of a large band in the Arnhem Zoo, which has a very large enclosure in which (we hope) chimpanzees behave fairly naturally. Chimp social life is dominated by social relationships, hierarchies, food, and sex. This book enjoys its lasting popularity to the fact that many humans apparently believe that these same factors dominate human social life.
By all measures, it's one of those rare books that makes a scientific contribution while being accessible to lay persons. I'm one of those lay persons and found the book very interesting. It's mostly about chimps, though you'll be tempted to draw parallels with humans at various times.
This 25th anniversary edition is a trade paperback, with lots of black and white pictures throughout the text and about a dozen color plates in the middle.
A Fascinating Read March 29, 2008
A. Bancroft (San Diego)
I was hesitant to purchase this book because I thought it was pricey. Let me tell you, it was worth every penny. This good quality paperback is filled with terrific photos and lots of references. Frans de Waal's documentation of the behavior of the Chimps of Arnhem is hilarious and horrifying. I couldn't put it down!
An excellent update January 8, 2008
Brian Switek (New Brunswick, NJ USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
In the year I was born the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal delivered a highly popular and influential book about the chimpanzees of Arnhem Zoo, the Netherland facility housing the largest captive population of the apes in the world. At first such a book might not have seemed so exciting, the well-known studies of Jane Goodall or Diane Fossey among apes in Africa making a group of chimpanzees in a zoo seem bland by comparison, but de Waal took advantage of the opportunities for detailed observation the captive setting provided and painted a vivid picture of the complex social life of chimpanzees in Chimpanzee Politics. Twenty-five years after its first publication, the book has recently been updated with new information about the chimpanzees of Arnhem and a selection of color photographs, the supplemental materials adding to what was already an excellent book.
The true strength of Chimpanzee Politics lies in de Waal's ability to guide the reader step-by-step through the complex social interactions of the chimpanzees, the story of the various dominance shifts and reconciliations being fairly easy to follow. Even when some of the interactions become a little confusing, the book includes a smattering of diagrams that help to show how the groups feelings toward a certain member oscillated back and forth over time, for example. These are especially helpful as de Waal shows that while physical strength or the ability to beat another chimpanzee in a one-to-one confrontation is important, coalitions and support from other members of the group can make or break dominance hierarchies in ways that we might not expect. Indeed, the males Luit, Nikki, and Yeroen are the main "characters" of this tale, each having their time at the top (but only through cooperation and coalitions). Ultimately, as reported by de Waal in the paper "The Brutal Elimination of a Rival Among Captive Male Chimpanzees" published in 1986, Luit was fatally injured by Nikki and Yeroen, a fact that is included in the epilouge as de Waal admits he did not want to initially end his book on a dark note.
The power shifts between the three males don't make sense without an understanding of the females in the group, however, and de Waal does spend some time describing the behaviors and social habits of the females. A little more explanation and detail in this area would have strengthened the book, especially since female chimpanzees in the wild disperse from their home populations and are not constantly in close contact with each other, but de Waal does spend some time talking about the rough time the male chimpanzees received when introduced to the group when it was dominated by a female named Mama. Eventually the males achieved dominance, but even so they still relied on the support of females during the periods when one male was on his way to displacing the dominant male as the alpha, so females are not merely relegated to the objects of the males sexual desires and nothing else. In fact, the younger sexually-mature females were sometimes so amorous that they "wore out" the adult males, the interactions between the sexes being just as compelling as the chapters featuring power struggles.
Given the close resemblances, both physical and social, between chimpanzees and our own species it is easy to draw comparisons between the two, but de Waal remains careful not to extend his observations of chimpanzees too far. Even when his writings might land on the anthropomorphic side of the fence, de Waal usually admits that he is doing so up front. Indeed, de Waal's unapologetic attitude for attributing names and personalities to each animal and up-front honesty in making the occasional comparison to human behavior makes Chimpanzee Politics a refreshing read, de Waal overcoming preconceptions that captive chimpanzees are not worth the time spent studying them. While it was right on-time to signal a changing view of primatology when it was first published, Chimpanzee Politics is just as fresh and thought-provoking in 2008 as it was in 1983.
An exciting if not compelling Study October 15, 2007
Herbert L Calhoun (Falls Church, VA USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Frans De Waal, a Primatologist of some considerable note, in this exciting report on his most recent research, gives us an insider's view of the social "goings on" within a tribe of Chimps. His research model might be described as a Machiavellian-based political model, one he fashions loosely into a framework for understanding and interpreting the meanings implicit in chimp sexual and political behavior, behavior that De Waal observed in a zoo context and recorded for the better part of seven years.
The author discerns definite hierarchical patterns to Chimp behavior, along lines common across the animal kingdom -- especially as regards to how alpha males dominate and sustain their power at the top of their respective social hierarchies. De Waal shows that unlike larger primates, because of their smallness of size, ruling chimp culture requires (almost as a political imperative) that alpha males build coalitions from among the ranks of secondary males and females if they hope to sustain their dominance at the top of the hierarchy for any length of time.
The author vividly walks us thorough several power struggles in which alpha males are replaced. Each of these replacements or "coups" took place either because the dominant male became too greedy, too relaxed in his caolition-building or leadership, or because another male built sounder more enduring and robust coalitions and used them to move against the incumbent.
Making the necessary Freudian extrapolations, one is likely to see in the deeper outlines of these power struggles a remarkable resemblance to similar dramas witnessed everyday in the human political arena. For instance, it take little imagination to guess that Chimp political and sexual behavior is not only Machiavellian in its basic character, but perhaps also Darwinian in its form -- that is to say it is Darwinian in the Sociobiologist's sense of being instinctively driven well beneath cognition. However, it is probably sounder and safer to speculate that such behavior is being driven at the level of "proto-Chimp culture" and socialization rather than at the level of genes.
In any case, even though it is wise not to read too much into these similarities, I nevertheless believe that in the final analysis it is brain architecture that drives these similarities home. Man does not always want to account for, nor take full responsibility for, the behavioral remnants of his reptilian brain. As a result we live within a self-made delusional bubble made up of layers of self-righteous beliefs and denials, noble ideals and values, all couched in an ideology of self-preservation. This unconscious super-structure is piled atop our reptilian brain masquerading at the conscious level as a much more evolved and complex form of civilized animal than it really is.
I thus share the view of other reviewers that another way to see this is just as another layer super-imposed on top of the more honest chimp model. To the extent this interpretation is valid, it does raise interesting if not frighteningly close similarities about what normally goes disguised as ordinary human sexual and political behavior.
Drawing conclusions about human behavior based on an already human inspired model being applied to chimp political processes, runs dangerously close to introducing a closed theoretical system, in effect a theoretical tautology. It seems clear that the behavior described in this study -- even if viewed only across the rest of the ape family -- shows remarkable variations. To close this circle completely and begin drawing additional conclusions about human based on a single de Waal's study, would be unwarranted, theoretically questionable and slightly more than just a bit irresponsible.
Nevertheless, I put this work in the same class as Wright's "Moral Animal." There are certainly cross-cutting and reinforcing conclusions to be drawn as a result of this research. Five stars
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
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