A controvérsia em torno da atribuição de cultura a animais não humanos: Uma revisão crítica

Abstract

In recent decades, animal behaviorists have attributed culture to non-human animals, starting a controversy with socio-cultural anthropologists that is still far from cooling down. In order to better understand this controversy, and to identify possible paths that might lead to a consensus, we reviewed the meanings of the term culture as used by socio-cultural anthropologists, and also the history of its use in ethology (specially primatology). We argue that socio-cultural anthropologists and ethologists disagree in terms of their theories and worldviews. In order to reach a synthetic approach to human and non-human animal behavior, without ignoring speciestypical characteristics, it is desirable to search for consensus in both levels. The questions of symbols and of meanings are central to the anthropological notion of culture; therefore it will be necessary to discuss how to include them in a comparative perspective. We conclude that a direction of consensus may be found in theoretical approaches that are critical to the related dichotomies of nature-culture, innate-acquired and gene-environment.