Counterdominance

Description

Chris Knigt et al. :

Symbolic revolution as ‘counterdominance’:

"Current models associate the rapid evolutionary expansion of the hominine brain with greater Machiavellian intelligence (e.g. Dunbar 1993). An authoritative recent suggestion is that hunter-gatherer type egalitarianism was eventually established because the capacities of dominant individuals to exploit subordinates became increasingly well matched by group members’ ‘counterdominance’ capacities; under such conditions, a strategy of ‘playing fair’ — resisting dominance by others while not fighting for dominance oneself — became evolutionarily stable (Erdal & Whiten 1994).

There are grounds for linking counterdominance with an increasing reliance on low-cost vocal-auditory communication in place of energy-expensive gesture and manual grooming (cf. Aiello & Dunbar 1993). We have seen how, in conflict situations, low-cost signals are mistrusted and ignored by listeners precisely on account of their low costs. If we accept that Pleistocene humans nonetheless did rely increasingly upon efficient vocal-auditory communication (e.g. Lieberman 1991), we can only assume that through counterdominance strategies minimizing such sources of conflict as inter-male reproductive differentials (Turke 1984; 1988; Power & Aiello in press), humans were establishing unusually extensive, stable, kinbased coalitions fostering corresponding levels of mutual trust. Provided internal deception remained relatively rare, conditions for the evolution of conventional signaling might have been established, yielding a growing ‘proto-language’ of coded terms for social/environmental reference (cf Bickerton 1990). Darwinian theory, in any event, locates the evolutionary roots of speech in selection acting upon cooperative individuals. Over the generations, listeners in the human case have evidently needed to know: otherwise they would not have evolved such specialized neurophysiological adaptations for decoding messages accurately at low amplitudes, requiring minimal redundancy and at astonishingly high speeds (Lieberman 1991; Pinker & Bloom 1990 and refs; Pinker 1994). Admittedly, the system can be used for lying; indeed, reliance upon speech renders listeners highly vulnerable. But in view of the low-cost, conventional design features of the system, internal deception can be ruled out as a factor driving its evolution.

By contrast, ritual in human cultures demands seemingly disproportionate energetic investments (Sperber 1975). Like their animal counterparts, human rituals are loud, multi-media displays, stereotyped and prone to massive redundancy (Rappaport 1979, 173-246). They are also characteristically illusion-inducing or ‘deceptive’ (Sperber 1975; Lattas 1989). The difference is that animal manipulative displays are individualistic and competitive, whereas their most potent human counterparts in traditional cultures are quintessentially collective performances. They demarcate social relations of power, identify84 -ing groups with common interests and setting them in opposition to other groups (Leach 1954; Cohen 1985). But despite this collectivity, they are also highly manipulative performances. Human groups throughout recorded history have exploited others by using elaborate ritual to overcome their victims’ ‘sales resistance’. To the extent that such performances convey honest information, it is in ostentatious display of their very costliness — demonstrating the organizers’ ability to bear such costs (cf Zahavi 1987). We might infer — in view of the energy expended in relation to the paucity of reliable information conveyed (Sperber 1975, 8) — that such rituals arose as coalitions of conspirators strove to ‘exploit the muscle power’ of others who tended to resist the message."

(http://radicalanthropologygroup.org/wp-content/uploads/pub_knight_power_watts.pdf)