On Emergency Decisions, Egalitarianism, and Group Selection
Polly Wiessner
Current Anthropology, Vol. 39, No. 3. (Jun., 1998), pp. 356-358.
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I suspect that using archaeological data from these cultures to test her hypothesis as she recommends (p. 589)
will prove even more complicated and less conclusive.
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On Emergency Decisions,
Egalitarianism, and Group
Selection
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POLLY WIESSNER
Box 9448, Eros, Windhoek, Namibia (wiessnera
iwwn.com.na). 6 XII 97
Boehm (CA 37:763-93) puts forward an important thesis-that with the evolution of egalitarian societies,
privileged routes to reproductive advantage are blocked
and the power of individual selection severely compromised. With competition so constrained, altruistic behavior can more readily spread in a population. This has
implications at two levels. For individual selection it
means that egalitarian relations could have facilitated
the evolution of "altruistic" behavior and accompanying cooperative norms and control mechanisms. For
groups it implies that the relative power of group selection could have been enhanced with the reduction of individual selection. From this premise, Boehm goes on
to argue that emergency decision malting, by binding
groups in collective action, may have permitted group
selection to reinforce cooperative behavior in a population. Though his detailed examples are drawn largely
from nonegalitarian societies, he suggests that the
model can be projected back to prehistoric foragers.
Compelling though Boehm's model is, it does not
consider the costs of strictly enforced egalitarianism.
With demands for relatively equal distribution of economic returns and social rewards, incentive to produce
is dampened in hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies; in fact, individuals may periodically cease production simply to avoid exploitation (Lee 1979, Wiessner
1982). (Though the effect on pastoral production, where
work effort and returns are less closely tied, will be less,
costs of egalitarianism may appear in other areas, for instance, ineffective communal resource management.)
Given the effects of egalitarianism on production and
resource management, it is questionable how long egalitarian structures can survive in the face of group selection. Where they do persist today is in societies that are
isolated, subordinates embedded in the economies of
dominant nonegalitarian societies, or required by precarious environment and limited technology to maintain broad networks of reciprocity outside the group. In
the latter case, problems are more often solved by dispersal than by group action.
Nonetheless, the idea that egalitarianism may have
evolved to facilitate altruism is an important one. As
foragers lilze the Kalahari San realize, one factor that reduces the risk of relations involving delayed reciprocal
altruism is the social rules that prevent the giver from
indebting others or the receiver from turning assistance
gained into significant reproductive or economic advantage. To speculate, it may have been only with the evo-
Volume 39, Number 3, June 1998 1357
lution of egalitarianism that the cost of reciprocity was sions as the events unfold. They must be backed, reinreduced sufficiently to permit the extension of kinship forced, reevaluated, and reshaped with sustained effort
relations and accompanying obligations of reciprocity until the matter is laid to rest.
Thus, in contrast to emergency decisions made in refrom immediate family or a small circle of coresidents to affinal kin and more distant relatives outside the sponse to natural occurrences, group decisions involvrtrouD. The result was the formation of broad networks ing relations between people are so intricate that they
of kilnship based on both biologically and socially stipu- can rarely be resolved to confer group benefit in the ablated ties that so structure human societies today and sence of a strong leader who guides and invests in the
ensure economic securitv [Wiessner 1082). Hand in process. To return to the Enga example, Enga do not
hand with these networks'miy have evo1;ed'the human convene, discuss, reach a consensus, go to war, take
ability to become indoctrinated [Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1982)~ land, and flourish; the process is much more complex.
that is, to be induced to place the interest of others or In the initial clan meeting or meetings, the big-man
the interest of a group over one's own through such must hear and evaluate all opinions, for the decision to
means as the manipulation of rhetoric, song, dance, and go to war will have very different impacts on the intersymbols [Salter and Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1998, Wiessner ests of individual members. And it is through individu1998).Certainly the willingness to act against immedi- als that allies, who are so critical to the success of a war,
ate self-interest in favor of distant kin with anticipation will be recruited. Since it is labor rather than land
of future returns does not come easily but is the result which is short in Enga, a small parcel of land gained is
often not worth the damage to individual ties of finance
of extensive socialization during:
" childhood. indoctrination through initiation, and periodic rituals of reinforce- from outside the clan [if one can assume that Enga wars
are indeed about land at all [see Lakau 1994, Young
ment.
Turning to emergency decisions, those made in re- 1995, Wiessner and Tumu I 9981).A successful big-man
sponse to meteorological events are often relatively un- does his research well by letting all speak, heeding opinstressful and involve little altruistic behavior. Guidance ions which he considers valuable, and when possible
is sought from individuals who are experienced and making each man feel as if his advice has been heard.
knowledgeable; less experienced group members bene- When a war is under way and the clan is faring badly,
fit from their advice. Moreover, they are often easily re- he may then call upon a number of ritual means to
versible-people disband and reassemble fluidly in re- unite the group and brew spirit. For example, he may
sponse to resource distribution. However, with the convene the clan for a ceremony involving confession
evolution of socially defined kinship networks, a new and absolution of past wrongdoings and internal antagodilemma was introduced to emergencv decision mak- nisms against fellow warriors or organize the perforing, namely, the conflict of interelt between loyalty to mance of a small ritual to elicit the help of the ancesthe group and loyalty to supportive kin outside the tors. Finally, when losses mount and it is time to call
aroun If such conflict of interest can be mediated so an end to the war, months may be spent in negotiations
;hat kembers can draw on outside ties to bring wealth and orchestration of complex war reparations under the
into the group, then the group flourishes, and selection leadership of big-men. Here oratory from a respected
may operate at the group level. The Enga of Papua New leader and the wealth to back words with action are
Guinea describe this situation in a metaphor of birds critical. Individual opinions are suppressed in favor of
that roost in the same tree at night. In the daytime each the words of one who can heal wounds with elegant oraflies its own way, seemingly pursuing its own interests, tory. To quote a prominent Enga big-man, Ambone
but in the evening it returns, bringing the harvest back Mati:
to the same "nest."
However, the coalescence of individual interests in
The tongue was the thing that in most cases
decisive and beneficial group action in the face of combrought trouble to a clan. Wars started from the
plex social interests is not as easy as this metaphor sugtongue. It was the tongue which said things that
gests. First of all, because individuals do not share a sincould provoke somebody who already had ill feelgle configuration of external ties, group decisions
ings, and those who did not want to fight had to go
usually favor the interests of some group members at
and fight all because of the tongue. If you use the
the expense of others. For instance, when an Enga clan
tongue to make peace, then you will have peace in
goes to war, members with affinal and maternal kin in
the clan. . . . You have come under the influence of
;he enemy 'groups must suspend ties which normally
the white man through education, but for us and
bring them wealth, support, and affection. Second,
our generation it was the tongue that ruled.
emergency decisions that involve relations of people are
not easily reversible. While a family which has split off And even when reparations were paid, big-men still had
from a band in response to hardship imposed by natural to assuage wounded feelings within the clan at their
events may rejoin it at any time, wounded men, own personal expense, knowing very well that their cawounded trust, and wounded pride take long to heal. reers hung on their ability to hear opinions, pull them
Third, such emergency decisions usually do not resolve together into decisions, and see that the decisions were
a problem in a single meeting but set off a series of deci- executed in such a way as to benefit the group. Ambone
L,
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ANTHROPOLOGY
Mati went on to describe how big-men had to make personal sacrifices to see that their decisions brought success:
You see, not all people in the victim's clan would
be satisfied with the war reparations, and a poor person in the clan was most likely to miss out, receiving no pigs at all for such purposes as paying bridewealth for his wife. A wise man from his own clan
would give a pig to such a person; it required wisdom to do such a thing. The big-man of a clan had
to make sure that no dissatisfied person would
think of taking revenge, for he did not want to see
chaos come to his dace and did not want the
houses and gardens to be destroyed. For such reasons the big-man had to give a pig, preferably one
which he had decided to keep for himself, to the person who was most likely to cause trouble.
In short, complex emergency decisions involving social and political relations require prudent and competent leadership. To be effective, they are often backed
by ceremony and ritual to unify group members, disguise social inequalities, and reinforce, alter, redirect, or
align group goals and values. Successful manipulation
of ritual and timely performance can make or break
group strategies; ritual makes group action possible and
is usually not a "commit[ment] to a supernatural solution that hamstrings the group," as Boehm puts it. The
continual innovation and selection involved in redesigning ritual to meet changing needs set the pace for
culturally guided selection [see Wiessner and Tumu
1998 for examples).When cultural strategies succeed by
binding group members into coordinated action, they
confer strong group advantage. By contrast, the cumbersome apparatus of egalitarianism is generally insufficient or ineffective for making such complex decisions
and following them through to achieve group benefits.
In strictly egalitarian societies, the diversity of opinions
may either lead each family down its own path, as people vote with their feet, or move them to make rash decisions, for in the end no single individual will be responsible for failure. Examples may be found in the
raids of African pastoralists brewed by individuals in
pursuit of personal loot or prestige that bring damages
from counterraids to be borne by the group [Bollig 1992)
and in decisions made during Gebusi sCances that sentence innocent group members to death for witchcraft
[Knauft 1987).
Ironically, then, the very egalitarian relations that
evolved in the service of the evolution of far-flung networks of kinship and reciprocity may have crumbled
again under the dilemma that the latter posed for group
action. That is, the conflict of loyalties to group members and those to kin outside the group so complicated
the decision-making process that people sought strong
leaders to orchestrate and execute this process. And so
social hierarchy, repressed during the evolution of cooperative behaviors, may have reemerged to organize
more complex structures of cooperation. Nonetheless,
in both Boehm's arguments and mine, the possibility of
a relation between emergency decisions and group selection holds; it is the issue of whether this can be projected to forager societies that is in question.
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