Chimpanzee Culture Wars : : Rethinking Human Nature alongside Japanese, European, and American Cultural Primatologists / / Nicolas Langlitz.

The first ethnographic exploration of the contentious debate over whether nonhuman primates are capable of cultureIn the 1950s, Japanese zoologists took note when a number of macaques invented and passed on new food-washing behaviors within their troop. The discovery opened the door to a startling q...

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Superior document:Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2020 English
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Place / Publishing House:Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2020]
©2020
Year of Publication:2020
Language:English
Online Access:
Physical Description:1 online resource (352 p.) :; 20 b/w illus.
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Other title:Frontmatter --
Contents --
Preface --
Prologue --
Introduction --
1 The Birth of Cultural Primatology from the Spirit of Japanese Uniqueness --
2 Multiculturalism beyond the Human --
3 Chimpanzee Ethnography --
4 Controlling for Pongoland --
5 Japanese Syntheses --
6 Field Experiments with a Totem Animal --
7 Salvage Primatology --
Conclusion --
Epilogue --
Notes --
References --
Index
Summary:The first ethnographic exploration of the contentious debate over whether nonhuman primates are capable of cultureIn the 1950s, Japanese zoologists took note when a number of macaques invented and passed on new food-washing behaviors within their troop. The discovery opened the door to a startling question: Could animals other than humans share social knowledge-and thus possess culture? The subsequent debate has rocked the scientific world, pitting cultural anthropologists against evolutionary anthropologists, field biologists against experimental psychologists, and scholars from Asia against their colleagues in Europe and North America. In Chimpanzee Culture Wars, the first ethnographic account of the battle, anthropologist Nicolas Langlitz presents first-hand observations gleaned from months spent among primatologists on all sides of the controversy.Langlitz travels across continents, from field stations in the Ivory Coast and Guinea to laboratories in Germany and Japan. As he compares the methods and arguments of the different researchers he meets, he also considers the plight of cultural primatologists as they seek to document chimpanzee cultural diversity during the Anthropocene, an era in which human culture is remaking the planet. How should we understand the chimpanzee culture wars in light of human-caused mass extinctions?Capturing the historical, anthropological, and philosophical nuances of the debate, Chimpanzee Culture Wars takes us on an exhilarating journey into high-tech laboratories and breathtaking wilderness, all in pursuit of an answer to the question of the human-animal divide.
Format:Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
ISBN:9780691204260
9783110704716
9783110704518
9783110704723
9783110704549
9783110690088
DOI:10.1515/9780691204260?locatt=mode:legacy
Access:restricted access
Hierarchical level:Monograph
Statement of Responsibility: Nicolas Langlitz.