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Contents

Preface xiI N T R O D U C T I O N N D H I S T O R YChanging Viewsof PrimateSociety:A SituatedNorth ,{rnericanPerspective ShirleyC. Strumand Linda M. Fedigan 3

W H A T O O T H E P I O N E E R S A Y ?T H A D V A N T A C E S F H I N D S I C H T 5 1A Few PeculiarPrimates Thelnn Rowell 57The Bad Old Days of Primatology? Alison olly 71Piltdown \.{an, the Fatherof American FieldPrimatologyRobertW. Srrssnrrln85SomeReflections n Prirnatolclgv t Cambridgeand the ScienceStu


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Negotiat ingScience:nternat ional ization ndJapanesePrimatology PatnellAsquitlt 165SomeCharacteristics f ScientificLiterature n BrazilianPrimatology Maria Emilin Yrmttmoto nd AnusksreneAlencnr184

10 An American PrimatologistAbroad n Brazil KorenB. Strier191E-\14L EXCHAT' .GF-s:Whyo Westernersccept apaneseatabut not theory and pract ice? re theremanv primatologies rone nternat ional cience? 208

S E C T I O N E N L A R G I N C H E L E N S : T O S E L Y E L A T E D l S C l P l - I N E S1 511 The Divergent Caseof Cultural Anthropology Naomi Quitrn223

StandpointMatters-in Archaeologl ' ,or ExampleAlisonWylie 213Paradigms nd Primates:Bateman'sPrinciple,Passive emales,and Perspectiesrom Other Taxa Zuleynn Tang-Martinez261Culture,Discipl inary radit ion,and the Studyof Behavior: ex,Rats,and SpottedHvenas Stephen . Glicktnatr 275Changing Views on Initation in Primates RichardW. Bynre296E-MArL XCHANGS:Didociob io logy akea d i f ferencen ourideas boutprimatesociety? id women stud)' ing rimatesnrakea difference? 310

S E C T I O N M O D E L SO F S C I E N C E N D S O C I E T Y 2 716 PrimateSuspect: omeVariet ies f Science tudiesCharisM. Thorttpson lssirrs 32917 A \,Vell-Articulated rimatology:Reflections f a Fellow

Traveler Bruto Latour 3581B Women,Gender, nd Science: omeParal lelsetweenPrimatologvand DevelopmentalBiology EvelT'ttoxKelleri82

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lvlorphing n the Order: FlexibleStrategies, eministScienceStudies, nd PrimateRevisions DonnaHarawoy 39gLife n the Field:The Natureof popularCulture n 1950sArnerica GreggMihrtut 421Polit ics,Gender, nd Worldly primatology:The Goodal l-Fosseyexus BrinnE. Noble 136E-\ lArLEXCl rAr . -GLS:Theightaboutsc ience_why oes thappen?Primatologistsnd the media-why do primatologistsagonize bout t? 163

S E C T I O N R E F O R M U L A T I N GH E22 Science ncounters23 GenderEncounters

Q U E S T t O N S 7 3SltirleyC. Strunr 175Lirtdn M. Feligon 198

S E C T I O N C O N C L U S I O N S N D I M P L I C A T I O N S2 124 FutureEncounters: he Mediaand Science; enderanclScienceon the Periphery;The ScienceWars;The Valueof primateStudies;The Futureof primatesanclprirnateStudies;Finale:Nerv Teams SlrleyC. Strumantl Lultt M. Fetlisdn 523

Relrences511Corttr ibutor 619Index 623


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The Divergent CaseofCulturalAnthropologyNnotni Quittrt

wontan seeshcrself being seen.Clutching her peltci l, slte rr.oncershrr\r. ,thed isc ip i i ne w i l r i 0w the wr i l i ng shcwants o do . w i i l i t he seen s oo der i ' a t i \ cor male work? c)r too feninine? Too safe?or too riskv? Too seriousr or nalts r r i ousenough?Nran 'e r .esbore , on her , roo r ing to see f she w iu do be t te ror worse than rncn, or at least as $.ell as othel a.qn1sn.RutlrBt,hdr 995. 2)

In this paper trace he path that wontenstudyinggender,as a sometirnes nore_anci sontetinresess-iclentiablegroup,have aken hrough he recenthistorvof one rl isci-pline,cultr-rralnthropologr'. s rri l l l .rtc,rntr 11p;1rent,heculturalanthropology tory sasnrucl-r boutacadenticol-itics as about theoreticaldevelopments,rnplrcating heone deeply r.r he other. n this respect,rine rsa cauti.n-ary tale for behavioralprinratologists. ari lyn Stratherr.r(19871 asarguedhat the sociar ciencesontrastwith thenaturalsciencesimply n being ractious nd fractured ynature,but I do not believe ny academic iscipline o beintmune o the kind of academic olit ics will describe. nthe other hand, we cannotassunle aralleldevelopmentsin the two disciplinesust becausehey happen o be rela_tivesand happened n the 1970s o be swimmrng n thesame ntellectual urrentswhen, alongn,ith other behav_ioral and socialsciences,oth embarked n the renewed


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A Well-Articultttedritrntology 359type of causality,while the "culture" peoplewould have nsistedad nau-seamon the variabil i ty,pliabil i ty,and historicityof hurnanand animalbehavior.Fortunately or all of us,we did not get stuck n these hree different,but interrelated,alsedebates.nstead,we slowly and painfully movedtoward another agenda hat I would l ike to outl ine in this chapterbyfollowing, n three diff erent sections, ow eachof those old and tireddiscussionswas reconfigured, hanks to the extraordinarysetup devisedby the organizers nd for which I am inhnitely grateful.

The Vascularization f Science nd SocietyThe first originalityof the meeting s to havebrought ogether sciencestudies cholars" rrdscientists, ho at ftrstwerepresentedo eachotheras wo "camps"-which appearedo me asbizarre spresenting rinlatesas one camp and primatologists s another.Yet t was only a matteroftime before hingsbecamear morecomplicated: l l iances egan o shiftwithout obeyingparty ines. t wassoon mpossibleo considerhat therewere only two sides, he frrst made up of those who believeddata lverefabricatedout of thin air, and the secondbeing those vho believed heypossessedn unmediatedand indisputableaccess o the reality "outthere.The reasonor this high learningcurve s easy o understandn retro-spect: science tudies" s to scientiRc racticewhat prirnatologys to pri-mates.Without primatology, n order o speak f apesand monkeys,wewould have o rely on a few anecdotes roughtbackbv missionariesndexplorers;ve would haveno data,no comparative asis, o nlore thanthe shabby epreserltationsf wilderness nd savagerv'it l .r 'hich \resternculturehasequipped s fiom the beginning.The challge n the qualin'ofour representationf apesand monkeysmight not be terribll" tnportantto the prin.rates-althougl.rt certainlydoeshavean eiiecton the consL'r-vation of many animal roops seeStrum his volume)-but it is certainh-of great mport to us as a human communitv.To depriveourselves i allthe knowledge ccumulated n primatesn the ast ,ftyyears see ecligarland Strum his volume),would be an incredibleoss.The same s largely rue for science tudies,although the rrlass f.knon'ledge s much smallerand the data softer (see lhompsort Cttssit-tsthis volurne).Without the empiricalstudiesof scientists t rork,wewouldbe imited to anecdotes ndmythsabouta few stuffed great cien-tists" hung on the rvallsof the Universitl 'Hall of Fanre.Science tudiesmisht make ittle differenceo scientists t the bench,since, fterall, hey


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360 ChapterSeventeenknow what they do (aswell asbaboons now how they behave), ut itwould make a difference o all of us as a human conmunity. To depriveourselves f the knowledgeon the practiceof science hat hasbeenaccu-mulated over the last twenty years n the tristory,sociology,and pl-tiloso-phy of science,n order o go back o a sort of mid-nineteenth-centurypositivism, would certainly be a pity-although I must admit I preachfor my parish.Whatever he assessmentf the two disciplines nd thedifferencesn quality and status, he discussion annotbe productive fone acceptshe empirical evolution t broughtabout n one'sor,r 'n, hileshrugging ff the other as rrelevant. n my opinion, by the end of themeeting, here was someagreement hat to return to a n'orld madeup ofDr.Livingstone's r l-ordZuckerman'saboonswould beno morepossiblethan to backpedalnto an epistemology eopledby ,Auguste omte'sorKarl Popper's cientists.This point beingsettled, he next problen-ro arisewas hat peopleatthe conferencewere all well read n primatology,but very few had readmuch of the empiricalwork of the otherdiscipline, cience tudies. o aska sociologist f science, Would you lump out of twenty-storybuildingsincevou belier-e ravity o be socially onstructed?"s ike askinga pri-matologist, Monkevsaredisgusting nd promiscuous ild beasts, ren'tthe.v?"No ansn'er s to be expected nd no answershould be given-except he one offered v Donna Haraway:Push he heckler hrough hen'indon'1" o produce nowledge bout scientific ractice nd to debunkthe mvthologyof Science, apitalS, s no more a der.rial f the realityofthe scientificacts hemselveshan studying he social omplexit,v f sex-ual competitionand debunking he myth of the "wild beast" s a denialof the realityof the animalsout there n the bush.Quite he contrary. othe question aised t one session,What is responsibleor the changingviewsof primatesn the ast ifty years?"he only answer could ,ndwas,"But theprbnates hertrselvesf course, t is they who forced us to modifyour accountof them," exactlyas would haveanswered,We earneverybit of the new'science tudies' rom the scientistshemselves,"f I had toexplain the recentshifts n the definitionof what sciences and whatmakes t tick. "Please elax," was tempted o say o some of my moreanxiouscolleagues round the table. "Reality s not in questionhere."Thedebate oesnot oppose ealityon one sideand rrealityon the other,but realit ies n both sides; r, more exactly,t opposes, n t he one hand,a realistic ersionof what primates andscientists) reand, on the otherhand, a totally unrealisticor mythical vision of what primates(or scien-tists)do.If rveaccept he cor.nparisonf two entpirical isciplines nd f we no\\'lear.e side he red herring of realityversus pure socialconstruction,"


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A WeI-Articuhte d Pr matology

Alliances and intere sts

Publicrelations of thediscipline

Mobilisation ol the u'orld

F ig . 1 . A s in rp l ihed v ien o f the t lows of knorv ledge f rom Latur 1995a) .

nothing is yet solved ecausehe question ecomes ow did we nmke heprirnateshemselveselevanto the questionswe askedabout them so thatthey could have a part in what we say of their behavior, while, beforeprimatology tartedn earnest,hev had so ittle to say n the representa-tion Westernersad of them. A l itt le summaryof science tudiess ndis-pensable t this luncture f we are o continue. n order o be clearand,alas, ketchy, wil l usea simplediagram o git 'ean ideaof the amountofwork necessaryo rlake the primatesaccountableor ti.re actsproducedby the disciplineof primatology.

If we had to study primatology,we would be nterestedn five differenthorizonsof practice,each of them being simultaneously ecessaryomakea sc iente roduct ive.The first horizon-but one can startwith any loop of figure1 since tis a flow-is what can be called he "mobil izationof the world," thatis, all the eff orts nvested n creatinga field site-or an enclosure r alaboratory-a data-producing nit. Everyparticipantat the conference,including of course hose n "science tudies," new only too rivell heimrnense ffort hat goesnto obtaininga fleldsite,maintaining t for anylength of time, habituating l-re nimal, mapping he territor', ' , r ingingthe animals nto the enclosures,aring or them, eeding hem,equippingthem with variousdevices, arnpling hem, etc.The beautvoi primatol-ogv s the numberof intermediary ituations etween ield sites n unpro-

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362 ChaqterSeventeentected areas al l the way to brain surgery on animals held in laboratorycondit ions. The general point is that no matter how tnuch natural histori-ans l ike to get up early with binoculars and enioy sunrise in the bush,and no matter how much neurobiologists l ike to watch single-neuronsf,r ing up, they would immediately stop being scient ists f they ceased oretum from their instruments-broadly conceived-with dta that havethe pecul iari ty of being highly trarrsformednformation. A pract icing sci-ent ist is never presented simply with information, but always with atransformation that should nonetheless maintain, as intact as possible,the features she is most interested in-hence the circular form I gave theloop (Latour 1995b).

Although this work might account for B0 percent of the time spent,sweatand ingenuity is not enough to produce a discipl ine. Another vascu-larizat ion is necessary.A scient ist needs col/eagttess ntuch as data, andthe forrner is no easier o obtain than the latter. The second oop r,r 'emusttake into account, is that which can be designatedas "autonomizat ion ofthe discipl ine," which is as much hard work as tending to the instru-ments. What is a primatologist?A zoologist f i rst and foremost?An anthro-pologist interested n early man? A sociobiologist fol lowing self ishgenes?A psychologist?We al l knor,r 'how dif f icul t i t is to solve these quest ions.Everyorre at the conference was deeply aware of the frf tv years of workthat was necessarv o produce professionalassociat ions, ournals, inst i tu-t ior-rs, onferences,ancl evaluat ion processes, o that the data painfulh'extracted fron-r he instruments could be made relevant and the variousbenefi ts from dif ferent experimental or natural ist ic setupswould be avai l -able for comparison. Without col leagues,no qual i ty control and thus norelevant data could be produced and made to circulate. A scient ist whosimply enjoyed f ieldwork but who had no col leagues, vould have no exis-tence and no visibi l i ty. He might just as wel l have staved in the bushfascinated by the beauty of the sunset.

This is not the end of his work, however. In order to have data anclcol leagues,another enormous amount of work has to be done, this t int tspent on the third horizon cal led "al l iances." Field si tesare expensive ttrkeep up, zoos are huge organizat ions, ournals cost a fortune if they havt 'good referees,graduate progrart ts o recrui t future col leaguesare expert-sive, and laboratory tests are t inte consuming. No nratter how muclt . iscient ist s interested n her anirt talsand no matter hon' ntant 'col leagLrushe er-rioys aving, she st i l l has to interest rtorrsci t ' rt t isfsn her prodttct io:systenr.A third vascularizat ion s necessary hat is in no waY externai , :subsidiary,but internal and coextensivewith the n'ork to be done, arr ' :rvl-r ichcan lead a primatologist very far arn'ay rom his col leagues o t l . .strangestpeople, even the mil i tary (Haraway 1989). Arguments for cloir:-


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A \'{ell-Articulotedrhnatologv 363researchmust be provided,grant applicationswritten, and relevant ssuesoutl ined.A scientist houldapproach is agencies nd foundationswiththe samedegree f enthusiasm e uses o convincehis colleagues,r thesamemeasure f concernhe displays or his animals.No one said hatbeinga scientistwasan easy oblAgain, everyone n the room knew fairly well how uranynonprimatolo-glsfswere necessaryo establish rimatologyasan autonomousdiscipline.A rough,but good, ndicatorwould be to count the numberof differentinstitutions thanked in the acknowledgments f each of the paperspro-ducedby the peopleassembledn Teresopolishroughout heir careers.One would quickly reach he hundreds.For eachof them, rluch "net-working" was necessaryn order to persuade utsiders hat their l ivescouldnot go on without firstdeveloping rimatology.Without the trans-lated nterestof all theseoutsiders,he discipline sa whole rvouldgrindto a halt.But there s a fourth loop that is as essential s the other three,espe-cially n the case f primatology: he "public relation"or the "publicap-peal"of a discipline.n addition o the "science tudies" eople, he orga-nizers ad invited several cholarsnterestedn the publicrepresentationof apesand monkeys seeMitman t his volume and Noble his volume).As with the others, he discussionstartedoff badly,with scientists orn-plainingabout being eitherdistortedand manipulated y the mediaor,worse, gnored. But for this issueas well, the learning curvewas high. Itwassoon clear o all that for a discipline hat claims o be relevant oeverything rom the origin of rnan and \:onan, to the genetics f vio-lence,o the antiquityof emotionandsex oles, o the necessity f conser-vation, t wasutterly impossibleo exclude he public-all the more sosince t was public opinions that historicallvgeneratedhe interestofthosewho had become he discipline's ll ies n the former oop. LongbeforeDarwin'sda.v,he impact of primatolopynd the questionof thedescent f man and its relation o the rest of the atrimalkingdom hasmadeprimatologyan indispensableradingzonebetween deologies ndsciences.f we had forgotten hisessentialeature f the discipline,DonnaHaraway's rimateVisions1989)would have emindedus that frlnts,utu-seums, dvertisements,nd popularcultureall play an enorntous ole nactivating he whole of primatology,and providing much of its interest,passion, nd energy.Here oo, this vascularizations essential, nd thecomparison ffered y the hyenas seeGlickman his volumel highlightshow difflcult t is to work on animalswhich havea "public relationprob-lem" and, by contrast,how difficult it is to deal with animals which are,scl o speak, too much loved"lA scientist,however, s not only sweating o producegooddata,disput-


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364 Chapter eventeening with her colleagueso havepapersevaluatedand accepted, nd con-vincing agencies nd foundations o finance her field study and local au-thorities not to trap her animals.She s not only making popular films,preparing slide shows, and organizing conferences o raise money andredress he imagegiven her argument. She also has to think about howthe whole flow of information (assessment,rgument, money, image,myth) holds togetherasone coherentwhole. The fifth horizon is no moreand no less mportant than the other four. It can be called "concept,""theory," or "paradigm."Contrary to many misconceptions, cience tud-iesare just as nterested n this specific ype of vascularizationas n thefour others.Concepts,however,are not colored enses hat would distortour view of things, to use he very unfortunate optic metaphor that willbe criticized n the next section.Nor are they Platonic deals loating farfrom the four other loops as f, in order to take seriously he "cognitivedimension of science,"we had to escape o another world. Conceptsaremore like a beatingheart that reoxygenateshe blood, provided t is con-nected o the rest of the circulatorysystem.Yes, onceptsare he heart ofscience, ut one hasrarely seena functioning heart cut off from the restof its body "Male dominance," kin selection," proximateand ultimatecausality,"bonoboscenario," nd "selfish enes,"o takea few examples,arehighly complex ntegrations f masses f data,hunches, ustoms, ndhabitsof thought, hat cannotbeeasily iscarded s rrelevant nd cannotrecapitulatevr'hat he whole discipline s about. When you isolate hemfrom the restvou have nothing. When you have the restwithout them,it is ike holding a disheveled keinof wool.Theories rehighly practicaloperators hat do not constitute an "inner nucleus" of sciencewhichcould be excisedout of a protoplasm.The point of quickly commenting on this five-horizondiagram s notto do the sciencestudy of primatology-although it would be a worthytask hat Harawayand several thers havealreadystarted-but to list thenumber of elements hat should be taken nto account o "makeprimatesrelevant o what they allow us to sayabout them." I f a scientistweremadenough to brush asideall of these oopsand scream n exasperation:Butlet us get rid of all this sociologyand history of science, f al l these m-pedimenta-instruments, professions,ournals, nstitutions, agencies, Vcrews,exhibits, heories,concepts,paradigms-and let us go back to theanimals themselves, et us seize hem unfettered and unimpeded " hewould not produce a better knowledge. nstead, he would produce noknowledge at all and would be lost in the contemplat ion of a troop offuzzy crealueseven the namesof which would escape im-since taxo-nomical labels eside n books,university training, databanks, nd muse-ums aswell. Sucha scientistmight be enrapturedby primates,but would


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A WeII- r iculated P natolo91'be lost to science, nd so would anyonewho would have failed to fulfillat once he contradictory asks equested y four differenthorizons.Yes,sciences hard work, and eachof thesemediations s necessarvo allowprimates o havea say n our anguage. ur discourse anbe accurate, utonly on the condition that eachof these ransformationss carriedout.Such s the great essonof science tudies: o one can jun.rpoutsideofmediations nd speakn truth about he outsideworld.To cut science fffrom its rich vascularizations equivalent o kil l ing it.I t shouldbe clearby now that the discovery f science tudies s notthat a science anbe nfluenced r distortedby "outside" actors uchasideologies,olit ics, ulturalbiases, r psychologicalassions.fhe discor'-ery-if this grand word can be used for such a humble dlscipline-ismuch more interesting et, and slightly resembleshat, if I daresar', ithe greatWill iam Harveyhimself "Facts"are circulatingentities.Thevare like a fluid flowing through a complex network, a rough sketch ofwhich has been given in figure 1. What circulatess a certain 1'peoftransformation hat allows he world somebearingon what we sayaboutit. Thus, he triple notion of an outsideworld of nature"out there,"aninner coreof science in there,"and a politicalor socialdomain "dorvr.tthere,"can no longerbe sustained.When, during the conference, sil-verbackbelieveshe is stating he obviousby saying: We should not cotl-fise our represer)tationf the chimpsand what the chimpsaredoing outthere,"he is n factaskingus to split n two the rich vascularizationhat"science tudies"aims at describingwithout artif icial nterruption.Theonly goal of the primatologydiscipline s precisell 'o flnd tnanywa),s omix, confuse, nd interminglen'hat "prinrates redoing out there"and"what we sayabout hem." But to understanclhis, a second alsedebatehas o be pushedaside.l

From the Metaphor of Gaze o That of PropositionThe dif f icul ty of integrat ing science studies and printatolog' n-as rein-forced during the meeting by the organizers'original intent ion to ;rrobe"the role of theory, method, and gender" in "the changing images of pri-mate societ ies." This earl ier agenda, by i ts very forrnulat ion, coulcl clonothing but paralyze the discussion since it imposed on eacl. tof us thefrui t less task of puri fying, in the sentencesuttered about our animals,what depended on "them" and what depended on "us." I f I have beel-tr ight in the former sect ion, this would have been tantamount to severingall the vascularizat ions hat make up a discipl ine, and striving toward theimpossible task of having animals, on the one haltd, and statements

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state of affairs

166 ChapterSeventeen

rsulting statement

biasesand theories

Fig. 2. In the dualist model, a statement is the resultant beth'een tno opposite forces, whatthe rvorld is l ike and what we are equippetl to \aV about it.

about hem, on the other.with nothing in between. he dynamic of themeeting,however,slowlv eroded his original ntention, and began onudgeus toward a completelvdifferentsetof metaphors.n order o beable o do the reflexive 'ork requiredof us, \ /e movedfrom an opticalmetaphor o a new one that I n-i l l call "proposition."Tobe sure, he original rltention elied n a perfectly turdyandvener-able intellectual esource. ikc in the "parallelogram f forces"we alllearned t school, n\' statenrent bouta state f affairs an be consideredas he "resultant"of tn'o forces:what the world is l ike, and what n'e areequipped o sav about it. l f our biases re stronger,he resultantshiftstowardone axis,n'hile, f the world is somehow trongenough, he state-rnent about it moves oward the oppositedirection.With this classicalrr.rodel, e inragineour statementso be twice constrained,not ottlyby theworld Dufalsoby our mental and culturalequipment. t thus makesa lotof sense o try to weigh the different components and to measure, oreachhistorical eriod,which one s stronger nd which is weaker.This model is obviouslybetter han the nave deaof science s anexact eplicaof the world, and it makes, must confess, erfect ommoltsense. et, t is utterlyrl irolrg, incecommon senses rarelya trustworthyguide n scientif,cmatters.A simple hought experimentdemonstratestl-ris oint easily.What would happen f therewereno counterforce om-ing from the axis hat I havecalled biases nd theories"? ccording othe model, t means hat the resultantwould be entirelydetermined ythe stateof affairs t hand.Thus, f we had no theory,no preconception,

no bias,and no standpointwhatsoever, e would benefit rom an indis-putable,unmediated, ristineaccesso things n themselves. o labora-tor ' scientistwould believe hat for a minute. The samecan be saidof anaturalhistorian-they know all too well the work needed omake fea-ture of the outsideworld l isiDle.During the conference, teveGlickmanprcsented s with a simpleand startl ingexample.Hyenaethologists ad


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A We A ticulated P imato ogy 367waited or his paperpublished n 1990 o tell the difference etrveenmalehyenapenisand a female litoris SinceAristotle's ay, his questionhad been, f I dare say,pending. After reading his paper, he differencecouldeasilybe discerned ith a few minutesof training,aswe all couldwitness or ourselves Frank,Glickman, and Powch 1990).To "makesomething" visible s thus an entirely different task than to calculate heresultant f a parallelogramf forces.The traditionalmodeldoesnot work any better f we push he coupleof forcesn the otherdirectionand maginea statementhat is not coun-terbalanced y an1'constraint rorl the outsideworld. According o thediagram, t would mean that our statementabout the world would beso/e/y ependent n our repertoire f m1.ths, rejudices, resuppositions,and biases, pure story without anv grounding n the n'orld out there.No practicingscientistwould believe his for a ninute. I-lorv ould suchexotic notions as kin selection,Machiavell ianntell igence, ocialcom-plexity,rnatriarchy, ocial ools, and pulsesof testosterone,e devisedwithout a Iong and thorough intimacy with the animals henrselves?Where n the preexisting ulturewould thesenotionsreside oas o con-struct hese tories rom scratch? o iraginations ferti leenough o pro-duce even the r.nost imple facts of primatology.To take up the hvena'sexampleonce more, what the millenaries f cultural biases ave aughtus is nil comparecl o what we have learned since the opening of theBerkeley nclosure: epetitivesiurs,endiess umors-nothing that caneven begin to articulatewhat makeshyenas' sexualityso specific.Whatthe dualistmodel of a resultantbetween wo opposite onstraints oesnot explain s precisely^,hatwe want more dearly o understand:Howdo the animalsout there contribute o how we imaginestories hat noone without some evel of intimate familiaritv could dream up? Howcould the setup we ceaselessll 'eviseelicit features n the livesoi theanimals hat were nvisible o all before ,r-etart .nakinghenr up? Sureh.'a tug of war between wo contrary orceswil l not do the lob.One sentence y ThelmaRowellwil l clearlyererlplifv the alterrrativemodel that wasslowlyseeping nto our discussions. peaking bor-rt ernew studyon sheep, hestated ne of her "biases"n tl-reolloring var-:"l tr ied to givemy sheep he opportunity o behave lkcchrnips, rof hatI believe hat the,vwould be ike chimps,but because anrsure frat i 1'outakeslrcepbr boritry lteep y opposition to intelligent chirnps hs' l'ollr/ttothavea clnnce" my emphasis).What on earth could this l itt le clausemean: givemy sheep he opportur-rityo behave"?A whole new philosophyof scientifrc ractice esidesrr this extraordi-narystatement: to give he opportunity o behave" s not the same hingas"imposinga biasonto" animais hat cannotsaya thing. Rowellstates


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368 Chaqtereventeenthe differencebetween "a bias" and "an opportunity" very explicitly,sinceshe nsists hat shedoesnot believe heep o be "like" chimpsandsince, eft to their own devices,boring sheepwill remain boring sheepforever.What does she mean, in my view? By importing the notion ofintell igent behavior rom a "charismatic nimal"-another one of hertreasurable xpressions -shemight modify, subvert,or elicit, in the un-derstanding of sheepbehavior, features hat were until then invisiblebecause f the prejudiceswith which "boring sheep" have alwaysbeentreated. She does not oppose,as in the dualist model criticized above,what sheepare really doing, with storiesabout them. On the contrary, tis becausehe artificiallyand willingly imposeson sheepanother resourcecoming from elsewherehat "they could have a chance"to behave ntel-ligently. But Thelma Rowell does not say that she is inventing sheep,sociallyconstructing hem, or making them up at her wishes.On thecontrary, t is becausef this very artificial collagebetweenunrelatedani-mals-charismatic chimps and boring sheep-that she can besf evealwhat sheep eallyare.Her sentence ould makeno sensen the dualistparadigmportrayed n figure 2, since shewould have to choose eaturesaccording o an absurdquestion:Are the sheep eally ntell igentor didyou invent what they are?Or is it a combination,a resultantof both?"None of the above," heshouldanswer. By placing hem,quite deliber-atel,v nd quiteartif iciaily,nto the paradigm f intell igentchimps, gavethem a chance o expresseatures f behaviorhitherto unknown. Themore I work at it, the more autonomousmy sheepmay become."2ThelmaRowell 's entences in no way exceptional.t is, on the con-trary, he common parlance f practicingscientists. or them, intensityof work and autonomy of what their objectof study does,aresynotlytrlous.The better fabricateda fact, the more independent t is. Scientists ehaveas f they were"givingan opportunity" o phenomena hat, n otherset-tings,would not be "given a chance."3 owever,what makes his verycommonway of talkingdisappearrom the scientists' wn philosophyofscience-not to mention philosophy of science tseif, safely removedfrom all the empiricaldiffrcultiesof benches,enclosures, nd freld sites-is the pervasive Pticalmetaphorhey have beenmade o use. f you trans-form all the actions that make the autonomy of scientific actspossibleinto "filters" that "color," "bias," or "distort" the view that a Saze houldhave of a phenomenon, then the very originality of scientificwork be-comesunaccountable.With the optical metaphor, the only reasonableoutcome one can strive for is to gef rid of all the filters in order "to seethings as hey are."Thus the work necessaryo make hingsvisiblehasitself been made nvisible, and every reminder by sociologists,eminists,anthropologists, pistemologists, nd psychologistshat there are ndeed


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A Wel Artic ulated P imato ogy"biases," fi l ters," "coloredglasses,"preiudices," standpoints," para-digms," and "a prioris" will be considered s so many ways o weakenhequality of a scienceor to debunk its claim to t ruth. The only good gaze,according to the optical metaphor, is the one that is interrupted bynothing.The dynamics of the meeting in Teresopoliswere fascinating towatch-difficult not to use the metaphor even when criticizing itl-becausehe organizers ang a bell at every session rying to bring us backto a reflexive nquiry about "the role of theory, method, and gender nthe changing mages f primatesociety,"while the dualistmodel underwhich we all operated o answer his question fell apart more and morecompletely s he dayswent on. Gender, or instance, id not appear safilter that would make male and female scientistssee hings differently,blinding the males o some eatureswhile revealing thers o the moreperceptiveemaleprimatologistsseeKeller his volume).At the confer-ence,genderbegan o pla;t he same ole as "intell igentchimps" n thesentenceanalyzedabove.Not that of a filter or of a bias, but that of atrope, ouse Donna Haraway's avorite word. In the striklng paperon therespective ctivity of eggsand sperm(seeTang-Martinez his volume), heimportation to an unpredictabledomain-reproductive physiology-ofall the politicaldebatesn feminismover he dispatching f passivity ndactivity, allowed the ovum to "have the opportunity" of entering into abewildering range of behavior instead of being consideredas a "boringpassive gg."The sessionsn genderat the conferencehen shifted roma rathercounterproductiveoul-searchingboutwhetheror not a givenprimatologist asor wasnot "biased ,v ender, to a much more nterest-ing research rogram:How much activitl 'canbegrantedany givenentityif we acceptusing he "indignation against assivit\" ' ainedby decadesof feministstruggle sa resourceo "give a new chance" o an animal orto oneof i ts components?The sameshift quickly consumed he vaguenotion of theorv andmethod.When it is said hat theJapanese ethodwas o stav n the freldat leastas ong asan animal's ife span (seeTakasakihis volume), hisobviously annotbeconsidered sa "bias" hat would "l imit" these cien-tists'vision of the animals.Quite the opposite. his simpledecisionen-tails, or reveals, ifferentanimalssince t allows hem to expand heirinteractions ver a much longerperiod.This doesnot mean that thosewho go into the fleld for no more than a week with the solepurposeofcollectingblood samplesor their populationgeneticsmodel are more"biased," ut rather hat they wil l give the animalsa chance o behavedifferently.The same s true of important decisions ike going to the fieldin Kenya nsteadof staying n an enclosure, r naming the animals ndi-

369


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370 ChaDter Seventeenvidually, or following them on foot instead of watching them from thesafehaven of a jeep.Eachof these movesallows for new differences nthe animal to be elicitedor educed.The de facto abandonmentof theoptical metaphor was clear to all in one of the sessions evoted to therole of theory, when the following contradictory verbs were all usedtodescribewhat variousconceptsweremaking us do: "interact,""focus,""connect," "synthesize," accelerate," highlight," "raise a problem,""providea solution," polarize ttention," shift attention," legitimate,""vindicate,""challenge," stimulate,"etc. Surely, l l this very rich andactive repertoire could not be squeezed nder the label of "f,lter" or"standpoint" for an outsidegaze ooking at a thing out there.On thecontrary, hey made a lot of sensef theoriesareplaced, ike the fifth loopof gure1, at the heartof severallowsof data ransformations.What other metaphorwould do iustice o this practice nd replaceheold tired optical apparatus hat limits the reflexivity of a scientific disci-pline to such an extent? n the paperprepared n advance or the confer-ence, had proposed,ather okinglv, o shift from the gazemetaphor oa gasmetaphor This had the advantage f keepingwith the fluidity offacts ntroduced n the first section.When you put gas nto the tank ofyour car/you are ndeedconnectedwith the oil fieldsof SaudiArabia.Theseconnections an certainlynot be construedas so many "biases"which would have "distorted" he "real oil" out there.At the very east,if one wished away all these mpedimenta,cracking, ransformations,transportations,efineries,n order o gain accesso the "oil i tself,"onewould be left with no gasat all . . . The reality of oil in Saudi Arabia sproven by the number of transformations t undergoes efore ending upasgas n your tank. So,with the gasmetaphor, t is mpossibleo use hecrackingand transformationsof oil against he reality or against he qual-ity of the final product.You have o chooseeither oil without transforma-tion and thus no gasat all, or a lot of transformations ut then you getgas nstead f oilThis gasmetaphor, however,does not do justice o the original ity ofscientific ransformation.To be sure, t outlines well the circulation andfluidity of the reference nd it nicely emphasizeshe impossibil i ty f in-terrupting the flow. But the relation betweenwhat we sayabout animalsand what animalsare ike, s not that of gasand oil. In the case f prima-tology,animalsaremuch more than the raw materialof our knowledgeabout them. The more knowledgewe have of them, the norevisible heybecorne.t is as f the pipeline wasbidirectional, roviding more oil whenn'e have more gasl t is because scientist abricates he fact that it be-corrcs ndependent rom his work-hence the puzzlingdoublemeaning


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A Well-ArticulatedPrimatology 371of this l i tt le word "fact": what is made out, what is not made out. Clearly,this bizarre feature can't be sustainedby the industrial nretaphor.Another way to better capture the pract ice of science is to considerpreconcept ions, biases, theories, methods, a prioris, and culture as somany roads hat make i t possible o gain access o the anintals themselves.Surely,no researcherat Gombe, for instance, wil l cal l the t inv trai ls thatlead to the f ield si te a "bias." I t does not stand "in between" the prirr.ratol-ogist and his chimps. More exact ly, i t does stand i t r bebyeett , ut insteadof being what harnpershe view of the chimp, as n the opt ical nretaphor,it is, without any doubt, what allows the chimps to enter into vien'. Thesame s true of provisioning crates,clearings, sampling methods, stat ist i -cal data reduct ions, binoculars, Jane Goodal l 's popular f l lms, lecturesgiven to the Leakey society, etc. Al l of these elements are in betreen,to be sure, but as so many indispensable mediat ionswithout rvhich noknowledge would be produced at al l . No one wi l l cal l the tarmac on n' l ' r ichplanes are landing a "f i l ter" that distorts what planes are supposed o bein themselves. The tarmac is, very commonly, what allows the plat-re oI a n d . . .

The difference between the optical and the trail metaphor cornes fromthe geometry and the posit ion of the scient ist . In the gazeparadigm, theobserver is fixed and so is the thing to look at. It is a still life and probablycomes from a mistaken interpretation of classical paintings. In such ametaphor, any addition of an intermediary is taken as detrimental to thequal i ty of the view. In the trai l metaphor, on the contrary, the observer snot f,xed, but moves toward the thing to be seen, itself always in move-ment, and the more work that is dor.re n the intermediary, the better thedata wi l l be. In the lat ter metaphor, i t is as i f the vert ical posit ion of thesuccessivei l ters had been shif ted 90 degrees o turn then.r nto a platformal lowing the spectator to move on i t . I t was soon clear to us, during themeeting in Teresopol is, hat al l of the possibleeffects of theorr' , ntethod,and gender on our knowledge of primates would be evaluated di f fercr.rt lvif, instead of being what cut us off f rom the animals, i t becante n.hatgave the animal an opportunity to be seen.The vei ls that unt i l then hadobscured he view of the animals, now became the red carpet al lon' ing usan effortless walk towards them . . .The trai l metaphor is not without i ts defects,however, since i t ntain-tains the idea that knowledge is vision and that observer and obsen'edare quite independent from the route they take. None of this captures heoriginal i ty of Theima Rowell 'ssentence. t is becauseshe decided to treatsheep as chimps that they were l i f ted out of their condit ion of "boringsheep" and al lowed the opportunity to demonstrate some intel l igence.


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37 2 ChapterSeventeenHow can we explain this action of making something elsevisible?Eitherit is made, or it is visible, but how can it be madevisible?How can wereplace he passive esultant of the model we have now discardedby anaction that seems o have contradictory eatures? o be sure,we could usethe traditional vocabularyof fabricationand construction,but this mightentail artificiality, nvention, and even deception. f we say hat factsarefabricatedor constructed,we clearly mply, in the common parlanceatleast, hat they have some nnate vice that makes hem foreverunable o"fly." It seems hat we have no way-in modern Western anguage t leastflullien 1995)-to entertain the possibilityof sayingat once, n the samebreath, abricated husautonomous.We are alwaysasked o choose Is itreal?"or, on the contrary,"ls it fabricated?" ven hough, in practice,wekeep saying hings like: "l tried to givemy sheep he opportunity to be-have ikechimps."One way out of this difficulty might be to talk abovt propositions.aIittle bit of philosophy is necessary t this luncture,and I apolog ize o mycolleaguesor this little excursus, ut it is crucial or allowing me, in thenext section, o frnd another way of discriminating betweengood andbad science. severyonewill admit, he goal s worth a litt le painPropositions hould not be l imited to statementsmade of words ut-teredby a human "aoout"a natural hing. As he name ndicates,hey areoffersmade by an entity to relate o another under a certainperspective.Propositions renot l imited to the human domain of language nd con-sciousness.or nstance,Uexkll 's anonical ick can be considered s aproposition and asa certainway of inhabiting the world by eliciting in itsmultiplicity a tiny number of relevant raits.To useanotherphilosophicalword, one could say hat the tick "offersan interpretation of the world."But so does a fleld site with its research ssistants n mopeds, ts focussample method, its archives, ts portable computers,etc. The field siteinhabits the world in a certain way and establishes ertain types of con-nections hat will modify the others.The passage f any hot-bloodedani-mal will make the tick tick; the appearance f a new animal in the f,eldsitewil l make all the assistantsuddenlyattentive.A statement ays nwords what a thing is. A proposition designates certain way of loadingan entity into another by making the secondattentive o the rst,and bymaking both of them diverge rom their usualpath, their usual nterpreta-tion. A simple figure might help to grasp he abstractdifferencebetweena statement nd a proposition.A statementpertains o the human languageand is utterly separatedbv an unbridgeable ap from the things it talks about. There s alwaysanabvssbetweenwords and world, human and objects.This gap may bebridged, owever, y the verymysterious ct of establishing correspon-


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A We l-Arti culated P imato ogy 373

STATEMENTlanguage world

human I s"nl - l l n a t u r eI conespondance \JPROPOSITION

Fig.3. The difference etweena statement n language bout a reference, n the one hand.and a proposition,on the other, ies n the situationof the tw-o oncepts:n the latter he dif-ference etweenword and world is no longerpertinent.dence between words and world so as to provide the statement with atruth value. If, and only if, the cat is on the mat will the sentence thecat is on the mat" be verifled.But sincebetween he dimensionless en-tence "the cat is on the mat" and a three-dimensional lack furry cat onthe mat there is no possible esemblance,he correspondences alwaystentative and the gap between the two may never be fllled, no matterhow many hundredsof t hick tomes he philosophers f language avethrown into it. The word "dog" doesnot bark any more than the word"cat" purrs.Because f their infinite distance ' i th things-distancecre-atedartif lcially,or political easons,y the erasure f all the intermediarvsteps f dataconstructions-statementsrealn'ar-sunning the riskof notcorrespondingo the world n an exactway, hr-rsonder.nninghe huntanIocutor o l i fe imprisonment,ockedaway n the cell of language. kepti-cism directly descendsrom this implausibledefinition of truth as corre-spondence etweenwords and the world.Propositions,n the other hand,do not pertain o language ut to theworld. This world, however,doesnot resemble naturemade of thingsforeign o human consciousnesshat hasbeenmade o stand ike an en-emy camp opposite he human camp. t is made of interpretations, rpropositions,sent fo others so that they might behavedifferently. n be-tweenpropositions here is thus not onegapbut man,v lifferences. ean-ing is not obtainedby this very implausiblecorrespondence etween an-guageand oblectswhich have been made totally foreign to one another

diffe rences


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i 7 4to beginwith, but by connectingpropositions hich r.night r nright nrrtbe slightly oreign o one another.While the notion of statements)ro-vides no possibleavenue or the thing to be made relevant to rr-hat vesayabout t-except through he perilous ootbridge f a correspondencebetweenwordsand world-the notion of propositions llon's hings tcrbe loaded nto words. Whereasa statement mplies the existence f atalkative human surroundedby rnute things, a proposition impiies thatwe are made o speakn this way by'what s talkedabout.To understandthis very tricky point in a lessabstractway,we need o turn to the thirddebate f the conference-themost ascinating nd also he most diftcultto elaborate.

Articulatedor InarticulatePropositionsAfter having circumventedhe falsedebate o decide f primatology s oris not "socially onstructed," nd after he rathersteri le iscussion n therole of method, theory,and gender n "shapingour views" of primates,the conference ould havegottenstuck n the traditionaloppositionbe-tween "nature"and "r'rurture," nd all the more sogiven he feelings orand against ociobiologv,'hich wereas ntenseas hose riggered y sci-encestudies. his s rvhere,rom my point of view, he meetingwasmostrervarding.t seemshat we avoided he usualpitfallsby exemplifying npracticea new set of criteria o distirrguishood rotnbadsciencehat com-pletely' uts across he old tired distinctionbetweenbiologicaland cul-tural determinism. t is this shibboleth hat I want to rendermore exDlicitin the last sectionof this chapter.I hope that Thelma Rowell will forgive me for analyzingher assertionabout her sheep n more detail, but it provides he essential lue for mydemonstration. As I said above, statementsare different from proposi-tions. This isespecially lear f we considerhow we make udgmentsabouttheir quality. Statements re true or falsedepending on whether or notthere is a stateof affairs corresponding o the statement-with all thedifftcultiesoutlined by the philosophy of language. u'ill propose o say,howevel that propositions are good or bad depending on whether theyarearticulate r inarticulate.Boring sheepareboring sheep" s an inarticu-late proposition since t repeats autologicallywhat a sheep s, as f refus-ing to enter nto a connectionwith anything else. Sheep re ntell igentchirnps" is an articulatedproposition since t offers o establisha connec-tion between wo completelydifferent ent ities that will give meaning toboth: in the ftrst sentence,sheep"are not given a chance," as Thelmasaid; n the second, hey "will be given an opportunity to behavediffer-


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A Well-ArticulatedPrimatctlogy 37sent ly." The f i rst sentence s a repet i t ion-A is A. The second is, to use aphi losophical term, a predicat ion-A is B-that is, something else, onwhich it now depends to gain i ts meaning.The difference between articulate and inarticulate is not the same asbetween true and false. It is more like the difference between a musrcmade of one note that remains at the same pitch and another that modu-lates the tone by shifting from one note to the other. Contrary to popularbeliefs about science, it is very difficult to capture with some precisionwhat scient istsmean when they say that one piece of science s ,, interest-ing" and another "rubbisl .r." f dict ionarv science s made up of statementsthat are simply true or false,scienceon the run, that is, research, s madeup of proposit ions that also have rhr. ' t l . rm, olor, temperature,and tempo.When a scient ist says that a proposit ion is " interest ing,, ,she does notonly mean that i t is accurate,but that i t has a lot of other qual i t ies aswell: i t can be warm, hot, surprising, fecund, product ive, e_xcit ing. . .When we insist on the dist inct ion between bad and good science, l.enotonly dist inguish between truth and falsi ty, but also betn'een repet i t rveand art iculate sentences.When we say that "data are meaningful , , ,wethus designateanother type of circulat ion than the one between a refere.ntout there and a statement in the language (see op of gure 3). We seemto designate a very specif ickind of movement among proposit ions thatrearrange hemselves nto new and unexpectedcombinat ions (seebottomof f igure 3).

We now understand why the debate about , ,socialconstruct ion,, or"biases" was so frui t less. It was st i l l connected with the l inguist ic andoptical metaphors. The rnore intermediaries there were between the eyeof the observer and the object-or betr,veenhe statementsof the scien-t ists and the thing in i tsel f-the /ess irect, and thus, the lessaccuratewasthe correspondenceand the qual i ty of the ir. rformationproduced. Ideal lv,according to this view, if there r. l 'ere o interntediart ' at al l , no cor-r-rpl ica-t ion whatsoever, the knowledge would be r.norecclntplete.The situat ior-ris ent irely dif ferent with proposit ions. The rnore act ivi t \ . there is, ancl t l -remore intermediaries here are, the betrer he chance to art iculate meaning-ful proposit ions. The dif ference between sett ings is not betn'een thosewhere the scient istsare inact ive, remote, detached,disinterestcd,ancj au-tonomous, and t l -rosewl-rere hey are act ive, construct ive, busv fabricat-ing, or being biased,and ful l of a prioris and presupposit ions. nstead, hedist inct ion is between tl.resett ingswhere al l the act ivi tv ends up ltrocluc-ing repet i t ive data and those where the act ivi ty produces lt terest ingart ic-ulat ions. Once again, Thelrna offers an excel lent exar.nple r. l . rcn he cast i-gates the farmers for constant l l ' separat ing sheep frour one another assoon as they demonstrate behavior that is not sheepish and panurgian.


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376 Cha7ter eventeenFarmers o not give he sheep chance,whereas helma's etups reun-usualbecause he activelycounteracts he farmer'scustoms,allowing thesheep o establishhierarchiesand social relations wherein they stand aslightlybetterchanceof being socially omplex.This casealso nicely shows hat propositionsare in no way confinedto language.The forms of life, in their entirety, n which farmers nteractwith sheep y selectinghern or their docil i ty and sheepishness,i l l notallow them, .e. the farmers, o let tlrcm, .e. the sheep,e olkedabout nany other r,r'ay. peech s not an exact propert,vof the human phonicapparatus, f the human inner subjectivity, f the human consciousness.It is more a propertyof the whole setting n which very heterogeneouselementshave been gatheredand connected:barns,enclosures, rassflelds,and r.t'ooln the farmers' onn of life; barns,enclosures, rass ields,l ibraries, enes, apers, nd ethological neetingsn Thelma'sorm of l ife.Whoever enters he farmer'ssetting vill be tnade o sdl that boring sheepareboring sheep;whoeverentersThelma's uasi-laboratory i l l be madeto say hat sheep oo ntav be "charismatic nimals," n spiteof the dis-tancebetweenprimates nd runrinantslIn practice,t is rrelt 'r.thc ase hat ne utter statements y n-rerelysingthe resource f language nd then only afterward heck o see f t hereexistsa correspondir-rghing that wil l verify or falsif.v ur utterance.Noone has everbegurr v sal,ing he "cat is on the mat" and thert urned tothe proverbialcat to seewhether or not it is sitting grar-rdly n the prover-bial mat. Our involvement in what we say s at once much more intinnteand much morc indircct han that of the traditional picture: we are al-lowed to saynew things when we enter well-articulated ettings.Articula-tion between ropositionss much deeper han speech.Wespeak ecausethe propositions f the rn'orld re hemselves rticulated, ot the otherway around. More exactly, r'edreallowed o speak nterestitrgh'b1'r+'hateollov,to peaknterestirrgli ' tDespret996). he notion of articulated ropo-sitionsestablishesntirelydifferent elations etween nowerand knownthan the traditionalview, but it captr.rresuch rnoreprecisely he richrepertoire f scientific ractice nd s much betteradaptedo the reflexivetask requested y the organizers' rief.A simple diagram might clarify the shift from one shibboleth to theother.The traditional touchstone ries o distinguish scientificstatementsaboutprimates rom rronscientific tatements. he first t1,pes said o cor-rcspond o a stateof affairs out there,"while the otherwil l be elaboratedll usir.rgnly the resourcesrovidedat one ime by the available tockofpresuppositions,l ichs,nyths,a prioris,or paradigms, ithout the bene-trt of anvthing "out there."To be sure, his touchstoneprovidesa veryLr.tlulcl inrensionor sortingout dictionaryscience. ut it doesnot can-


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A \Uell-A ticulatedP imato ogy,

PROPOSITIO\Sanlculate rnar t rcuulc

ific A Bscientific C D

F ig . 1. The c lass ica l i s t inc t ion be tween sc ien t i f rcand nonsc ien t i f i c s ta tements \ n ( ) t


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378 CInDter eventeenactivemediations o the greatest umber of activeentities.We werenottrying to move from a naive scienceo a critical science, or from a non-science o an eventuallyscientiflc outlook, nor from a pure science o apollutedscience, ut from a sciencemade rom a certainnumberof activeentities o anothermadeof a greater umberof them.6Let me givea few exanples o i l lustrate his point. The difference e-tween the classical icture of active spermatozoarying to penetratepassiveegg,and the new picture provided by Tang-Martinez, s not thatthe seconds freed rom gender iases hile he formerhad beendistortedby them; nor is it that the formerwas solelyscientific vhile he secondbrought n external actors orrowed rom the arger ulture o "contar.ni-nate" the scientif ,c actsof physiologl. The difference s that the formerleavesa large number of entities nactive, simply transporting necessity,while the secondgenerates t everypoint activeentities hat, in part,modify the causality xerted nto them b.v he other.An egg hat activelyselects ut spermatozoa iffers front a passir,e gg not becauset is nrore"feminine" or becauset is studiedby a radical emir.rist,ut becausetdoesmore hingsand it is composedof more elements,more arficles, ndmore mediations, one of rn'hich an bc' educed o a simple nput andoutput blackbox.The same s true of Glickman's atsbeforeand after hedernise f Skinnerian svchology. he postbehavioristatsarenot morescientific han Skinner's ats.They do more things.They aremadeup ofntoreelements.l 'heyaremorearticulate nd soare he psychologists house more diverseelements o talk about them. Simplification ecomesharder; ransports f necessityesseasy.The same s true of "smartba-boons," "charismaticchimps," and "Machiavell iananimals." No oneclaims hat these epresent ore scientihcally hat the animalsare ike-although heyobviously o; nor doesanvonepretend hat these repleas-ing stories hat are more in keepingwith the prejudices f the age-although hey obviouslvare.Smartanimalsaremoreactive n their ownbehaviorand thus allorn'or more awarenessn the part of the scientistsstudying hem, forcing hem to takemore precautions, bliging hem tobecome n turn more ntell igent,more respectful.TThe point of this very cmde ndicator-the number of activeentitiesand the numberof activescientists-is o point out that articulationwasa much more important element n the discussion han thle ypeof entityeachof us tried to dealwith. That they pertained o natureor to culture,to environrlent or to physiology, o scienceor to the history of science,to genetics r to feministstudiesmattered es-shan their degree f acti\ '-i tv and their abil i ty o reconflgureheir inputs and outputs.This shibbo-leth can be applied o variouselements, enes, orrnones, hysiology,brain rvaves, nd behaviors, ithout forcingus to resort o the imageof


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A llell-Articulatedrimatology 379"levels"-the inferior evelbeing considered s more determinant hanthe oneprecedingt. Reductionisms no longeran interestingssue. hus,for instance, ealingwith smart baboonswho live in sociallycomplexgroupsdoesnot mean that primatologists oming from anthropologicaldepartmentswil l be unwill ing to deal with geneticdeterminism.Theywill simply be wary of a certain ype of geneticshat connects lementsso as o decreasehe number of active mediators. Also, trside enetics hedistinctionbetweenarticulate nd inarticulate ropositions i l l sortoutwhich parts of genetics re repetitiveand simply scientific, nd whichpartsarearticulate nd dealwith a greatmany active smart"genes nd"smart"proteins, he pathways f which cannotbe used or transportingan indisputablenecessity.

Glickman'shyena enclosure t Berkeley ffersa magnificent l lustra-tion of what it means o dealwith articulation.Everypossible isciplineis brought in, from endocrinology o ethology, rom genetics o psychol-ogy, from anatomy to natural history, from media studies o the historyof science, ut not one of them is introduced to decreasehe number ofactiveentitieselicitedby another.Quite the contrarv:every ime a newdiscipline appears,a new active entity is made visible that complicatesthe straight path of another.Glickman is not trying to integrateall thedisciplines, achof them dealingwith a certain level" and defininganinflexible type of necessity.nstead,he is forcing all of the disciplinesbrought o the Berkelev nclosureo reconfrgureheirdefrnitionof actionat theoccasion f new and puzzling features ffered hen.r y those hyenasto whom he hasoffered the opportunitr." o behave ntell igentlyand tobe madeup of entities,wherebyeachof them canbe described sslightlysntdrterhan before. Off the shelf"endocrinologvr,' i l l ot do the job anybetter han "off the shelf" populationgenetics r "off the shelf" histor;'of popularmisrepresentationsf hyenas.Articulated ropositions annotbe easily raversed y indisputable ecessities.rom his enclosure, herescientists rerendered marter y smarterhyenaswho at lastescapeheterrible fate of being despisableDisney-likehyenas, no simplificationaboutdeterminism an escape.Thegreatadvantage f this definition s that it alsoapplies o the criti-cal discourse earing on primatology tself.When sorneone avs hat"women primatologists ee hings differentlybecausehey arc \\'ontell"or that "Japanesecientists ee hings differentlybecausehev arcJapa-nese," t can mean wo different hings hat areeasy o distinguish f rveuse he new touchstone. his ntroductionof an outsideelemer.rt ightplayexactl.vhe same epetitivenarticulate oleas he one I'r 'e rsed husfarasan example: boringsheep reboringsheep," wonrenarewomen,""Japanese re Japanese." he new entity is introduced-sex, culture,


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380 Chapter eventeenetc.-not in order to elicit a new feature from the other, but so as tomaintain he essentialist haracterof the causality hat has been broughtin. It givesno more critical edge o the proposition than to say hat //genesaregenes"or that "Westerners lwayssee hings asWesterners." autologyis alwaysa tautology,no matter if it comes rom the inside of science rfrom the outside,no matter if it dealswith nature or culture, from ulti-mate or proximatemechanisms.But thesenew featuresmay alsomean somethingentirely different.Bybringing in women scientistsor Japaneseesearchers,his new originalstandpointwill introduce a difference hat will lead away rom the stand-point. Once again, t is Thelma Rowellwho provided the best exampleofthis shif t when, to ridicule the notion of standpoint, she said n passing,"lf a female scientiststudies emale baboonsand sticks o them shewillend up studyingmalesbecauseemalebaboonsarevery much interestedin males "That'sexactly he qualityof a standpoint: t allowsmovementin a differentway than what was ntended.Standpoints everstandsti l lBecause f the new attention given by female researcherso female ba-boons, a new attention will be given to males hat differs entirely fromthe original focuson the domineering malesand that differsa/so rom thefocuson the fernalehat rlasoriginally ntended.When we contend hatprimatologl' betravs"many Western ulturalbiases boutanimals,mon-ke1's, pes, r DarkAfrica, hat's exactly t: primatologybetraysheseorigi-nal standpointsby turning them into somethingcompletelydifferent.\\hat is true for the gene, or hormone evels, nd for aggressions alsotrue for history and the sociologyof science:he carryingoverof indisput-able necessity s always ess nteresting, and, in the end, less scientiflcthan the revelationof active mediatorsall the way down.If I am allowed some Gallic exaggeration, would be tempted to saythat the meeting n Teresopolis ad an historical significance. oo often,scientists elieve hat their sciencewill be better served f they ignore asmuch as possibleall the untidy connections that make it work, withwhich they deal on a daily basis.They might be gathered o reflexivelyevaluate heir discipline, but this evaluation, n their eyes,can only becarried ut by usingan off-the-shelf hilosophyof sciencehat dates acksixty years-to be charitable.The aim of such reflexivegathering couldonly be to purify the disciplineevermore from the last remnantsof adher-ence o subjectivity,politics, mythology, ideology,or biases.Shirley andLinda led us along an entirely different trail, which I have ried to map indotted lines using my own systemof projection. What would happen tothe collective nderstanding f a discipline, f scientists ere no longertrying to extirpate themselves rom the sin of being connected,but ac-cepted he vascularization s so many positive features hat would turn


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A \Uell-Articulatedrimatolog) 38'ltheir sciencento a well-articulatedne?Primatologywould not only becrucially mportant asa trading zonebetweenanthropology,zoology,evo-lutionary theory, ethics,conservation, nd ecologli but alsoan exemplarysite or the renewalof philosophyof science.

N O T E ST O C H A P T E RS E V E N T E E NEngl ish n th is chapter k indly corrected by Duana Ful lwi ley.

1. I am well aware that this distinction between representation and things, or,to speak more philosophically, epistemological questions and ontological ones, isbui l t in the cul ture for much stronger pol i t ica l reasons hat have noth ing to dowith primates or Teresopolis. I have traced elsewhere part of this genealogy (La-tou r 1997) .

2. The sentence is all the more interesting since it deals with a purely observa-tional etholoSy which has none of the usual features of laboratory experimentswhere i t is a lways easier o show the ar t i f ic ia l i ty of the setup (Hacking 1992| .For atreatment of a s imi lar sentenceby Louis Pasteur , eeLatour 1996a.

3. See he beaut i fu l case studies by Despert (1996) on the theor ies devised bvA. Zahavi about Arabian babble. SeeGl ickman (th is vohrnte) on rrhat happened tr>laboratory rats in the cagesof the behaviorists.

4. I have tried to rvork out this limit of the philosorhv of action by' devisingthe concept of " fact ishes" (Latour 1996b). For one possib leuse of th is not ion inepistemology, see Stenger 1996. The notion of proposition is a central conceptin Whiteheadian metaphysics (Whitehead 1929 [197811.I t has c lose connect ionwith the debates between "saltationist" and "deambulatorv" conceDtions of truth-making (James1907).

5. For a more complete demonstrat ion, seeLatour 1999.6. The question of why is it that the "greater number of active entities thebetter" cannot be tackled within the confines of this chapter since it depends on a

further redefinition of the difference between science and politics. For a first-effortgo at i t , seeLatour 1999.

7. This extends,as Despret (1996) has so elegant ly shown, to those people rvhowatch pr imatologis ts or ethologis tsat work: in te l l igence,so to speak, s nfect ious-s t u p i d i t y t o o . . .

Latour74 Primates Strum Gb

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