Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective

By Napoleon A. Chagnon

Book Overview

This volume presents state-of-the-art empirical studies working in a paradigm that has become known as human behavioral ecology. The emergence of this approach in anthropology was marked by publication by Aldine in 1979 of an earlier collection of studies edited by Chagnon and Irons entitled Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective. During the two decades that have passed since then, this innovative approach has matured and expanded into new areas that are explored here.

The book opens with an introductory chapter by Chagnon and Irons tracing the origins of human behavioral ecology and its subsequent development. Subsequent chapters, written by both younger scholars and established researchers, cover a wide range of societies and topics organ-ized into six sections. The first section includes two chapters that provide historical background on the development of human behavioral ecology and com-pare it to two complementary approaches in the study of evolution and human behavior, evolutionary psychology, and dual inheritance theory. The second section includes five studies of mating efforts in a variety of societies from South America and Africa. The third section covers parenting, with five studies on soci-eties from Africa, Asia, and North America. The fourth section breaks somewhat with the tradition in human behavioral ecology by focusing on one particularly problematic issue, the demographic transition, using data from Europe, North America, and Asia. The fifth section includes studies of cooperation and helping behaviors, using data from societies in Micronesia and South America. The sixth and final section consists of a single chapter that places the volume in a broader critical and comparative context.

The contributions to this volume demonstrate, with a high degree of theoretical and methodological sophistication--the maturity and freshness of this new paradigm in the study of human behavior. The volume will be of interest to anthropologists and other professions working on the study of cross-cultural human behavior.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0202020444
• ISBN13: 9780202020440
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.0" x 9.1"

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Another step forward for empirical science.

This book brings together some of the best minds to discuss what weknow about evolutionary strategies for mating, parenting, reproductionand altruism. It consists of numerous studies showing the universalityof human behavior, and how different ecologies result in differentlocal behaviors, all the while conforming to our innate algorithms.That is, how nature and nurture combine resulting in our modernsocieties, and how our maladaptations with regards to rep[17~roductionand altruism are a result of our technology changing the rules ofadapted strategies. Such things as birth control have now unlinkedmale social displays of wealth and dominance that once led toreproductive success.But the best part of the book is the Statementof Theories. It is a lucid history of how cultural anthropology hasall but abandoned the scientific empiricism for a politically drivenagenda of cultural determinism. That is, while these radicalenvironmentalists were criticizing evolutionary approaches withoutcoming up with alternative theories, evolutionary theorists werecharging ahead, making phenomenal progress in understanding humannature. It explains again how detractors such as Sahlins, Gould,Lewontin, Kamin, Rose, et al., with their condemnation of theevolutionary perspective, without providing alternative hypotheses,have actually accelerated the progress made in linking humans to allother organisms in an evolutionary explanation of how we interact withthe world about us. [17~[17~[17~Overall, this book is mustreading, especially for anyone interested in demographics, parenting,and reproduction rates of different population groups. Especially nowwhen there is a renewed interest in many countries that reproductionrates are so low that immigration is sought to make up the difference,with the impending problems it brings when multiculturalism replaceshomogeneous populations and cultures.

Human Behavioral Ecology at its Finest

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.