Introduction

As a graduate student preparing to enter the field for the first time, I was admonished by a senior faculty member to remember that I was an anthropologist as well as a primatologist. His words struck a very responsive chord because I never forgot them during my initial fieldwork on primates, or subsequently. As a consequence, the conceptual framework of this book appeared to offer me an opportunity to incorporate my own experience into my contribution, almost as if I were utilizing myself as an anthropological informant. There may even come a stage in one's career when the weight of professional experience begins to require more personal expression: Oates' (1999) examination of the loss of West African rainforest ecosystems is a recent example.

My career as a ‘monkey watcher’ may have begun somewhat differently from that of the other contributors to this volume. As a graduate student, I proposed to examine the process of speciation (in mammals) by looking at behaviors such as ecological preference that were thought to keep closely related sympatric species – in this case macaque monkeys (Macaca spp.) in west-central Thailand – reproductively isolated from one another (Eudey, 1980, 1981). At that time, although not subsequently, actual elucidation of an aspect of the monkeys' behavior was not a motivating factor.