Dear Colleague,
We would like to draw your attention to the existence and the activities of the
European Sociobiological Society (ESS). Anybody within the scientific
community interested in the topic of sociobiology, (human) ethology,
Darwinian psychology, psychobiology, evolutionary psychiatry, behavioural
ecology, biopolitics, bioeconomics, or evolutionary aspects of human or
animal behaviour, is welcome to apply for membership. The ESS has the
objective of serving as a forum for the study of the role of biological factors
in the behaviour of animals and man, with special emphasis on evolutionary
aspects. The Society will, according to its Statutes,
refrain from using or
abusing such studies for political purposes. Candidate members are accepted
as full members at the annual business meeting.
Membership dues
The membership dues are D.fl. 40,- (about 25 US$), preferably to be paid by
VISA or Euro/Mastercard. Payment by Eurocheque or Dutch postal giro (in
Dutch currency only) is also possible. Candidate members are exempt from
payment in the year of application. After admittance to full membership,
members will automatically receive an annual invoice from the ESS treasurer.
Newsletters
Members receive at least 4 ESS Newsletters a year (with
interesting book
reviews), plus an annual update of the List of Members, an
annual update of
the Books on Sociobiology, and the Book of Abstracts of the Annual ESS
Meeting.
Publications
Publications of the Society include: Essays in
Sociobiology (2 Vols. 1985, 1986), The Sociobiology of Ethnocentrism (1987),
The Sociobiology of Sexual and Reproductive Strategies (1989), Sociobiology and
Conflict (1990), The Aquatic Ape Theory: Fact or Fiction? (1991), The Nature
of the Sexes: The Sociobiology of Sex Differences and the 'Battle of the Sexes' (1992),
Sociobiology and Politics (1998), Sociobiology and the Arts (1999),
In-group/Out-group Behaviour in Modern Societies: An Evolutionary Perspective
(1999), and The Darwinian Heritage and Sociobiology. Other volumes are in
preparation.
Thank you for your attention.
Name and location: Article 1
1. The association's name is: European Sociobiological Society.
2. The association is located in the municipality of Amsterdam in the
Netherlands.
Objectives: Article 2
The association has the objective of serving as a forum for the study of the
role of biological factors in the behaviour of animals and man, with special
emphasis on evolutionary aspects. The association will refrain from using or
abusing this study for political purposes.
Duration: Article 3
1. The association was founded on August 21, 1982. Its duration is fixed at an
indefinite time.
2. The association's year shall coincide with the calendar year.
Membership: Article 4
1. The association shall consist of members who are scholars in any academic
field, have an active interest in biological aspects of behaviour, and agree with
the association's objectives.
2. Members shall be admitted by decision of the general assembly.
3. A list of candidate members shall be distributed at least three weeks before
each meeting.
4. Objections to the admission of a candidate member shall be submitted in
writing to the Board. The Board shall report to the General Assembly at its
next meeting. The General Assembly shall decide on any course of action.
Article 5
Membership cannot be transferred or assigned.
Article 6
1. Membership shall terminate: a. by decease of the member; b. by giving
notice of the member; c. by giving notice by the Association; d. by expulsion.
2. Termination can only be effected towards the end of the Association's year,
in writing and with a term of notice of at least one month.
3. Termination of the membership by the Association can only be implemented
if a member does not fulfil the obligations attached to the membership.
4. Expulsion can only take place when a member acts in violation of these
statutes, rules or decisions of the Association, or when a member injures the
Association. Expulsion is effected by the General Assembly on proposal of the
Board. The member in question is informed as soon as possible, with a
statement of reasons.
Obligations: Article 7
1. Members shall pay an annual contribution, the amount of which shall
annually be fixed by the General Assembly on the basis of an estimation of the
costs.
2. Members are not accountable for the commitments engaged by the
Association nor are they liable to contribute to any losses of the Association.
Board: Article 8
1. The board shall consist of at least three individuals, one of which fulfils the
function of chairman, one the function of secretary, and one the function of
treasurer.
2. The board members shall be appointed by the General Assembly. The
General Assembly has at any time the right to appoint additional members of
the Board.
3. At all times Board members may be dismissed or suspended by the General
Assembly with a statement of reasons.
4. Board members are appointed for a period of two years. The period
between two successive annual general assemblies is one year. Periodically
retiring Board members are re-eligible.
5. An incomplete board remains competent to manage the Association.
Article 9
1. The Board shall be in charge of managing the Association including the
carrying out of all acts in law, none excluded. Even so, the General Assembly
is entitled to lay down in an appropriate resolution that for certain well
described Board decisions its approval is required. The absence of such
approval cannot be used against third parties.
2. The Secretary shall be in charge of the day-to-day running of the
Association. The Board can delegate to him tasks and authorities.
3. The Board shall meet as often and wherever the chairman decides.
4. The Board shall take decisions unanimously.
5. The Board's decisions are recorded, duly signed by the Chairman and
Secretary. They are open to members at all times.
Article 10
1. The Board shall represent the Association in law and otherwise.
2. The authority to represent shall also be granted to two members of the
Board acting together.
3. The Board shall authorize the Secretary in an adequate way for the proper
execution of his function.
General Assembly: Article 11
1. The General Assembly constitutes in the Association the highest power in
the sense that all authority not granted by law or by these statutes to others
lies with it; also in the sense that the General Assembly can instruct the Board
in policy matters.
2. The General Assembly shall be held at a place indicated by the Board.
3. At least once a year a General Assembly shall be held within six months
after termination of the Association's year, except for the prolongation of this
term by the General Assembly. In this General Assembly, the Board shall
submit its annual report, a balance sheet and a statement of profit and loss and
other documents. The Board shall also submit a budget for the current year for
approval by the General Assembly.
4. The General Assembly appoints annually a commission for investigation of
the documents mentioned in the above subsection. The commission shall
consist of at least two individuals who shall not be members of the Board.
Article 12
1. Apart from the General Assembly mentioned in the above article, general
meetings can be called by the Board as often as it is deemed desirable.
2. At the written request of at least such a number of members as are
authorized to constitute 1/10 of the votes in a plenary general assembly, the
Board is obliged to call a general meeting within four weeks. Should the
Board not comply with such request within two weeks, the requisitioners
themselves may proceed to call the requested meeting.
3. The convocation of the General Assembly shall be made in writing to the
members at least three weeks before the meeting. The convocation shall
include the agenda for the General Assembly.
Article 13
1. The members shall have the right of voting; each one shall have one vote.
Each member can authorize another member to vote for her/him by a written
authorization. One member entitled to vote can at most represent two other
members.
2. A unanimous decision of all members to vote in the General Assembly,
although not present at the meeting but with of the Board, shall have the same
force as a decision taken by the General Assembly.
3. The chairman has the power of decision in voting procedures not described
in these statutes.
4. All decisions are taken by absolute majority. When votes are equally
divided concerning other proposals than election of persons, these proposals
are considered to be rejected. When votes are equally divided concerning
election of persons, fortune will decide. If by an election, where more than
two persons are involved, no one obtains an absolute majority, there shall be a
reelection between the two persons who obtained a greater number of votes.
Statutes change: Article 14
1. These statutes cannot be altered except by a decision of the General
Assembly, called with the announcement that the meeting at an alteration of
these statutes will be proposed. Such a convocation shall be accompanied by
the literal text of the proposed alteration.
2. Those having called the General Assembly for dealing with a proposition
for alteration of these statutes, will have to expose for inspection of the
members a copy of the proposed text at a suitable place, at least five days
before the meeting till after the end of the day of the meeting.
3. The alteration of the statutes shall not become effective until a notarial act
has been drawn up.
Liquidation and settlement: Article 15
1. Article 14, Part 1 and 2 shall also apply in case of a decision of the
General Assembly to dissolve the Association.
2. The General Assembly shall determine the destination of the remaining
surplus as much as possible in conformity with the objectives of the
Association.
3. Settlement will be effected by the Board unless the General Assembly
decides otherwise.
4. After liquidation, the Association will endure as long as necessary for the
settlement of properties. The articles of these statutes will stay in force as
much as possible during the period of liquidation. In documents and
announcements of the Association the words "in liquidatie" (in liquidation)
will have to be added to the name of the Association.
Official Statutes (Notarial Act dated June 10, 1983; Official Dutch
Registration
of Associations,
Number V 534021).
by Vincent Falger1 (from ESS Newsletter #
40, January 1996, Commemorative Issue: Obituary of Jan Wind, Founding Father
of the ESS)
The history of ESS began with a meeting in 1981 of the contributors to a
Dutch book on sociobiology, edited by Frans de Waal. Sociobiology
Discussed: Evolutionary Roots of Human Behaviour? was published in the
period that sociobiology was associated in the first place with controversies2.
Emotions ran high when people dared to think of approaching human
behaviour from a biological perspective. In the Netherlands, like in Great
Britain and the United States, one ran a serious reputational risk if one tried to
take biology seriously in the study of our own behaviour. For example, the
Dutch criminologist Willem Buikhuizen, who a few years earlier performed
very unconventional research to discover possible genetic defects in some type
of criminals, was ostracised by his colleagues, was slandered in the press, and
left Leyden University bitterly disillusioned.
Frans de Waal, who in the early eighties was also working on his
well-known Chimpanzee Politics, brought together a number of people who
agreed to disagree on the scope, methods and results of sociobiology. De
Waal, himself in the first place an ethologist in the Dutch tradition of Tinbergen, Baerends
and
van Hooff, recognised the intellectual stimulus of
sociobiology, although he never wanted to be seen as a sociobiologist.
Among the thirteen authors of Sociobiology Discussed, Jan Wind [1932-1995]
certainly
took the most outspoken position with his contribution on the supposed genetic
foundation of egoism and altruism. His opponents were Piet Vroon, a
psychologist who criticised Jan's alleged 'genetic reductionism', and A.W.
Musschenga, a moral philosopher who was not convinced by Jan's analysis of
non-kin altruism. In Jan's answer to his critics we can read among others: "I
also have argued that the [straight] relevance of sociobiology for daily life is
not very great (as yet). That also goes for generally appreciated mental
constructions and theories like 'continental drift', Darwinian evolution,
cosmogeny and relativity. One of the tasks of sociobiologists (and other
scientists) is to analyse how much (... OK, OK: how little) that relevance
is."
(p. 97).
We can see this as illustrative of Jan's character: he liked to
trigger
thinking in unconventional directions, but he was not an intellectual
warmonger. And if we read this as his scientific program, Jan has contributed
very much to the promotion of the evolutionary approach of human behaviour.
After Sociobiology Discussed was published, October 24-25, 1981, a public
conference was held to stimulate further discussion of the subject.
At this meeting the first signs of international interest were present in the
persons of Roland Corluy and Rob Cliquet from Belgium. Relaxing in the
evening with a drink and a small cigar, we - that is, Jan, Roland, Rob, Hans
van der Dennen and I myself - contemplated contentedly about the past
discussion and the many people interested. I remember very clearly when Jan,
in his characteristic quasi-noncommittal way, asked whether it wouldn't be a
good idea to try to continue the interesting discussion on a more regular basis.
Why not organise a small-scale follow-up conference, because he knew from
his international contacts that not only a few Dutch and Belgians were
interested in the subject. For me, these questions mark the moment that ESS
was born, although its name originally was 'European Sociobiology Study
Group'. And so the first meeting of this ESS Group took place August 21-22,
1982, in the International School for Philosophy in Leusden, the Netherlands.
The following lengthy quotation is from the anouncement of this conference,
and those who have known Jan as an ESS board member will recognise his
style of presentation:
"The aim of this meeting is three-fold. First, there will be a, presumably short, business-meeting starting Aug. 21 at 2.00 pm. during which the participants are invited to elect the members of a board and to democratically decide upon the - presumably modest - membership contribution. The following and main part of the meeting will be dedicated to the scientific work mainly focusing on the possible contribution of biology - especially evolutionary biology - to the understanding of the social behavior of man and animals. A few invited speakers are scheduled among which professors A. Jaquard (Paris), O. Hansen (Lund), U. Melotti (Milano), and E. Voland (Göttingen). Topics to be discussed include sociobiology's relevance for linguistics, for sex ratio manipulation, for sexism and feminism, for political science, and for human family systems, and a methodological analysis of its underlying concepts. Next to these invited, 30 minutes, lectures there will be some place for free papers, the number of which we prefer to keep limited in order to have ample time for discussion. Papers that cannot be accomodated during this meeting can, however, probably be presented during a next one which, we hope, will be implemented a few months later (depending on the viability of this E.S.S. Group). [...] Finally, we hope that during this meeting informal contacts will be established and renewed for which purpose the chosen site [the International School for Philosophy] seems favourable."
Notes:
1. Dept. of International Relations, University of Utrecht, Achter Sint Pieter
200,
3512 HT Utrecht, The
Netherlands. E-mail:
v.falger@rgl.ruu.nl
2. See, among others, V.S.E. Falger (1984): Sociobiology and political ideology. Comments
on
the radical point of view. Journal of Human Evolution, vol. 13, 129-135.
3. LOS was founded in 1985 in Cracow, Poland, after it was proposed two years earlier in
Vancouver. It is fair to state that Jan's interest in the origins of speech and language date back
to
his thesis On the Phylogeny and the Ontogeny of the Human Larynx. A Morphological
and
Functional Study, which he defended in 1970. See also Bernard H. Bichakjian in LOS
Forum, no.
21, Fall 1995, 1-3, 'In Memoriam Jan Wind'.
4. Jan himself was everything but a single-minded scientist. Trained as a physician, he
combined
a florishing practice as an ear, nose and throat specialist with his scientific interests in genetics
and human evolution, in particular behaviour and speech. He has been a part-time lecturer in
the
faculty of medicine of the Free University in Amsterdam since 1974. In November 1991 Jan
became a professor of evolutionary behavioural biology, with special emphasis on the origins
of
human speech, at the same university. In the period of 1972 to 1985 he every year made a trip
to
one or more Third World countries (in East Africa, India and Nepal) to practice in villages
and
teach local physicians, nurses and medical students (he was very much interested in
development
problems, f.e. 'On acculturation and health in traditional societies: noble savages vs. noble
savants' Human Ethology Newsletter, vol 5 (1989), no. 9, 5-6), but also collected
blood samples
for research in his dept. of biological anthropology and visited paleo-archeological sites
related
to
human evolution. Research on fossils in African collections, for example, resulted in 'CT
scanning of fossil hominid skulls', Clinical Otolaryngology, vol. 14 (1989), 368-9
(together with
F. Zonneveld) and 'Neanderthal speech', New Scientist, no. 1677 (1989), 65. A much
earlier, but
also typical scientifically fascinating problem was 'Human drowning: phylogenetic origin',
Journal of Human Evolution, vol. 5 (1976), 349-363. In 1994 he sent a reprint to two
Dutch
colleagues who had published an article on submersion with children, telling them in an
accompanying short letter that he became interested in the problem after he as a medical
student
had rescued a boy out of one of Utrecht's canals leading alongside the academic children's
hospital where the authors worked. Of course, he never mentioned that in public, but he used
such a detail to make new contacts. It is hardly surprising that one of the last initiatives Jan
took,
was stimulating a small group of Dutch high school biology teachers to discuss the problem
caused by the question whether or not evolution should be made a part of the written
examination
in biology (fundamentalist forces had gained support for the vision that Darwinist evolution
was
not science, but just a philosophical orientation).
5. An other illustration of the importance Jan attached to his task of promoting new insights
from
science was his function since 1977 as an author of tens of 'nutshell' reviews of books about
medicine and biology for the Dutch Public Library Center in The Hague. He then also paid
attention to the quality of the translation.
Chairman: Prof. Dr. Dr. Peter Meyer, Sozialwissenschaften, Universität
Augsburg, Germany.
peter.meyer@wiso.uni-augsburg.de
Secretary and ESS Newsletter Editor: Dr. Johan M.G. van der Dennen, Center for
Peace and Conflict
Studies, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
j.m.g.van.der.dennen@rechten.rug.nl
Treasurer: Dr. Vincent S.E. Falger, Dept. International Relations, University
of Utrecht, The Netherlands.
v.falger@rgl.ruu.nl
Board Member and Book Review Editor: Dr. Marcel Roele, Free University of
Amsterdam,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
m_roele@dds.nl
Board Member: Prof. Dr. Marina Butovskaya, University of Moscow, Moscow,
Russia.
marina@carabus.msk.ru
Back to the top of this document
Back to the ESS homepage
Purpose of the ESS?
Books on Human Ethology and Sociobiology
Future activities of the ESS
Recent ESS Newsletters
ESS Membership List
Websites of ESS members
ESS Associates and Links