Page 57 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

EDUARDO NEIVA

cheat in the future. Evolution selects honesty. In the course of time, deceitful
signals would be rarer and rarer. And taking into account that evolution
presumes the repetition of strategies over extended periods of time, manipula-
tion has to be temporary. Manipulator and manipulated will be caught in a
evolutionary arm-race. Signals evolve to be honest and reliable (Zahavi and
Zahavi 1997).

Animal sociability and human groups
To adopt an evolutionary perspective on culture brings with it significant
advantages. It overlaps with some of the anthropological claims about human
societies, and yet redefines human culture integrating it with biological life.
We saw previously that there are two mechanics in animal grouping, depend-
ing on how predation can occur. The result is two di fferent kinds of group
formations. If predation comes from the outside, the ideal solution is to form a
tight group. But, when the attack comes from inside the group, individual
organisms choose to disperse the totality, running each one in a different direc-
tion. It is quite the same in human societies. Human groups are organized
according to two basic morphologies that ripple across humanity, and
recombine themselves in various singular cultures. The singularity of cultural
solutions is preceded by a morphology affecting the creation of specific cultural
products and messages. In other words, a universal form underlines specific and
particular social formations. The two basic social morphologies are supported
and created by the ‘circulation of complexity, of information, through the
social body’ (Thom 1975: 318), in short, by communication: a phenomenon
not at all different from the definition of fighting strategies in animal conflict
resulting from what messages are traded in the interaction.
Superficially, it would seem that the two morphologies are disparate and
non-congruent manners of ordering the relationships of individuals and their
collection, between the isolated parts and their whole. However, the fact that
the morphologies comprise two ways of defining the relationships between
individuals is an indication of the dominance of individuality not only among
animals but also in human beings, thus following the Darwinian intuition that
self-preservation is an active and primary force at the core of life processes. We
just have to remember the ruthless action of the fetus over its mother: com-
plete and absolute exhaustion of the mother’s nutrient resources could lead to
her death. The fetus’s selfish interest must be curbed. Her death means its
death. In human pregnancy, the alternation of biochemical reactions between
mother and fetus can take care of the problem. Outside of the womb, humans
create social rules that are shared and must be learned to allow e ffective
interaction.
Human societies are thus organized according to two major structure types
with their own rules. One type is based on the subordination of the individual
to the group, being therefore hierarchical and holistic. The other type is fluid;

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