Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-rvxtl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-14T00:15:23.778Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A society as a clearly membered, enduring, territory-holding group

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2025

Mark W. Moffett Open the ORCID record for Mark W. Moffett [Opens in a new window]
Mark W. Moffett*
Affiliation:
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA. [email protected]
*
*Corresponding author.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I have attempted to provide a concept of societies that will foster productive cross-disciplinary discussions, namely one incorporating these three elements: (1) A mechanism for group identification, by which members distinguish those who belong from those who do not; (2) the potential for this membership to last for generations; and (3) control over a shared physical space. Herein, I respond to thoughtful commentaries from academics across the social and biological sciences, addressing their insights on the importance of identity in determining society boundaries, how institutions and nations relate to identity, the complications of territoriality as a definition component, how societies fragment, the workings of multitier sociality, and the significance of cooperation.

Type
Author's Response
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 48 , 2025 , e76
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2008). Language contact along the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea. Anthropological Linguistics, 50, 1–66.Google Scholar
Archie, E. A., Moss, C. J., & Alberts, S. C. (2006). The ties that bind: Genetic relatedness predicts the fission and fusion of social groups in wild African elephants. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 273, 513–522.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ashton, B. J., Kennedy, P., & Radford, A. N. (2020). Interactions with conspecific outsiders as drivers of cognitive evolution. Nature Communications, 11, 4937.Google ScholarPubMed
Baker, J., Rigaud, S., Pereira, D., Courtenay, L. A., & d'Errico, F. (2024). Evidence from personal ornaments suggest nine distinct cultural groups between 34,000 and 24,000 years ago in Europe. Nature Human Behaviour, 8, 431–444.Google ScholarPubMed
Barth, F. (1969). Introduction. In Barth, F. (Ed.), Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of culture difference (pp. 9–38). Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Beauchamp, G. (2013). Social predation: How group living benefits predators and prey. Elsevier.Google Scholar
Bergman, T. J. (2010). Experimental evidence for limited vocal recognition in a wild primate: Implications for the social complexity hypothesis. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 277, 3045–3053.Google Scholar
Bergman, T. J., & Beehner, J. C. (2015). Measuring social complexity. Animal Behaviour, 103, 203–209.Google Scholar
Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Birdsell, J. B. (1973). The basic demographic unit. Current Anthropology, 14, 337–356.Google Scholar
Bookman, M. Z. (1994). War and peace: The divergent breakups of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Journal of Peace Research, 31, 175–187.Google Scholar
Bos, A. E., Pryor, J. B., Reeder, G. D., & Stutterheim, S. E. (2013). Stigma: Advances in theory and research. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 35, 1–9.Google Scholar
Boughman, J. W., & Wilkinson, G. S. (1998). Greater spear-nosed bats discriminate group mates by vocalizations. Animal Behaviour, 55, 1717–1732.Google ScholarPubMed
Brewer, M. B. (1991). The social self: On being the same and different at the same time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17, 475–482.Google Scholar
Brewer, M. B. (2001). Ingroup identification and intergroup conflict. In Ashmore, R., Jussim, L. & Wilder, D. (Eds.), Social identity, intergroup conflict, and conflict reduction (Vol. 3, pp. 17–41). Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brewer, M. B., & Caporael, L. R. (2006). Social identity motives in evolutionary perspective. In Brown, R. & Capozza, D. (Eds.), Social identities: Motivational, emotional, cultural influences (pp. 135–152). Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, J., & Yamamoto, S. (2022). The evolution of group-mindedness: Comparative research on top-down and bottom-up group cooperation in bonobos and chimpanzees. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 47, 101205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, J. L., & Orians, G. H. (1970). Spacing patterns in mobile animals. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1, 239–262.Google Scholar
Butera, F., Falomir-Pichastor, J. M., Mugny, G., & Quiamzade, A. (2017). Minority influence. In Harkins, S. G., Williams, K. D. & Burger, J. M. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of social influence (p. 317). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Butz, D. A. (2009). National symbols as agents of psychological and social change. Political Psychology, 30, 779–804.Google Scholar
Caporael, L. R. (2015). Parts and wholes: The evolutionary importance of groups. In Sedikides, C. & Brewer, M. B. (Eds.), Individual self, relational self, collective self (pp. 241–258). Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Chase-Dunn, C., Niemeyer, R., Alvarez, A., Inoue, H., Lawrence, K., & Love, J. (2010). Cycles of rise and fall, upsweeps and collapses. In Grinin, L. E., Herrmann, P., Korotayev, A. & Tausch, A. (Eds.), History and mathematics: Processes and models of global dynamics (pp. 64–91). Uchitel.Google Scholar
Cheney, D. L., & Seyfarth, R. M. (1990). How monkeys see the world: Inside the mind of another species. University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connor, W. (1978). A nation is a nation, is a state, is an ethnic group is a…. Ethnic & Racial Studies, 1, 377–400.Google Scholar
de Pablo, J. F. L., Romano, V., Derex, M., Gjesfjeld, E., Gravel-Miguel, C., Hamilton, M. J., … Lozano, S. (2022). Understanding hunter–gatherer cultural evolution needs network thinking. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 37, 632–636.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desai, N. P., Fedurek, P., Slocombe, K. E., & Wilson, M. L. (2022). Chimpanzee pant-hoots encode individual information more reliably than group differences. American Journal of Primatology, 84, e23430CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dixon, R. M. W. (1972). The Dyirbal language of North Queensland. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dove, M. (2011). The banana tree at the gate: A history of marginal peoples and global markets in Borneo. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M. (2009). The social brain hypothesis and its implications for social evolution. An-nals of Human Biology, 36, 562–572.Google ScholarPubMed
Faulseit, R. K. (Ed.) (2016). Beyond collapse: Archaeological perspectives on resilience, revitalization, and transformation in complex societies. Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Feldblum, J. T., Manfredi, S., Gilby, I. C., & Pusey, A. E. (2018). The timing and causes of a unique chimpanzee community fission preceding Gombe's Four Year's War. Journal of Physical Anthropology, 166, 730–744.Google Scholar
Fernandez-Velasco, P., & Spiers, H. J. (2024). Wayfinding across ocean and tundra: What traditional cultures teach us about navigation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 28, 56–71.Google ScholarPubMed
Finell, E., & Liebkind, K. (2010). National symbols and distinctiveness: Rhetorical strategies in creating distinct national identities. British Journal of Social Psychology, 49, 321–341.Google ScholarPubMed
Fitch, W. T. (2000). The evolution of speech: A comparative review. Trends in Cognitive Science, 4, 258–267.Google ScholarPubMed
Forli, A., & Yartsev, M. M. (2023). Hippocampal representation during collective spatial behaviour in bats. Nature, 621, 796–803.Google ScholarPubMed
Gavrilets, S., Anderson, D. G., & Turchin, P. (2014). Cycling in the complexity of early societies. In Grinin, L. E. & Korotayev, A. V. (Eds.), History and mathematics (pp. 136–158). Uchitel.Google Scholar
Godfrey-Smith, P. (2009). Darwinian populations and natural selection. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grueter, C. C., Qi, X., Zinner, D., Bergman, T., Li, M., Xiang, Z., … Fischer, J. (2020). Multilevel organisation of animal sociality. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 35, 834–847.Google ScholarPubMed
Guimond, S., De La Sablonnière, R., & Nugier, A. (2014). Living in a multicultural world: Intergroup ideologies and the societal context of intergroup relations. European Review of Social Psychology, 25, 142–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hahn, A., Judd, C. M., & Park, B. (2010). Thinking about group differences: Ideologies and national identities. Psychological Inquiry, 21, 120–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinde, R. A. (1976). Interactions, relationships and social structure. Man, 7, 1–17.Google Scholar
Isin, E. F. (2002). Being political: Genealogies of citizenship. University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Ivens, A. B. F., Nash, D. R., Poulsen, M., & Boomsma, J. J. (2008). Caste-specific symbiont policing by workers of Acromyrmex fungus-growing ants. Behavioral Ecology, 20, 378–384.Google Scholar
Kaiser, R. J. (1994). The geography of nationalism in Russia and the USSR. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kerjean, E., van de Waal, E., & Canteloup, C. (2024). Social dynamics of vervet monkeys are dependent upon group identity. Iscience, 27, 1–19.Google ScholarPubMed
Langergraber, K. E., Rowney, C., Schubert, G., Crockford, C., Hobaiter, C., Wittig, R., … Vigilant, L. (2014). How old are chimpanzee communities? Time to the most recent common ancestor of the Y-chromosome in highly patrilocal societies. Journal of Human Evolution, 69, 1–7.Google Scholar
Layton, R., O'Hara, S., & Bilsborough, A. (2012). Antiquity and social functions of multilevel social organization among human hunter-gatherers. International Journal of Primatology, 33, 1215–1245.Google Scholar
Lenski, G. (2005). Ecological-evolutionary theory. Paradigm Publishers.Google Scholar
Levin, D. T., & Banaji, M. R. (2006). Distortions in the perceived lightness of faces: The role of race categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 135, 501–512.Google ScholarPubMed
MacDonald, D. W., & Newman, C. (2022). The badgers of Wytham Woods: A model for behavior, ecology, and evolution. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacLin, O. H., & MacLin, M. K. (2011). The role of racial markers in race perception and racial categorization. In Adams, R. B. Jr., Ambady, N., Nakayama, K. & Shimojo, S. (Eds.), The science of social vision (pp. 321–346). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Madsen, A., & de Silva, S. (2024). Societies with fission–fusion dynamics as complex adaptive systems: The importance of scale. Philosophical Transactions B, 379, 20230175.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marcoux, M., Whitehead, H., & Rendell, L. (2007). Sperm whale feeding variation by location, year, social group and clan: Evidence from stable isotopes. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 333, 309–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marques, J. M., Yzerbyt, V. Y., & Lyons, J.-P. (1988). The “black sheep effect”: Extremity of judgments towards ingroup members as a function of group identification. European Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 1–16.Google Scholar
Marques, J. M, Abrams, D., Paez, D., & Hogg, M. (2000). Social categorization, social identification, and rejection of deviant group members. In Hogg, M. A. & Tindale, R. S. (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of social psychology: Group processes (pp. 400–424). Blackwell.Google Scholar
Moffett, M. W. (2013). Human identity and the evolution of societies. Human Nature, 24, 219–267.Google ScholarPubMed
Moffett, M. W. (2019). The human swarm: How our societies arise, thrive, and fall. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Morrison, R. E., Hirwa, J. P., Mucyo, J. P. S., Stoinski, T. S., Vecellio, V., & Eckardt, W. (2020). Inter-group relationships influence territorial defense in mountain gorillas. Journal of Animal Ecology, 89, 2852–2862.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moscovice, L. R., Hohmann, G., Trumble, B. C., Fruth, B., & Jaeggi, A. V. (2022). Dominance or tolerance? Causes and consequences of a period of increased intercommunity encounters among bonobos. LuiKotale. International Journal of Primatology, 43, 434–459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mulvaney, D. J. (1976). The chain of connection: The material evidence. In Peterson, N. (Ed.), Tribes and boundaries in Australia (pp 72–94). Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Mummendey, A., & Wenzel, M. (1999). Social discrimination and tolerance in intergroup relations: Reactions to intergroup difference. Personality & Social Psychology Review, 3, 158–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
North, D. C. (1992). Transaction costs, institutions, and economic performance. ICS Press.Google Scholar
Noyes, A., & Dunham, Y. (2020). Groups as institutions: The use of constitutive rules to attribute group membership. Cognition, 196, 104–143.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Olson, L. E., & Blumstein, S. T. (2010). Applying the coalitionary-traits metric: Sociality without cooperation in male yellow-bellied marmots. Behavioral Ecology, 21, 957–965.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parsons, T. (1966). Societies: Evolutionary and comparative perspectives. Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Pasquaretta, C., Levé, M., Claidiere, N., Van De Waal, E., Whiten, A., MacIntosh, A. J., … Crofoot, M. C. (2014). Social networks in primates: Smart and tolerant species have more efficient networks. Scientific Reports, 4, 7600.Google ScholarPubMed
Pradeu, T. (2020). The philosophy of immunity. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pradeu, T., Jaeger, S., & Vivier, E. (2013). The speed of change: Towards a discontinuity theory of immunity? Nature Reviews Immunology, 13, 764–769.Google ScholarPubMed
Prud'Homme, J. (1991). Group fission in a semifree-ranging population of Barbary macaques. Primates, 32, 9–22.Google Scholar
Renan, E. (1882) (reprinted1990). What is a nation? In Bhabah, H. K. (Ed.), Nation and narration (pp. 8–11). Routledge.Google Scholar
Rodseth, L., Wrangham, R. W., Harrigan, A. M., Smuts, B. B., Dare, R., Fox, R., … Otterbein, K. F. (1991). The human community as a primate society. Current Anthropology, 32, 221–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roscoe, P. B. (2009). Social signaling and the organization of small-scale society: The case of contact-era New Guinea. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 16, 69–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roux, A., & Bergman, T. J. (2012). Indirect rival assessment in a social primate, Theropithecus gelada. Animal Behaviour, 83, 249–255.Google Scholar
Royce, A. P. (1982). Ethnic identity: Strategies of diversity. Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Sachs, J. L., Mueller, U. G., Wilcox, T. P., & Bull, J. J. (2004). The evolution of cooperation. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 79, 135–160.Google ScholarPubMed
Samuni, L., Crockford, C., & Wittig, R. M. (2021). Group-level cooperation in chimpanzees is shaped by strong social ties. Nature Communications, 12, 1–10.Google ScholarPubMed
Samuni, L., Langergraber, K. E., & Surbeck, M. H. (2022). Characterization of Pan social systems reveals in-group/out-group distinction and out-group tolerance in bonobos. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, e2201122119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sani, F. (2008). Schism in groups: A social psychological account. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 718–732.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sani, F. (2009). Why groups fall apart: A social psychological model of the schismatic process. In Butera, F. & Levine, J. M. (Eds.), Coping with minority status (pp. 243–266). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schoener, T. W. (1968). Sizes of feeding territories among birds. Ecology, 49, 123–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sekulic, D., Massey, G., & Hodson, R. (1994). Who were the Yugoslavs? Failed sources of a common identity in the former Yugoslavia. American Sociological Review, 59, 83–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sellas, A. B., Wells, R. S., & Rosel, P. E. (2005). Mitochondrial and nuclear DNA analyses reveal fine scale geographic structure in bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico. Conservation Genetics, 6, 715–728.Google Scholar
Sergio, F., & Newton, I. (2003). Occupancy as a measure of territory quality. Journal of Animal Ecology, 72, 857–865.Google Scholar
Seyfarth, R. M., & Cheney, D. L. (1984). The acoustic features of vervet monkey grunts. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 75, 1623–1628.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seyfarth, R. M., & Cheney, D. L. (2017). Precursors to language: Social cognition and pragmatic inference in primates. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 24, 79–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Slobodchikoff, C. N., Perla, B. S., & Verdolin, J. L. (2009). Prairie dogs: Communication and community in an animal society. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Smaldino, P. E. (2019). Social identity and cooperation in cultural evolution. Behavioural Processes, 161, 108–116.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snyder-Mackler, N., Beehner, J. C., & Bergman, T. J. (2012). Defining higher levels in the multilevel societies of geladas (Theropithecus gelada). International Journal of Primatology, 33, 1054–1068.Google Scholar
Spoor, J. R., & Kelly, J. R. (2004). The evolutionary significance of affect in groups. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 7, 398–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swann, W. B. Jr., Jetten, J., Gómez, Á., Whitehouse, H., & Bastian, B. (2012). When group membership gets personal: A theory of identity fusion. Psychological Review, 119, 441–456.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tajfel, H. (1970). Experiments in intergroup discrimination. Scientific American, 223, 96–103.Google Scholar
Tajfel, H. (1974). Social identity and intergroup behaviour. Social Science Information, 13, 65–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2009). Why we cooperate. MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vanhaeren, M., & d'Errico, F. (2006). Aurignacian ethno-linguistic geography of Europe revealed by personal ornaments. Journal of Archaeological Science, 33, 1105–1128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Horn, R. C., Buchan, J. C., Altmann, J., & Alberts, S. C. (2007). Divided destinies: Group choice by female savannah baboons during social group fission. Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology, 61, 1823–1837.Google Scholar
Westra, E., Fitzpatrick, S., Brosnan, S. F., Gruber, T., Hobaiter, C., Hopper, L. M., … Andrews, K. (2024). In search of animal normativity: A framework for studying social norms in non-human animals. Biological Reviews, 99, 1058–1074.Google ScholarPubMed
Whitehead, H. (2024). Sperm whale clans and human societies. Royal Society Open Science, 11, 231353.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whitehead, H., & Rendell, L. (2004). Movements, habitat use and feeding success of cultural clans of South Pacific sperm whales. Journal of Animal Ecology, 73, 190–196.Google Scholar
Whitehead, H., & Rendell, L. (2015). The cultural lives of whales and dolphins. Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Whitehouse, H., & Lanman, J. A. (2014a). The ties that bind us: Ritual, fusion, and identification. Current Anthropology, 55, 674–695.Google Scholar
Whitehouse, H., McQuinn, B., Buhrmester, M., & Swann, W. B. Jr. (2014b). Brothers in arms: Libyan revolutionaries bond like family. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111, 17783–17785.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wiessner, P. (2002). The vines of complexity: Egalitarian structures and the institutionalization of inequality among the Enga. Current Anthropology, 43, 233–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xiao, Y. J., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2012). See your friends close and your enemies closer: Social identity and identity threat shape the representation of physical distance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 959–972.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed