Evolution and Human Kinship [Hardcover]

Austin L. Hughes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 11, 1988

While there have been controversial attempts to link conclusions from sociobiological studies of animal populations to humans, few behavioral scientists or anthropologists have made serious progress. In this work, Austin Hughes presents a unique and well-defined theoretical approach to human social behavior that is rooted in evolutionary biology and sociobiology, and which is additionally viewed as a direct continuation of the structural-functional tradition in anthropological research. Using mathematical and statistical techniques, Hughes applies the principles of kin selection theory--which states that natural selection can favor social acts that increase the fitness of both individuals and their relatives--to anthropological data. Among the topics covered are the subdivision of kin groups, selection of leaders in traditional societies, patronage systems, and the correspondence between social and biological kinship. The author concludes that patterns of concentration of relatedness are more important than average relatedness for predicting social behavior. He also shows that social interactions can often be predicted on the basis of common genetic interest in dependent offspring. The result is a major contribution to the field of behavioral biology.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Hughes succeeds well, drawing on existing anthropological literature and interpreting and reinterpreting it in the light of his biological perspective. The real test, of course comes now as he invites empirical anthropologists to pick up his formal tools and to see if they can be used to push into new grounds, forcing new discoveries and revealing hitherto unsuspected links. . . .This is an important book." --The Quarterly Review of Biology

"Throws an important new light on our understanding of inclusive fitness theory, as well as on the way we apply sociobiological principles to the study of Man" --Trends in Ecology & Evolution

About the Author

Austin L. Hughes is a Research Associate in the Biology Department at the University of Iowa.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1ST edition (February 11, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019505234X
• ISBN-13: 978-0195052343
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,299,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Progress, but one-sided, December 1, 2010

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Scully (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Evolution and Human Kinship (Hardcover)

This book attempts to create a grand theory of human social behavior by linking kin selection theory to the structure of human kinship. The author proposes several formal mathematical tools to test such a link, focusing in particular on principal components analysis, but highlighting also social network analysis and deterministic models. He tests the validity of kin selection theory in describing several aspects of human kinship from several unrelated data sets, including sharing among kin, the structure of family groups, the emergence of stratified kin groups and kinship terminology.

The book is extremely well written and relatively easy to follow if you skim the mathy bits. It covers a number of issues that are of fundamental importance to kinship theorists, including marriage and descent. It seems very much ahead of its time in its use of mathematical and statistical tools and argues persuasively for the need to examine kinship systematically.

The book's major failing is in its one-sidedness. The touting of kin selection theory is at the expense of consideration of equally valid theories, even within sociobiology (e.g., other evolutionary bases for cooperation, conflict and reproductive skew among related individuals) and can seem a bit naive as a result. Furthermore, much of the existing literature within evolutionary anthropology was ignored or glossed over, leaving the reader with a somewhat biased perception of the status quo in 1988. The author also by and large rejects the American cultural anthropological tradition of kinship studies, which is understandable given his perspective, but does nothing to bridge the study of kinship and biology as he desires. Because the author is a zoologist rather than an anthropologist, much of this is not surprising.

Regardless of the shortcomings of this book, I still recommend it as a supplementary text for any class that considers evolutionary perspectives on human kinship. Chapters 1, 5 and 8 would be particularly interesting for undergraduate students. Hughes' case is stated perhaps too strongly, but is nonetheless a case worth considering, as it adds structure and perspective to explorations of human kinship systems.