Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective (Evolutionary Foundations of Human Behavior) [Paperback]

Lee Cronk (Editor), Napoleon Chagnon (Editor), William Irons (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Evolutionary Foundations of Human Behavior | Publication Date: June 1, 2000

Adaptation and Human Behavior is a collection of state-of-the-art studies in the rapidly growing field of human behavioral ecology. It commemorates the birth of this approach two decades ago with the publication of Chagnon and Irons's edited volume Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective. At the same time it redefines human behavioral ecology for a new generation of scholars and students. Following a set of introductory chapters that put the volume in broader historical and theoretical context, eighteen chapters use data from more than twenty different human societies to explore human behavioral adaptations. A final chapter looks at how far the approach has come and where it may go. Well-known human behavioral ecologists as well as a younger generation of scholars approach topics with a degree of theoretical and methodological sophistication that demonstrate both the maturity and freshness of this new paradigm in the study of human behavior.

CONTENTS

Preface · Part I. Some Statements of Theory · 1. Two Decades of a New Paradigm, William Irons · 2. Three Styles in the Evolutionary Analysis of Human Behavior, Eric Alden Smith · Part II. Mating · 3. Polygyny, Family Structure, and Child Mortality: A Prospective Study among the Dogon of Mali, Beverly I. Strassman · 4. Paternal Investment and Hunter-Gatherer Divorce Rates, Nicholas Blurton Jones, Frank W. Marlowe, Kristen Hawkes, and James F. O'Connell · 5. Fertility, Offspring Quality, and Wealth in Datoga Pastoralists: Testing Evolutionary Models of Intersexual Selection, Daniel W. Sellen, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, and Daniela F. Sieff · 6. Manipulating Kinship Rules: A Form of Male Yanomamö Reproductive Competition, Napoleon Chagnon · 7. Physical Attractiveness, Race, and Somatic Prejudice in Bahia, Brazil, Douglas Jones · Part III. Parenting · 8. Parental Investment Strategies among Aka Foragers, Ngandu Farmers, and Euro-American Urban Industrialists, Barry S. Hewlett, Michael E. Lamb, Birgit Leyendecker, and Axel Schölmerich · 9. Parenting Other Men's Children: Cost, Benefits, and Consequences, Jane B. Lancaster and Hillard S. Kaplan · 10. Female-Biased Parental Investment and Growth Performance among the Mukogodo, Lee Cronk · 11. The Grandmother Hypothesis and Human Evolution, Kristen Hawkes, James F. O'Connell, Nicholas Blurton Jones, H. Alvarez, and E.L. Charnov · 12. Why Do the Yomut Raise More Sons than Daughters? William Irons · Part IV. The Demographic Transition · 13. An Adaptive Model of Human Reproductive Rate Where Wealth Is Inherited: Why People Have Small Families, Ruth Mace · 14. Skills-Based Competitive Labor Markets, the Demographic Transition, and the Interaction of Fertility and Parental Human Capital in the Determination of Child Outcomes, Hillard S. Kaplan and Jane B. Lancaster · 15. Sex, Wealth, and Fertility: Old Rules, New Environments, Bobbi Low · 16. To Marry Again or Not: A Dynamic Model for Demographic Transition, Barney Luttberg, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, and Marc Mangel · Part V. Sociality · 17. Effects of Illness and Injury on Foraging among the Yora and Shiwiar: Pathology Risk as Adaptive Problem, Lawrence Sugiyama and Richard Chacon · 18. Reciprocal Altruism in Yanomamö Food Exchange, Raymond Hames · 19. Reciprocal Altruism and Warfare: A Case from the Ecuadorian Amazon, John Q. Patton · 20. The Emergence and Stability of Cooperative Fishing on Ifaluk Atoll, Richard Sosis · Part VI. Conclusion · 21. Twenty Years of Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior: Where Are We Now? J. Patrick Gray · References · Index

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Aldine Transaction (June 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0202020444
• ISBN-13: 978-0202020440
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #484,566 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lee Cronk is a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1989. His first book, That Complex Whole: Culture and the Evolution of Human Behavior, explored the possibility of developing an approach to the study of human behavior that incorporates both evolutionary theory and the concept of culture. Long-term fieldwork in Kenya led to his second book, From Mukogodo to Maasai: Ethnicity and Cultural Change in Kenya. It explores the past, present, and future of ethnic identity among the Mukogodo, a small group of Maasai-speaking pastoralists. He has also co-edited two volumes. Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective, co-edited with William Irons and Napoleon Chagnon, is a collection of theoretical and empirical chapters by leading figures in the field of human behavioral ecology. Through the Looking Glass: Readings in Anthropology, co-edited with Vaughn M. Bryant, Jr., is designed for use in introductory anthropology classes. He has also published articles in American Anthropologist, Current Anthropology, Evolution and Human Behavior, Human Nature, Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, Ethnology, Nature, and other journals. Cronk's current research and writing projects focus on such topics as cooperation and the relationship between culture and behavior.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Human Behavioral Ecology at its Finest, November 8, 2000

By 

Herbert Gintis (Northampton, MA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective (Evolutionary Foundations of Human Behavior) (Paperback)

The greatest error in social theory throughout the 20th century was the belief that humans are so different from other species that none of the tools normally used to study behavior in non-humans is applicable to the study of behavior in humans. Usually this was supported by arguing that human culture is so variable and human nature so malleable that we have virtually completely transcended our animal roots.

E. O. Wilson's great book, Sociobiology (1975) changed all that. Despite ferocious opposition to the idea that humans are animals deeply affected by their evolutionary history (Wilson was called a racist and a fascist by very eminent biologists and anthropologists), a whole generation of young researchers got the message, and began producing extremely valuable studies confirming that many aspects of human psychology and human social organization could be better appreciated by treating humans as the product of evolution, and using methods little different from the study of primates, and even birds and insects.

This book is an edited collection of some of the major research efforts undertaken by these evolutionary psychologists, sociobiologists, and behavioral ecologists. The research is for the most part not armchair theorizing, but the analysis of painfully collected and minutely analyzed data on small scale societies. After two chapters of nicely developed theory, the book offers five chapters on mating, followed by another five chapters on parenting.

The book then attacks a major problem in sociobiology: the demographic transition, which occurred in Europe a century ago, and is occuring in many developing nations today. The demographic transition consists of a fall in the birth rate following a rise in per capital income---an event that is quite unexpected, since sociobiology is based on the notion that humans are/were in their evolutionary history, fitness maximizers. The most plausible explanation, offered by Kaplan and Lancaster, is that humans do not maximize fitness, but rather a combination of fitness and welfare. The implications of this for social theory are immense, and begin to draw sociobiology back into conformance with economic theory, which stresses utility maximization.

The book then presents four papers on human sociality. These papers, while quite impressive, are to my mind excessively closely tied to Robert Triver's notion of reciprocal altruism, and more broadly, Richard Alexander's slightly broader notion of indirect altruism. I think recent evidence fairly conclusively shows that human behavior is not self-interested even in the widest sense, and some theory of multilevel selection and/or culture/gene coevolution is needed to explain human sociality in an acceptable manner.

But these are quibbles on the edge of current research, and should by no means deter the interested reader from profiting from these exciting and impressive articles.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT, September 24, 2005

By 

T. Marin "trojaness" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective (Evolutionary Foundations of Human Behavior) (Paperback)

This book arrived in adequate time and was in great condition. There was no trouble with delivery, it was on time.

15 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another step forward for empirical science., January 19, 2001

By 

Matt Nuenke http://eugenics.home.att.net (Chicago, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective (Evolutionary Foundations of Human Behavior) (Paperback)

This book brings together some of the best minds to discuss what we
know about evolutionary strategies for mating, parenting, reproduction
and altruism. It consists of numerous studies showing the universality
of human behavior, and how different ecologies result in different
local behaviors, all the while conforming to our innate algorithms.
That is, how nature and nurture combine resulting in our modern
societies, and how our maladaptations with regards to rep[17~roduction
and altruism are a result of our technology changing the rules of
adapted strategies. Such things as birth control have now unlinked
male social displays of wealth and dominance that once led to
reproductive success.

But the best part of the book is the Statement
of Theories. It is a lucid history of how cultural anthropology has
all but abandoned the scientific empiricism for a politically driven
agenda of cultural determinism. That is, while these radical
environmentalists were criticizing evolutionary approaches without
coming up with alternative theories, evolutionary theorists were
charging ahead, making phenomenal progress in understanding human
nature. It explains again how detractors such as Sahlins, Gould,
Lewontin, Kamin, Rose, et al., with their condemnation of the
evolutionary perspective, without providing alternative hypotheses,
have actually accelerated the progress made in linking humans to all
other organisms in an evolutionary explanation of how we interact with
the world about us.


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Overall, this book is must
reading, especially for anyone interested in demographics, parenting,
and reproduction rates of different population groups. Especially now
when there is a renewed interest in many countries that reproduction
rates are so low that immigration is sought to make up the difference,
with the impending problems it brings when multiculturalism replaces
homogeneous populations and cultures.