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  6. The Sociobiological School

  This brings us to the third form of Primordialism, the Sociobiological Approach. The most prominent advocates of this perspective are American biologist Edward O. Wilson, in his book Sociobiology (1975), and Belgian anthropologist Pierre van den Berghe (1978). Their approach is relatively straightforward. They apply Darwinian principles, which are readily applied to explain the behaviour of non-human animals, to human behaviour. If it is accepted, as Darwin argued and as subsequent genetic evidence has proven, that humans are evolved from a common ancestor with the chimpanzee and are essentially a form of highly evolved ape, then this approach should be entirely unproblematic. The fundamental question for sociobiologists, argued van den Berghe, was ‘Why are animals social, that is, why do they cooperate?’ After all, they are competing for scarce resources such that they can pass on their genes to the maximum extent, so there is no obvious reason why they should cooperate, yet some animals do cooperate, something which Wilson (1975) highlighted as being most extreme in the case of the social insects where sterile worker bees will readily lay down their lives by stinging intruders in defence of the hive.

  Sociobiologists postulated the answer, long intuitively known, that animals are social to the extent that such cooperation is mutually beneficial in helping to pass on their genes. Clearly, it is accepted that an animal’s fundamental instinct is to breed and thus pass on its genes to the next generation. British biologist Richard Dawkins (1976) goes further, arguing that the gene itself (or, specifically, the allele; the version of a particular gene) is essentially programmed to replicate itself and it achieves this by cooperating with other genes in the form of the organism, which is merely a vehicle for the replication of genes. Successful alleles are those which, in a particular environment, lead to the greatest reproductive success of their host, leading to that particular allele being more likely to spread through the population. In other words, successful alleles are those which lead to the host having the greatest ‘fitness’. If these alleles lead to significant fitness advantages for their carriers, they will spread throughout the population, leading to a situation, for example, where having blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale skin is widespread in some parts of Europe. The alleles which underpin these adaptations permitted greater fitness, because the carriers, in an agricultural environment marked by winter darkness, could more easily absorb Vitamin D from the sun, rendering it more likely that they would live long enough to reproduce (Cochran & Harpending, 2009).

  Sociobiology’s main innovation was to posit the main genetic mechanism behind pro-social behaviour among animals, a mechanism which is termed ‘inclusive fitness’. British evolutionary psychologist William Hamilton (1936–2000) argued that an animal can duplicate its genes in two ways. It can do so directly, through reproduction, or indirectly, through aiding the reproductive efforts of its relatives, with whom it will share specific proportions of genes, above a base rate of nil within the more general population of which it is a part (Hamilton, 1964). Animals can, therefore, be expected to behave cooperatively, and enhance each other’s genetic fitness, to the extent that they are related to each other, and to the extent that doing so will be mutually beneficial in terms of genetic fitness. This idea has been termed ‘kin selection’ (Maynard-Smith, 1964). ‘Hamilton’s Rule’ is that altruism will spread through a population if the cost to the altruistic individual is outweighed by his gain in terms of inclusive fitness, brought about by aiding his kin.

  I will present detailed evidence for this later, but it is intuitively obvious that all animals, including humans, are nepotistic, at least to some extent. In general, they favour kin over non-kin and close kin over distant kin. They may consciously behave nepotistically, investing in their children whom they know to be their children, or, as we will see is often the case, unconsciously, such as by selecting a sexual partner that is genetically relatively similar to themselves. Van den Berghe (1978) adds, however, that the propensity to be altruistic will be proportionate not only to the coefficient of relatedness between the self and the other, but also to the benefit/cost ratio of the altruistic act with regard to one’s own genetic fitness. Thus, a menopausal mother may be more likely to sacrifice her life for her only child than would a mother in her early twenties who was given a choice between her own death and the death of her first and as yet unborn child. The latter mother could go on to have many more children, but it would be in the interests of the former’s genetic fitness to sacrifice herself for the sake of her offspring as she could not have any more. A simple formula can be used to calculate that if the cost/benefit ratio of the transaction is smaller than the coefficient of relatedness between the individual and the other, then altruism should be predicted.

  Indeed, following van den Berghe, Australian political scientist Frank Salter (2007) has shown, in considerable mathematical detail, precisely how it is possible to predict whether kin-altruism is likely to occur at the level of the ethnic group or even at the level of the race. Salter notes that genetic interests can be quantified because gene frequencies within different ethnic groups have indeed been quantified. For example, Salter draws upon an analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of 1,007 European males to show the degree of relatedness between different European ethnic groups. Consequently, Hamilton’s theory, combined with data on population genetics, allows ethnic kinship to be estimated. Salter argues that kinship with other members of one’s ethnic group is zero if the group is considered in isolation, though against that baseline one could obviously calculate kinship with one’s family members, for example. However, Salter shows that the world’s population is composed of many ethnies, some of which are far more closely related than others. Some ethnies are so distantly related that random co-ethnics become very closely related by comparison and even the difference between relatively genetically similar ethnies — such as the English and the Danish — is certainly sufficient that the genetic interests of an Englishman would be damaged by even a small degree of population replacement by Danes.

  Clearly, noted Salter, in any given population of one ethnicity, an individual shares 50% of his genes with each of his parents, siblings, and children; 25% of his genes with each of his grandparents, aunts and uncles and grandchildren, 12.5% of his genes with each of his great-grandparents, cousins, and great-grandchildren and so on. He has zero genes in common with a random co-ethnic. However, this relationship changes if the baseline is changed. Numerically speaking, Salter calculated that if the world consisted simply of Englishmen and Danes then two random Englishmen would have a kinship coefficient of 0.0021 above the baseline. This would be akin to sharing a set of 6 x great-grandparents, in other words, being seventh cousins and so having common ancestors in the early eighteenth century. In that that one’s genes can be replicated directly or indirectly, by kin altruism, the replacement of a random co-ethnic with a foreigner would damage one’s genetic interests. However, this damage would be tiny, though not inconsequential, when comparing the English and the Danes. The replacement of a single, or small number, of co-ethnic English by a very small number of Danes, for example two, might actually be counter-balanced by the positive contribution of these Danes to one’s genetic interests. For example, if one of the Danes became one’s wife — allowing one to breed — and the other was a medical researcher who pioneered a cure for some rare condition affecting one’s children, this small-scale Danish immigration would enhance one’s genetic interests. But, in general, it would damage them, even if only modestly.

  At the other extreme, if the world was divided between Australian Aborigines and Mbuti Pygmies, then two random Australian Aborigines would have a kinship coefficient of 0.43. This would render them almost as identical twins (where kinship is 0.5), meaning any replacement of even a single Aboriginal with a singly Pygmy would wreak enormous damage on the genetic interests of the Aboriginal. Following van den Berghe, we would expect that only a minimum risk would be taken by the English to repel a smal
l number of a Danes, but it would be worth taking a very significant risk, as Australian Aborigines, to repel even a handful of Mbuti. On this basis, we would expect ethnic conflict to be more intense the larger the genetic difference between the two ethnic groups. As already noted, this is precisely what has been found by Vanhanen (2012), something we will explore in greater detail below.

  The sociobiologists differ from extreme Primordialists in that they accept that the human development of ‘culture’ means that altruism is not as clearly predicted by relatedness as it is in non-human animals. The purely genetic hypothesis is complicated by a number of factors. The first significant factor is reciprocity, something we have already touched upon with the example of a Danish wife or Danish pioneering medical researcher. A rudimentary sense of reciprocity is present in some non-human animals but it is far more prevalent and complex in even the simplest human societies, due to longer time horizons and the ability to communicate complex information. Reciprocity is cooperation for mutual benefit or with the expectation of a return, and it can occur between kin as well as between non-kin. Thus, a human might be altruistic towards a human from a different ethnic group in the hope of receiving altruism in return at some future point. Due to our having longer time horizons than have our closest primate relatives, and our heightened ability to communicate, such an act could be better remembered and the response monitored.

  The second factor is coercion: the use of force to ensure one-sided benefit and to allow the dominant partner to predate or act as a parasite upon the less powerful one. Van den Berghe argues that as societies become more complex and fluid, people have less and less contact with their close genetic kin and, consequently, reciprocity and coercion start to take on far greater importance, albeit within certain limits predicted by a desire to promote kin-altruism. We will look at the evidence for this model later in our discussion. But it seems fairly obvious that an individual could promote his own genetic fitness — and that of his close kin — by making an alliance with people even of a different ethnic group. He could then promote his genetic interests against competitors within his own ethnic group through a form of coercion. However, what this of course means is that though there may be a general trend towards kin-altruism in human societies this will obviously be less pronounced than is the case among simple human societies or among non-human animals. This can be observed in interethnic alliances in terms of friendship or mutually loving sexual relationships that cross ethnic boundaries (see Dalrymple, 2004). The point, however, which sociobiologists emphasize, is that kin-altruism will, nevertheless, be highly significant to human affairs. Moreover, it will become increasingly significant in explaining behaviour the more genetically distant two conflicting ethnic groups are. And though reciprocity and coercion are doubtless important, kinship will be the ultimate explanation, underpinning the more overt explanations. Thus, for example, a coercive relationship between two races will probably be more coercive and more unpleasant the more distantly related they are, while a mixed-raced sexual relationship may be more likely if the couple share certain highly heritable features, possibly even to the extent that their ‘ethnic difference’ is more than compensated for.15

  Van den Berghe also looks at the question of why it is that most social groups — at least in relatively ethnically homogenous societies — tend not to be based around shared genetic characteristics, such as having blonde hair, but are more likely to be based around shared beliefs or hobbies. Van den Berghe argues that the answer is that there is significant inter-ethnic variation in particular traits, such as blonde hair, and this variation can be observed even within a nuclear family. Degree of kinship, therefore, cannot be easily inferred by one, or even a handful, of physical traits among relatively genetically closely related people. It is true, notes van den Berghe, that different European ethnic groups possess what he calls a ‘somatic norm range’, such that we may discuss people being ‘Nordic-looking’ or ‘Mediterranean-looking’, but these descriptions are often employed in the absence of more concrete information about the person’s ethnic background, such as his accent or native language. Physical appearance is only a reliable measure of kinship when it is widely discrepant, such as when comparing Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans or, possibly at some extremes, Northern and Southern Europeans. It is much less reliable when comparing, for example, the English and the Scottish. Accordingly, cultural markers actually become a more accurate means of assessing kinship coefficient than do genotypic traits, in this narrow context. This would, in turn, help to explain why most social groups tend to be cultural in nature and, also, why people can be so strongly motivated to defend the cultural group of which they are a part and attack its perceived enemy. An obvious example, in an English context, would be the accent with which a person speaks. This tells other English people the individual’s regional and social background and can thus be employed to infer the level of kinship to self. Clearly, how one chooses to dress conveys subtle cues about one’s social and, to a lesser extent, geographical background, which likely advertise small genetic differences from those of a different social or geographical background. Indeed, research by Italian geneticist Luigi Cavalli-Sforza (1997) has shown that divisions and sub-divisions of languages correspond remarkably well with populations (as defined by genetic distances) and boundaries of steep genetic gradients.

  7. Criticisms of the Sociobiological School

  A number of criticisms have been levelled against the sociobiological school but, unlike with the Constructivists, it seems to me that all of these can be satisfactorily answered.

  Firstly, it may be argued that the model is ‘reductionist’, in that it reduces the mass of available information down to an ultimately biological theory. One can respond, following E. O. Wilson (1998), that science by its very nature is reductionist. The test of a successful scientific theory is three-fold. (1) It must be a unitary theory that explains a very large amount of data in the simplest possible way. As such, in this way, it must be ‘reductionist’. (2) It must, in some way, unify separate fields of thought, such as social science and biology. This is known as ‘consilience’ (see Wilson, 1998). Advocates justify this arguing that, from a pragmatic perspective, we need to be able to make correct predictions about the world or we cannot survive. Science has shown that it achieves this aim, because it is underpinned by the empirical method and logic. As such, we can conceive of a hierarchy of disciplines, each reducible to the one that is closer to pure logic. Theories in psychology must be reducible to biology in order to be sound, biology to chemistry, chemistry to physics to pure Mathematics. The sociobiological model of nationalism does indeed reduce research in sociology and psychology down to the biological level. By contrast, the alternate, purely subjectivist, theories which we have examined do not pass the two tests of a scientific theory, for various reasons that we have already discussed.

  The second criticism of the sociobiological model is that it is a form of ‘biological determinism’. This criticism may legitimately be leveled against some forms of Primordialism. For example, American anthropologist Madison Grant (1865–1937) essentially argued that all differences between ethnic groups were a function of inheritance (Grant, 1916). However, this is a simply a straw man criticism if leveled against the work of scholars such as Wilson (1975) or van den Berghe (1978). Advocates of the sociobiological perspective clearly emphasize the significance of environmental variables in explaining differences in the behavior of different ethnies at different times. As we have seen, they note the significance, for example, of cooperation and coercion in human societies and especially more complex human societies and they discuss how the extent to which kin altruism will be displayed can be predicted by the risk balanced against the payoff, which will obviously vary according to environmental factors. In addition, van den Berghe has discussed the way in which purely cultural traits become an imperfect proxy for kinship in complex societies.

  Moreover, anthropologists such as Coch
ran and Harpending (2009) have explored the way in which cultural changes — such as the introduction of agriculture — can alter natural selection in particular directions with regard to psychological adaptations and, by extension, with regard to cultural differences. As such, it is simply inaccurate to claim that sociobiologists are advancing a form of biological determinism. They are arguing that ethnic groups are ultimately defined by biological differences from other ethnic groups, but this is not the same as arguing that they are nothing more than this. Those who identify as, and are accepted as, members of a particular ethnic group will vary in the degree to which they are biologically related and, accordingly, there is clearly space for a substantially sociological dimension to ethnic identity. It is simply being argued that, in general, a random member of the ethny will have greater kinship with another random co-ethnic than he will with a random member of another ethny. Likewise, many of the overt differences between ethnic groups may be substantially underpinned by environmental variables. It is simply being argued that the most parsimonious explanation is that biological differences ultimately underpin the cultural differences.

  The third criticism of this perspective has been leveled by many scholars but most prominently American psychologist Geoffrey Miller (2000) as part of a discussion of sexual selection called The Mating Mind. Miller rightly points out that we must be careful in attempting to explain all of human evolution in terms of Natural Selection; that is to say adaptions which assist an individual, or species, to better survive in a particular environment. Sexual selection, which was also originally proposed by Darwin, is also significant in explaining genetic variance. An obvious example of a ‘sexual ornament’ is a peacock’s tail. This may have some use in terms of natural selection, in that the peacock can make himself look bigger to predators by displaying particularly large tail. However, Miller argues that it is also a ‘fitness indicator’. A peacock with poor genetic fitness — and thus a high number of mutant genes — would have to invest proportionately more of its resources in simply staying alive than a peacock with fewer mutant genes. As such, it would not be able to grow or maintain as impressive a tail. The tail of a less fit peacock would be smaller, less bright, less ornate and asymmetrical. This is because we are evolved to be symmetrical, so symmetry shows that we have a lack of mutant genes which cause asymmetry and that we are fit enough to have grown a healthy phenotype in the face of disease or food shortage. With these considerations in mind, the tail would tell the peahen a great deal about the fitness of the peacock and we would expect the peahen to (1) select for peacocks than had such an ornament and (2) select for peacocks with the biggest and brightest tails. Miller argues that sexual dimorphism in humans and even psychological characteristics such as intelligence or a pro-social personality can thus partly be explained in terms of sexual selection.