Escaping Control in Unorthodox Ways 1: University Again
Returning
to college full-time in the late 1960s, I first wanted to major in
Botany. However, the Department of Psychology in Cornell
University’s College of Arts and Sciences offered me a teaching
assistantship, paying all of my expenses, and, thus, my field was
determined. I was, also, fortunate to work as an undergraduate
research assistant for a famous learning theorist in the department
(M.E.P. Seligman), exposing me to laboratory techniques with rodents.
I enjoyed laboratory work; however, several of my friends in the
Department of Neurobiology and Behavior had plans for careers in
fieldwork. This possibility excited me, and I retained it as a
possibility for graduate school.
I
graduated from Cornell with a B.A. in Psychology in 1970 and was
admitted to Harvard’s Ph.D. program in Biological Anthropology,
planning to become a primatologist studying under a world famous
professor (Irvin Devore). The logistics of the move from Ithaca to
Cambridge were complicated; however, ultimately, my husband and I
decided that my youngest son would accompany me, and he would remain
at home with the older children. I rented a room in the house of
friends, planning to commute back to Ithaca on weekends. My son was
accepted to Harvard’s laboratory nursery school, and I prepared for
a rigorous regimen of study. I failed to accurately estimate the
difficulty of what I had taken on, and, in addition, it would be an
understatement to say that my son was unhappy with his life in
Cambridge. After three weeks, I informed my major professor, via
a note, that I was leaving to return to my family in Ithaca*, not
without relief but, also, without a plan for the future. After
several months of contemplation, I decided to apply to the
Biopsychology graduate program at Cornell and was accepted with
financial support from the Ford Foundation for Minorities. My
husband was about to receive his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology,
and our marriage was rapidly crumbling. I was taking on major
responsibilities with family and graduate school, too many from where
I sit today.
Attending
graduate school was, for me, a way of participating in the Panopticon
Network in a manner that felt authentic to my skills and personality.
I was progressing on a traditional path that was exciting and
fulfilling. By 1973, my husband and I decided to divorce, and during
the summer of that year, I was selected to participate in the
Organization for Tropical Studies’ Tropical Biology course,
affording me the opportunity to conduct fieldwork for the first time.
Before the course began, I visited Barro Colorado Island, Panama and
the Colombian Amazon, briefly studying a variety of trees and
primates, including howler and squirrel monkeys, respectively. In
Panama, I was fortunate to spend many hours with “Griff” Ewer**
who was very ill but still studying mammalian ethology (jaguarundis).
On
the Amazon, I experienced one of the most memorable events of my
life. One evening, my host (Robert C. Bailey) arranged for me to
ride with a local fisherman in his dugout canoe. He fished with a
handmade spear, and we were very quiet. After several hours, the
fisherman pointed to the shore, banking his boat. With only minor
anxiety and a greater degree of curiosity, I followed him into the
forest where a tarp was erected. He disappeared for a moment,
returning with a bright container, pouring us hot coffee strong as
espresso as we sat on the ground. Not knowing each others’
languages, we gestured in order to communicate our gratitude for the
hours spent together.
My
experiences in the tropical biology course directed from Duke
University and San José,
Costa Rica convinced me that I would devote my career to Behavioral
Ecology, both empirical and theoretical. During the six weeks of
this course, I studied bracken fern, blenniid fish, and both squirrel
and howler monkeys at a variety of sites in Costa Rica and on San
Andres Island, Colombia. I experienced several “lifers” during
this course. Among these were riding on horseback on the Osa
Peninsula with campesinos
to locate endangered
Saimiri oerstedii
(squirrel monkey) swinging like bright yellow holiday lights in guava
trees ripe with fruit; getting lost in the forest on the Osa and
locating a trail by navigating a river downstream; learning to dart
monkeys for marking or other purposes. I decided that I would return
to Costa Rica to study mantled howler monkeys at Hacienda La
Pacifica, Cañas,
Guanacaste, because the animals were individually marked as a result
of the tireless work of Norman J. Scott and his assistants, including
this author. In addition, the ranch afforded safe facilities
permitting me to bring 2 of my children without too much concern—with
relative safety.
Returning
to studies at Cornell in the Fall of 1973, I began to take as many
classes as possible related to animal behavior in the Departments of
Psychology and of Neurobiology and Behavior and chose professors from
both departments for my graduate committee. In retrospect, my
courses in Behavioral Ecology and Ecology have proved most valuable
to my career since they trained me to think of organisms as
components, not only of populations, but also of communities and
ecosystems and all elements of the biogeophysical environment. This
embedded perspective is rare in Psychology and primatology and some
other areas of animal behavior, seeming to value animals only for
their relevance to human behavior. As the only graduate student from
the Department of Psychology in these classes, I am grateful to the
professors and students who received me. Furthermore, I continue to
be inspired by a postdoctoral fellow in Neurobiology and Behavior,
the late Jasper Loftus-Hills, who tutored me during this time.
Jasper and other behavioral ecologists impressed upon me***, also,
the importance of viewing behavior and social structure/organization
as situation or context specific, a perspective often overlooked in
the search for “species-typical” patterns of response.
My
training in Behavioral Ecology also emphasized another, empirically
based, rule opposed to definitions and descriptions in the social
sciences. In the latter disciplines, social behavior almost always
implies cooperative behavior. However, studies in Behavioral Ecology
demonstrate that cooperation is usually a “best of a bad job”,
exhibited when the costs of selfish behavior outweigh its benefits.
Recent studies also show that, for group-living organisms, group
productivity (i.e., the total reproductive benefits of a group) is
optimized when there is a mix of selfish and cooperative individuals.
Much work remains to be accomplished in the field of social
behavior, group-living, and social organization (including,
population structure).
*Soon
after returning to Ithaca, my undergraduate advisor, Harry Levin,
informed me that I had been chosen for Harvard's Society of Fellows.
I had no idea, at the time, what this meant; nonetheless, however
flattered I might have been, I knew when I had bitten off too much
(so to speak), remaining at Cornell and attending graduate school there, a very wise decision, in the long run. After receiving my Ph.D. from Cornell, I returned to Harvard as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Population Genetics. For a brief time during this period (1980-1981), I conducted additional postdoctoral work at Max Planck (see Brief CV below).
**Sometime
after returning to Ithaca, I received a lovely note from “Griff,”
one of many examples of the generosity and support I have received
from mentors, professors, other students, etc. throughout my career.
On balance, I have no complaints and have been treated very well.
Having said that, I emphasize that I took advantage of educational
opportunities and was an eager and relatively good student. I have my
parents and maternal grandmother and grandfather to thank for my
excellent grammatical, speaking, and writing skills, though a
Japanese primatologist, once Editor of the journal, Primates,
tutored me in academic writing.
***Having
acknowledged the importance of Behavioral Ecology to my professional
development, it is necessary to highlight the role that Ethology
(Bill Dilger, I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt) and Behaviorism (Seligman, Skinner)
have played in my scientific thinking. In particular, it is due to
the influence of Behaviorists that I gained an early appreciation for
the search for General Laws. My 2012 Springer Brief and earlier work
advertise the importance of the ethological literature on
“stereotyped” and “ritualized” responses to my thinking and
analyses. My Google profile lists my major influences (e.g., Jack
Bradbury, Steve Emlen, Mary Jane West-Eberhard, Sandy Vehrencamp,
many others: see vertebratesocialbehavior.blogspot.com).
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