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Primatology on Display 

 

Nicholas Langlitz, 2020, Chimpanzee culture wars: Rethinking human nature alongside 

Japanese, European, and American cultural primatologists, Princeton University Press, 407 pp., 

ISBN 978-0-691-20427-7 

 

Chimpanzee Culture Wars delves into the culture of primatology research and the furious debate 

over whether chimpanzees have culture. Langlitz has lifted the veil on primate research whose 

methods have appeared as the proverbial ‘black box’ to scientists outside the discipline. The 

research of primates has often appeared disparate and disguised by supposedly revolutionary 

discoveries about primate behaviors and carefree images of Goodall and Fossey interacting with 

their research subjects. Langlitz’s primary focus of the ethnography compared and contrasted the 

differences in primate research between eastern and western cultures, and between the lab work 

and field work. Ethnographically, Langlitz has conveyed the methodological and logistical 

difficulties that primatologists face, revealing the tangible difficulties that primate researchers 

face in the lab and in the field, which minimizes the mystique of primate research and in turn 

makes the field more relatable. Langlitz does not focus on whether or not non-human primates 

themselves have culture, but instead highlights the development of each area of primate research 

including cultural, epistemological, and ontological milieu surrounding researchers to better 

understand the viewpoint for each school of thought and how they arrive at differing theories and 

conclusions. Langlitz offers a fresh perspective on the culture of science because both the 

epistemological and ontological issues of primate research and defining culture as a whole need 

to be continually examined and reevaluated.  

 



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The more historical divide in the field, between research performed in the West in Europe and 

the United States and that performed in the East in Japan, is expertly outlined by Langlitz. The 

two observed cultures were drastically different during the genesis of primatology and resulted in 

a more empirical approach in the West whereas the East evolved from a more holistic approach 

that considered humans and non-human primates together. The Japanese work has often been 

criticized for its use of direct human involvement in the behaviors of primates, whereas the 

Westerners are criticized for not considering how their involvement influences primate 

behaviors. The divide is further emphasized by the interaction between lab and field research.  

Westerners tend to keep lab and field research separate whereas the Japanese have often sought 

to combine the two with varying degrees of success. The divide between lab and field work for 

western researchers is battled through epistemology and ontology. Lab researchers focus on the 

psychology of primates whereas field researchers focus on the observed behaviors of primates 

and their interactions with each other and natural world. The field workers tend to argue for the 

possibility of primate culture because they observe in-person the diffusion of behaviors through 

geographic groups and through generations. Lab researchers have typically fought against the 

idea of primate culture by setting boundaries that potentially separate humans from primates, but 

as these boundaries are falsified, new ones are established that prevent the possibility of primate 

culture (e.g., only humans use tools, only humans use language).     

 

Langlitz’s rather humanistic approach to the examination of primate researcher culture will not 

agree with those who prefer more empirical forms of ethnographic research, but the approach 

was warranted given the nature of his research subjects and the ever-changing field of 

ethnographic research. This being said, the author controlled for variables, when possible, in 

order to make direct comparisons between observations. Langlitz was fortunate in his ability to 

make direct comparisons between cultures and methodologies through the use of his contingency 

table (p. 9-12) by comparing Euro-American researchers to Japanese researchers and field 

workers to lab workers. The contingency tables allowed Langlitz to make lateral comparisons 

between the researchers’ cultures and the researchers’ methods, which was reinforced by forward 

comparisons between Langlitz’s take on his own field and the cultures he was studying. Langlitz 

performed his study through second-order observations, defined as observing primatologists 

while they observed primates in both the lab and field. Though Langlitz’s research was primarily 



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concerned with such second-order observations, his analysis differed from Haraway’s (p. 95) 

because Langlitz considered first-order observations of the primates under study, which 

undoubtedly placed his interpretations within a more appropriate epistemological framework.  

This framework allowed Langlitz to directly observe primate behaviors and the researchers’ 

interpretations of these behaviors and draw comparisons on how the scientific and geographical 

cultures have influenced the researchers’ interpretations of observed behaviors.  In this regard, 

the expert convergence of first- and second-order observations in the field with higher theoretical 

concepts places Langlitz akin to Lévi-Strauss’s bricoleur (1966). 

 

Langlitz did not follow the Malinowskian format of ethnography, and there is a general lack of 

experiential authority within the ethnographic portions of the literature, which is instead 

dominated by direct dialogue from Langlitz’s research subjects (e.g., Clifford 1983). The 

dialogic nature of Langlitz’s presentation of the primate researchers’ cultures is necessary for his 

philosophical interpretations and historical background that interject frequently to provide 

context for the subjects’ point of view. It is recommended that readers be generally familiar with 

philosophical and socio-cultural paradigms before reading this book because it delves deeply into 

concepts of epistemology and ontology and their evolution throughout time. Additionally, it is 

assumed that the dialogic approach used by the author was necessary as Langlitz examined the 

culture of what could arguably be called his peers. Langlitz also highlighted dialogue from 

interlocutors that frequently discussed the individual’s position or feelings towards their 

academic counterparts, superiors, and their perspective on the epistemological and ontological 

nature of their own unique culture within their respective fields. This approach presents a 

pseudo-polyphonic narrative that attempts to reach as close to the ‘native’s perspective’ as 

possible through the presentation of dialogue from multiple interlocutors throughout the cultural, 

epistemological, ontological, and hierarchical ranges of primate research, which address multiple 

aspects of these individuals’ perspectives.      

 

The last chapters of the book reaffirm the necessity for primate research and the continuous 

evaluation of the primate research paradigms and its researchers. It is in the last chapters that 

Langlitz touches on the main reason why we perform these inane convoluted studies. What 

makes us human and what does it mean to be human? These questions become even more 



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important when assessed through Langlitz’s solemn fatalist discussion of chimpanzees and in 

turn our own species. Though “fatalism is a swear word by which hardly anyone is swearing” (p. 

314), Langlitz’s fatalism is not misguided. Langlitz’s fatalism may take center stage in the 

Anthropocene as sociopolitical clashes continue unabated, the destructive potential of Homo 

sapiens has increased in recent history, and the looming environmental crisis continues to 

progressively worsen. Primates have served as anthropologists’ proxies of early human behavior 

because they are our closest living relatives. The observations and interpretations presented by 

Langlitz produce a relatively novel anthropological question: will the extinction of multiple 

primate species serve as a proxy for the study of our own demise?   

 

Langlitz presented a good ethnographic study on the culture of primate researchers that is rich in 

philosophical discussion. The more philosophical approach of the author was necessary given the 

nature of the research, which examined not only human culture but the cultural relations between 

researchers and chimpanzees. This work will most likely become requisite for aspiring 

primatologists and primate behavioral psychologists because it requires researchers in both fields 

to address biases and shortcomings of their methodologies and epistemologies. Additionally, the 

book provides another source for examining differences in nationalistic cultures within the 

sciences and how research is performed in reference to one’s own viewpoint. Chimpanzee 

Culture Wars is an excellent text that will continue the discussion on chimpanzee culture, human 

culture, and what it means to be human for years to come.   

 
References 
 
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. University of Chicago Press, 1966. 
 
Clifford, James. "On ethnographic authority." Representations 2 (1983): 118-146, 
https://doi.org/10.2307/2928386 
 
 
Benjamin Moss is a doctoral student at Louisiana State University.  He received his Master of 
Arts degree in Anthropology in 2020.  His primary interests are in human skeletal biology with a 
focus on the human cranium, geometric morphometric analysis, and human evolution. 
 
 

 

 



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