Pastoralism and Personality:

riddling and responsibility in Highland Peru

“…Consequently, herding requires little responsibility on the part of the herder, and therefore a second reason for our failure may be simply that the tasks involved in animal husbandry do not lead to the development of responsibility. Evidence presented by C. Bolton et al (1976) supports the conclusion that Andean pastoralists ore less responsible than farmers in the Santa Barbara region. If this is the case, then our findings are in line with the responsibility hypothesis, and our failure to obtain positive results on the specific hypothesis being tested is fully understandable.…”

“…Accused individuals may be subjected to physical examinations to obtain evidence of wrongdoing, but these procedures do not involve autonomic responses. Possibly as a functional alternative to ordeals, Andean villagers rely heavily on divination and sorcery to discover and punish malefactors against whom sufficient public evidence of wrongdoing is not available (Bolton 1974b;Bolton and Bolton 1976). Oral interrogation figures prominently in divinatory rituals.…”

A Critical Examination of Honor Cultures and Herding Societies in Africa

“…In the early seventies, Bolton et al (1976) replicated Edgerton's study in two Peruvian Andean villages with eighteen boys and girls ages five to seven. The children were all from Quechua-speaking families that combined agriculture and pastoralism; the only difference was the everyday tasks in which the children were engaged, with nine children engaged primarily in agricultural tasks and the other nine primarily in herding tasks.…”

“…By age seven to nine, when a young FulBe has become a skilled herder, he is allowed to herd alone or with other age-mates. Bolton et al (1976) argue that the pastoral personality of their young subjects in the Andes is not so much the result of dominating and controlling the animals (since sheep and lamoids are quite docile), but rather of the free time spent alone while herding without supervision from adults (1976). Freedom from adult monitoring may also be an important factor in the socialization of young FulBe boys since they have the opportunity to explore, follow their own impulses, and satisfy their curiosity (Whiting & Edwards 1988:57).…”

“…This is likely when the primary threat to herds comes from within the community (McElreath 2003), but not when the main threat comes from outsiders (e.g., pastoralists from other ethnic groups), which is the case in most pastoral societies in Africa. Second, Nisbett and Cohen connect their notion of honor psychology to the idea of a "pastoral personality," a psychological profile that emerged from anthropological studies of herder societies (Edgerton 1971;Bolton et al 1976). But in doing so they may have conflated two somewhat different concepts.…”