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is not profound because the constraints of governmental ideology are loosely
parallel to those imposed on all species by ecological factors such as resource
dispersion. If so, a different understanding of social responses to the imposi-
tion of external constraints might be revealed by species more recently
launched onto a trajectory of sociability. Examples we explore in this chapter
include badgers and farm cats living as groups in agricultural settings. Cer-
tainly, badger groups show weight reduction, higher incidences of wounding,
and lower reproductive success per breeding individual as group size increases
(Woodroffe and Macdonald 1995a). For badgers, group living may be a social
innovation facilitated by the development of agriculture; individuals may be
evolving towards capitalizing on this newly imposed structure (by manipula-
tion, support, interdependence of roles, and other factors), but for the
moment the stress is showing.
How to Describe Social Dynamics
j
It does not detract from the excitement of behavioral, ecological, and sociobi-
ological insights to note that recent enthusiasm for these topics (much stimu-
lated by Wilson 1975) has been characterized by a plethora of short, snappy
papers with a clear adaptive punchline and a concomitant neglect of the
empirical foundations of ethology. Historically, this arises because behavioral
ecology and sociobiology were pioneered to offer ultimate functional explana-
tions, whereas ethology embraced adaptive significance and evolution along
with mechanisms and ontogeny (Tinbergen 1963). This vogue has led to the
widespread abandonment of the ethological aspirations of the late 1970s, epit-
omized by Hinde's (1981, 1983) careful use of terminology and hierarchical
classification to ensure compatibility between studies used for comparative
work. At its purest, this traditional ethological approach placed greater empha-
sis on the facility of later reinterpretation of results than on the quest for a
desired result. In contrast, there is an invasive tendency to treat hard data and
description as disposable assets sacrificed to analytical elegance and discussion.
In a science in its infancy (such as social biology) this brings the risk that future
research may be doomed to repeat previous field work solely to attempt rein-
terpretation of undisputed results.
ACTION, INTERACTION, AND RELATIONSHIPS
Adapting Hinde's (1983) classification, the basic units of social exchange
between individual primates are
action
and
interaction.
Actions are directed
