Term for Plotting (as in behavior) I watched a video (First Man) on the evolution of humans that suggested the birth of language was probably the key to "plotting" and politics.

I'd like to learn more about plotting, but it's a hard thing to search for online, because the word plot is so frequently used in the context of plotting a thing's position (on a graph, for example).

Conspire and conspiracy are also inconvenient search terms because there's so much propaganda to wade through.

Is there a technical term for plotting or conspiring?
Merriam-Webster's gives the following synonyms: 


  conspiracy, design, intrigue, machination, scheme


Intrigue yields a number of hits on books in Google Scholar, e.g.:


Carlton, Apple: The inside story of intrigue, egomania, and business blunders (1997)
Price, Origins of the War with Mexico: The Polk-Stockton Intrigue
(2014)


Also, Machination AND intrigue yields a number of hits, such as


Pula, Polish Americans Protest Immigration Restriction: A Document, 
Polish American Studies (2011); 68(1): 59-76


'Machination' alone yields a lot of unrelated (industrial) stuff, so I think it's important to use additional identifiers when searching for literature, such as synonyms, antonyms or couple them with the topic of interest, e.g. 'brain mechanisms', or 'gender differences'.