Robin Fox

Lionel Tiger

The Imperial Animal

Michael T. McGuire

Ayşe Seda Toksoy

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A respected anthropologist offers his unique insights into the reasons behind the changes that have been occurring in American sexual and family norms, arguing that the control women have gained over their reproductive biology has left men feeling unneeded. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

The First Look at an Unexpected New World for Men and Women

The Decline of Males

Pleasure is biologically desirable and good for physical and mental health. In The Pursuit of Pleasure, Lionel Tiger explores this aspect of human nature by focusing on the origins and forms of pleasure. Medical science has perfected a host of often astonishingly impressive methods for preventing, alleviating, or recovering from pain. Its opposite, pleasure, has not had such a well-funded and fully justified constituency. In fact, those committed to the understanding and pursuit of pleasure, are rarely accorded respect and a sense of significance. People have objected to the notion of pleasure for a variety of reasons. The most complex derive from religious convictions that the most morally admirable human life is marked by abstemiousness, suffering, even martyrdom. There is also a corresponding fear that people may pursue pleasure too avidly and with too strong a sense of entitlement, and the world's work will not get done. But just as there have been suspicions of the dangers of pleasure, there have also been its supporters who assert its vital and joyful centrality to human experience. The Pursuit of Pleasure favors an agnostic approach borrowed from natural science. In lively, witty, and eminently readable prose, Tiger identifies major forms of pleasure and explores their variations, now and in the past. Pleasure, says Tiger, is not a luxury but an evolutionary entitlement that deserves to be taken seriously. As we acknowledge our need for enjoyment, we understand the need to establish balance in our lives-our need for the pursuit of pleasure.

The Pursuit of Pleasure

Disproportionate attention has long been paid to males in human and other social systems. The basic structures used to explain social behavior in sociological and biological work have overwhelmingly emphasized the significance and shape of male behavior and far less female behavior which is surely at least as important. Stratification, sexual selection, and natural selection of what women do among themselves and how they relate to men was explored in this volume for the first time. It is now available in a paperback edition, with a new introduction by Lionel Tiger. Do females conduct aggressive encounters with each other? Or do they have no impact on mate selection and hence on the future of the genotype? Is the main negotiation of females with males and not among themselves during this selective process? Do the usually larger size and frequently more elaborate behavioral displays of males betray the fact that the burden of selective functioning falls on males and not on females? It is improbable that the answer to these questions is "yes" and that there is little or nothing happening in all-female groups that affects not only how their communities operate but, more importantly in the long run, the genotype of their species. For those species in which gregarious social behavior is a sine qua non for successful reproduction, what are the principles of selection that operate through females? Are female hierarchies more abrasive or generous than male ones? Do they focus more on reproduction than production? What are the forms of female social grouping that either support, modify, inhibit, or stimulate sexual and hence natural selection? This work goes far beyond the slogans of our time for important responses to basic questions.

Female Hierarchies

Men in Groups

Joseph Shepher

"Our data show that although some 10 to 15 per cent of the women in the kibbutz express dissatisfaction with their sociosexual roles, the overwhelming majority not only accept their situations but have sought them. They have acted against the principles of their socialization and ideology, against the wishes of the men of their communities, against the economic interest of the kibbutzim, in order to be able to devote more time and energy to private maternal activities rather than to economic and political public ones. Obviously these women have minds of their own; despite obstacles, they are trying to accomplish what women elsewhere have been periodically urged to reject by critics of traditional female roles." -- from the book

Lionel Tiger

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