Pan Africa News, 27(2): 24–25 (2020)

Book Review

Chimpanzee Culture Wars: Rethinking Human Nature
alongside Japanese, European, and American Cultural
Primatologists
By Nicolas Langlitz
Princeton University Press, 352 pp.
Published in 2020
ISBN: 9780691204277, $95.00 (USA), hardcover
ISBN: 9780691204284, $26.95 (USA), paperback

Michio Nakamura
Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Japan(✉ E-mail: nakamura@jinrui.zool.kyoto-u.ac.jp)

When the editor-inchief of PAN contacted
me to review this book, I
was somewhat hesitant.
This was not because I
was uninterested, butbecause it takes me asignif icant amount oftime to read th rougha 352-page academ ic
book in English. The
reading process actually took three weeks,
not simply because of
my modest English ability, but also because thebook contained rather
intricate philosophical discussions referring to Rousseau,Heidegger, Merleau‒Ponty, etc. Nonetheless, I felt compelled to finish because the book’s theme is quite relevant
to my own research and many of the people mentioned in
the text are familiar to me.
In brief, this book is an ethnography of “culturalprimatologists” studying chimpanzees. Two famous primatologists, one from Europe and another from Japan,
are the main figures of the book, although many othersupporting individuals appear at relevant points. These
two eminent scholars differ in various ways, which readers will learn in detail from the book, but I would like tohighlight their commonalities. First, both study westernsubspecies of chimpanzees, field studies of which started
later than those of eastern subspecies. Second, both belong to academic institutions where they were able todelve entirely into research, avoiding the need to devote
time to undergraduate teaching. Third, the two were
heads of their respective institutions while also conducting their own research projects (so, they have long been“alpha males!”). Fourth, their research teams are highlyinternational in terms of membership. I draw attention
to these points as I think they can affect the behaviors of
researchers in the same way as the leaders’ regional orcultural origins.

The descriptions of these two stalwarts by Langlitz
were quite interesting and useful. Being Japanese myself, I was more familiar with the situation in Japan, but
discovered a great deal from accounts of the Max Planck
team. For example, it was interesting to learn of the veryrefined hygiene measures taken at the field site, the important role of a specialized statistician at the institute,the overhabituation problem of chimpanzees, and thetendency for students to rely exclusively on electronic
devices to take data and even to read e-books in the forest(though this last point may be more of a generational difference than a cultural one), etc. Perhaps Western readers
can learn likewise from descriptions of the Japanese side.
The aim of this book is not just to describe the behaviors of two human alpha males, of course. By going into
the field sites and laboratories of these primatologists,
Langlitz’s ultimate aim is to understand the reflections of“cultural primatologists” from the viewpoint of cultural
anthropology. While Langlitz is well aware that his observations are “very much skewed toward the researchers who allowed me” (p. 12), he looks more broadly at
the controversy over whether or not chimpanzees havecultures by comparing the backgrounds of “field studiesvs. laboratory studies” and “Euro‒American studies vs.
Japanese studies.”
I felt slightly awkward to find myself mentioned on p.
12 alongside big names of cultural primatology. While I
felt honored to be grouped among such eminent scholars,honestly speaking this accolade should rather belong toToshisada Nishida. Nishida also deserves to be mentioned
more often elsewhere in the text, at least in my view. For
example, Langlitz did not refer to Nishida even as a representative of Mahale. Instead, he repeatedly arranged“Goodall’s Gombe” and “Itani’s Mahale” consecutively(e.g., pp. 20–21, p. 59, p. 106). I do not deny the significance of Itani’s role in the initial stage of Mahale research.
Calling Mahale “Itani’s,” however, seems almost like calling Gombe “Leakey’s,” as it disregards those who actually worked on site. It was Nishida who stayed at Mahale
for a long time, accomplishing the habituation of K andM group chimpanzees, and subsequently writing many
influential papers about the site, and maintaining it over24

Pan Africa News, 27(2): 24–25 (2020)the long-term. I understand that Langlitz could not study
Nishida (in the form of participant observation or interview) because, by the time of his research on this topic,
Nishida was already deceased. Nonetheless, it might havebeen better if more credit had been given to this important player, at least in the context of comparing Euro‒American and Japanese cultural primatologists.
Perhaps in conjunction with the paucity of references to Nishida, very few papers or books written in theJapanese language are cited in the book. In my understanding, anthropological studies are usually performed inthe languages of the target audience (at least my anthropologist colleagues use local languages to undertake interviews and participant observations). If texts exist in thelanguage of the targets of an anthropological study, thislocal literature should also be a very important source forinvestigation, especially in the specific context of researchon diversity between cultures.
While reading books of this kind on science studies (oranthropology of science), I sometimes become confused
about whose voices are really represented in the text. For
example, even when the words of a scientist are placed inquotation marks, it is not really easy to tell whose message this is. Of course, the words were originally those of
the scientist, but it is the anthropologist (the author) who
selected them from among many other things that thescientist may have said in the interview or during morecasual conversations with the anthropologist. Thus, the final decision over which words to use in the book seems tobelong to the anthropologist. To further confuse matters,such words are not usually presented independently, but
may be connected to other words or writings by differentactors, which are then woven into a story. Perhaps some
important actors were inevitably excluded from the story.
What may superficially seem to represent the voice of ascientist is actually the result of careful selection by theanthropologist to fit his/her story.
Conversely, human informants do not always tell“truths.” As Langlitz cites the words of William McGrew,“Large-brained, intelligent creatures practice deception,and one of the easiest ways of doing so is by telling lies”(p. 129). I do not want to claim that the primatologists

in this book are telling “lies” to deceive the author, but I
can easily imagine that prominent scientists may be quite
good at presenting themselves well at least to the public
and to the media. Perhaps such great figures’ loud andclear messages are more easily adopted in this kind ofanthropology of science, precisely because they are loudand clear. However, might there not be minorities whowould not even dare to speak their “truth” for fear thatthey may be regarded as defying the alpha? Would there
be a completely different story if the author compiled
such different voices? It might be interesting for a study
to be undertaken on the academic conduct of anthropologists (how they choose target scientists or how they selectwords of the scientists, etc.) just as anthropologists study
the academic conduct of primatologists.
Although I have raised several concerns (some ofwhich I understand are overly demanding), I can assurethat this book is both an important ethnography as well
as a philosophical essay that raises some significant questions regarding cultural primatology. I found it especiallyinteresting to read the discussion of certain similarities
between Kinji Imanishi’s epistemology and recent trends
in science studies. If I understand correctly, both pose
doubts over the presuppositions of the Modern, such as
the a priori division of nature and culture, which may beperpetuating the deep gap between the academic domainsof humanities and natural sciences.
“It is such deviations from the habitual that get us tothink” (p. 307), Langlitz says in the concluding chapter. I
completely agree. Whether anthropologists or primatologists, this is the main reason that we do fieldwork.

Some minor notes:• “Kazutaka Sugawara” (p. 31) should read “KazuyoshiSugawara” (even many Japanese mistakenly read Sugawara’s first name in kanji as Kazutaka).
• The patterns of grooming hand-clasp in Mahale K and M
groups (p. 131) are reversed.

Received: 17 December 2020
Accepted: 19 December 202025