摘要:This paper begins from the stance that the "meaning" of collaborations, alliances or anysocial relationships is not automatically shared by all partners in such relationship and,indeed may, in some instances, be incomprehensible to one or more parties. This lackof a common meaning derives from the specificity of cultural constructions overlying acommonality of evolved psychological mechanisms. By drawing extensively on anthro-pological theory, I construct a preliminary model to both explain this lack of commonmeaning, and show why certain specific safeguards identified by other researchers onalliances and collaborations are so important in collaborative relationships