Primates in the real world
Subtitle: escaping primate folklore and creating primate science
By: Georgina M. Montgomery
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 160
ISBN-13: 9780813937366; 9780813937403
Subjects: Research; Fieldwork; Primates; History
Description: The opening of this vital new book centers on a series of graves memorializing baboons killed near Amboseli National Park in Kenya in 2009 - a stark image that emphasizes both the close emotional connection between primates researchers and their subjects and the intensely human qualities of the animals. Primates in the Real World goes on to trace primatology's shift from short-term expeditions designed to help overcome centuries-old myths to the field's arrival as a recognized science sustained by a complex web of international collaborations. Considering a series of pivotal episodes spanning the twentieth century, Georgina Montgomery shows how individuals both within and outside of the scientific community gradually liberated themselves from primate folklore to create primate science. Achieved largely through a movement from the lab to the field as the primary site of observation, this development reflected an urgent and ultimately extremely productive reassessment of what constitutes "natural" behavior for primates. An important contribution to the history of science and of women's roles in science, as well as to animal studies and the exploration of the animal-human boundary, Montgomery's engagingly written narrative provides the general reader with the most accessible overview to date of this enduringly fascinating field of study. -- from dust jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Separating fact from fiction; title: Venturing out of the lab and into the wild : early primate field studies; title: Control, repetition, and objectivity : turning field observation into a science; title: Capturing natural behavior : changing definitions of "natural" in mid-twentieth-century primate studies; title: Modern primatology : the emergence of long-term international field projects; title: Inclusion and indigenous researchers : the Africanization of the Amboseli Baboon Project.