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David W. Lawson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Applied Evolutionary Anthropology - Applying Evolutionary Anthropology.
Evolutionary anthropology, 2015Co-Authors: Mhairi A. Gibson, David W. LawsonAbstract:Evolutionary Anthropology provides a powerful theoretical framework for understanding how both current environments and legacies of past selection shape human behavioral diversity. This integrative and pluralistic field, combining ethnographic, demographic, and sociological methods, has provided new insights into the ultimate forces and proximate pathways that guide human adaptation and variation. Here, we present the argument that Evolutionary anthropological studies of human behavior also hold great, largely untapped, potential to guide the design, implementation, and evaluation of social and public health policy. Focusing on the key anthropological themes of reproduction, production, and distribution we highlight classic and recent research demonstrating the value of an Evolutionary perspective to improving human well-being. The challenge now comes in transforming relevance into action and, for that, Evolutionary behavioral anthropologists will need to forge deeper connections with other applied social scientists and policy-makers. We are hopeful that these developments are underway and that, with the current tide of enthusiasm for evidence-based approaches to policy, Evolutionary Anthropology is well positioned to make a strong contribution.
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Applying Evolutionary Anthropology to a Changing World
Applied Evolutionary Anthropology, 2014Co-Authors: Mhairi A. Gibson, David W. LawsonAbstract:Evolutionary Anthropology presents a powerful theoretical framework to understand how both current environments and legacies of past selection shape human behavioural and cultural diversity. Combining ethnographic, economic and demographic methods, this integrative and pluralistic field has provided new insights into the ultimate motivations and proximate pathways that guide human adaptation and variation. In recent years, anthropologists and related social scientists have also begun to explore how Evolutionary theory may be used as a tool to address questions of public health and social policy relevance. This marks a watershed development in Evolutionary approaches to human behaviour, as the field moves beyond purely academic boundaries and into the realm of applied social science. As a species, we are currently experiencing dramatic shifts in our lifestyle, family structure, diet and health and global contact. ‘Applied Evolutionary Anthropology’ (AEA) can provide new insights into the causes and the consequences of such human behavioural shifts by studying populations at the cusp of these transitions. It also holds great, largely untapped, potential to guide the design, implementation and evaluation of effective social and public health policy. This edited volume reviews the current state of the emerging field of AEA, highlighting the work of a number of interdisciplinary Evolutionary scientists studying contemporary world issues. In this chapter, we briefly introduce the objectives and main contributions of AEA, and discuss the key research themes explored both in this book and the wider literature.
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Family Structure and Health in the Developing World: What Can Evolutionary Anthropology Contribute to Population Health Science?
Applied Evolutionary Anthropology, 2014Co-Authors: David W. Lawson, Caroline UgglaAbstract:In this chapter, we consider what Evolutionary Anthropology contributes to the study of population health, focusing specifically on family structure and its relationship to child and adult physical health. Evolutionary anthropologists have now built a substantial body of literature on relationships between family structure and various dimensions of human wellbeing, particularly in the context of small-scale ‘traditional’ societies and developing rural communities most at risk of poor health outcomes. Crucially, they have also constructed theoretical models to account for variation in key dimensions of family structure in relation to individual, ecological, and cultural factors. Thus, Evolutionary anthropologists have much to say, not only about the extent to which specific family structures may influence health but also why certain family forms may persist or change across time and space. Here, focusing on studies primarily conducted in sub-Saharan Africa, we review the literature on three interrelated dimensions of family structure and their relationship to health: (1) family size, (2) polygynous versus monogamous marriage, and (3) the role of extended kin. Using these examples, we highlight the theoretical and empirical contributions of Evolutionary Anthropology and draw out implications for population policy and related initiatives seeking to improve family health in the developing world.
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applying Evolutionary Anthropology
Evolutionary Anthropology, 2014Co-Authors: Mhairi A. Gibson, David W. LawsonAbstract:Evolutionary Anthropology provides a powerful theoretical framework for understanding how both current environments and legacies of past selection shape human behavioral diversity. This integrative and pluralistic field, combining ethnographic, demographic, and sociological methods, has provided new insights into the ultimate forces and proximate pathways that guide human adaptation and variation. Here, we present the argument that Evolutionary anthropological studies of human behavior also hold great, largely untapped, potential to guide the design, implementation, and evaluation of social and public health policy. Focusing on the key anthropological themes of reproduction, production, and distribution we highlight classic and recent research demonstrating the value of an Evolutionary perspective to improving human well-being. The challenge now comes in transforming relevance into action and, for that, Evolutionary behavioral anthropologists will need to forge deeper connections with other applied social scientists and policy-makers. We are hopeful that these developments are underway and that, with the current tide of enthusiasm for evidence-based approaches to policy, Evolutionary Anthropology is well positioned to make a strong contribution.
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applied Evolutionary Anthropology darwinian approaches to contemporary world issues
Springer US, 2014Co-Authors: Mhairi A. Gibson, David W. LawsonAbstract:Chapter 1- Introduction: Applying Evolutionary Anthropology to a Changing World.- Chapter 2- Rationality and the Green Revolution.- Chapter 3- A comparison of the economic literature on microfinance and the Evolutionary literature on cooperation.- Chapter 4- How development intervention drives population change in rural Africa: A case study of applied Evolutionary Anthropology.- Chapter 5- Family structure and health in the developing world: What can Evolutionary Anthropology contribute to population health science?.- Chapter 6- Declining breastfeeding rates among immigrant populations: A look through an Evolutionary lens.- Chapter 7- The Evolutionary demography of sex ratios in rural Bangladesh.- Chapter 8- Evolutionary Anthropology, co-operation and warfare.- Chapter 9- Understanding and addressing cultural variation in costly antisocial punishment.- Chapter 10-Socioeconomic disparities in health behaviour: An Evolutionary perspective.- Chapter 11- Nutrition in a changing world: How economic growth drives chronic diseases.- Chapter 12- The Evo-Eco approach to behaviour change.
Mhairi A. Gibson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Applied Evolutionary Anthropology - Applying Evolutionary Anthropology.
Evolutionary anthropology, 2015Co-Authors: Mhairi A. Gibson, David W. LawsonAbstract:Evolutionary Anthropology provides a powerful theoretical framework for understanding how both current environments and legacies of past selection shape human behavioral diversity. This integrative and pluralistic field, combining ethnographic, demographic, and sociological methods, has provided new insights into the ultimate forces and proximate pathways that guide human adaptation and variation. Here, we present the argument that Evolutionary anthropological studies of human behavior also hold great, largely untapped, potential to guide the design, implementation, and evaluation of social and public health policy. Focusing on the key anthropological themes of reproduction, production, and distribution we highlight classic and recent research demonstrating the value of an Evolutionary perspective to improving human well-being. The challenge now comes in transforming relevance into action and, for that, Evolutionary behavioral anthropologists will need to forge deeper connections with other applied social scientists and policy-makers. We are hopeful that these developments are underway and that, with the current tide of enthusiasm for evidence-based approaches to policy, Evolutionary Anthropology is well positioned to make a strong contribution.
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Applying Evolutionary Anthropology to a Changing World
Applied Evolutionary Anthropology, 2014Co-Authors: Mhairi A. Gibson, David W. LawsonAbstract:Evolutionary Anthropology presents a powerful theoretical framework to understand how both current environments and legacies of past selection shape human behavioural and cultural diversity. Combining ethnographic, economic and demographic methods, this integrative and pluralistic field has provided new insights into the ultimate motivations and proximate pathways that guide human adaptation and variation. In recent years, anthropologists and related social scientists have also begun to explore how Evolutionary theory may be used as a tool to address questions of public health and social policy relevance. This marks a watershed development in Evolutionary approaches to human behaviour, as the field moves beyond purely academic boundaries and into the realm of applied social science. As a species, we are currently experiencing dramatic shifts in our lifestyle, family structure, diet and health and global contact. ‘Applied Evolutionary Anthropology’ (AEA) can provide new insights into the causes and the consequences of such human behavioural shifts by studying populations at the cusp of these transitions. It also holds great, largely untapped, potential to guide the design, implementation and evaluation of effective social and public health policy. This edited volume reviews the current state of the emerging field of AEA, highlighting the work of a number of interdisciplinary Evolutionary scientists studying contemporary world issues. In this chapter, we briefly introduce the objectives and main contributions of AEA, and discuss the key research themes explored both in this book and the wider literature.
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applying Evolutionary Anthropology
Evolutionary Anthropology, 2014Co-Authors: Mhairi A. Gibson, David W. LawsonAbstract:Evolutionary Anthropology provides a powerful theoretical framework for understanding how both current environments and legacies of past selection shape human behavioral diversity. This integrative and pluralistic field, combining ethnographic, demographic, and sociological methods, has provided new insights into the ultimate forces and proximate pathways that guide human adaptation and variation. Here, we present the argument that Evolutionary anthropological studies of human behavior also hold great, largely untapped, potential to guide the design, implementation, and evaluation of social and public health policy. Focusing on the key anthropological themes of reproduction, production, and distribution we highlight classic and recent research demonstrating the value of an Evolutionary perspective to improving human well-being. The challenge now comes in transforming relevance into action and, for that, Evolutionary behavioral anthropologists will need to forge deeper connections with other applied social scientists and policy-makers. We are hopeful that these developments are underway and that, with the current tide of enthusiasm for evidence-based approaches to policy, Evolutionary Anthropology is well positioned to make a strong contribution.
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applied Evolutionary Anthropology darwinian approaches to contemporary world issues
Springer US, 2014Co-Authors: Mhairi A. Gibson, David W. LawsonAbstract:Chapter 1- Introduction: Applying Evolutionary Anthropology to a Changing World.- Chapter 2- Rationality and the Green Revolution.- Chapter 3- A comparison of the economic literature on microfinance and the Evolutionary literature on cooperation.- Chapter 4- How development intervention drives population change in rural Africa: A case study of applied Evolutionary Anthropology.- Chapter 5- Family structure and health in the developing world: What can Evolutionary Anthropology contribute to population health science?.- Chapter 6- Declining breastfeeding rates among immigrant populations: A look through an Evolutionary lens.- Chapter 7- The Evolutionary demography of sex ratios in rural Bangladesh.- Chapter 8- Evolutionary Anthropology, co-operation and warfare.- Chapter 9- Understanding and addressing cultural variation in costly antisocial punishment.- Chapter 10-Socioeconomic disparities in health behaviour: An Evolutionary perspective.- Chapter 11- Nutrition in a changing world: How economic growth drives chronic diseases.- Chapter 12- The Evo-Eco approach to behaviour change.
Christa Finkenwirth - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Marmosets as model species in neuroscience and Evolutionary Anthropology.
Neuroscience research, 2014Co-Authors: Judith M. Burkart, Christa FinkenwirthAbstract:Marmosets are increasingly used as model species by both neuroscientists and Evolutionary anthropologists, but with a different rationale for doing so. Whereas neuroscientists stress that marmosets share many cognitive traits with humans due to common descent, anthropologists stress those traits shared with marmosets - and callitrichid monkeys in general - due to convergent evolution, as a consequence of the cooperative breeding system that characterizes both humans and callitrichids. Similarities in socio-cognitive abilities due to convergence, rather than homology, raise the question whether these similarities also extend to the proximate regulatory mechanisms, which is particularly relevant for neuroscientific investigations. In this review, we first provide an overview of the convergent adaptations to cooperative breeding at the psychological and cognitive level in primates, which bear important implications for our understanding of human cognitive evolution. In the second part, we zoom in on two of these convergent adaptations, proactive prosociality and social learning, and compare their proximate regulation in marmosets and humans with regard to oxytocin and cognitive top down regulation. Our analysis suggests considerable similarity in these regulatory mechanisms presumably because the convergent traits emerged due to small motivational changes that define how pre-existing cognitive mechanisms are quantitatively combined. This finding reconciles the prima facie contradictory rationale for using marmosets as high priority model species in neuroscience and Anthropology.
Eric Alden Smith - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Agency and Adaptation: New Directions in Evolutionary Anthropology
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2013Co-Authors: Eric Alden SmithAbstract:Neo-Darwinian evolution is widely acknowledged as the key framework for understanding the form and function of living systems, including myriad aspects of animal behavior. Yet extensions to human behavior and society are perennially challenged; debates are vociferous and seemingly irresolvable, and Evolutionary approaches to human behavior are marginalized within much of Anthropology and other social sciences. This review explores this contested terrain, arguing that although many critiques of Evolutionary analyses of behavior are faulty, some valid concerns must be addressed. Human agency, behavioral plasticity, and the partial autonomy of cultural and historical change present real challenges to the standard Evolutionary framework. However, several additions to the standard framework currently employed by Evolutionary anthropologists and others address these concerns and provide a more comprehensive understanding of human behavioral evolution and adaptation. These additions include phenotypic adaptation...
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How conservative are Evolutionary anthropologists
Human nature (Hawthorne N.Y.), 2012Co-Authors: Henry F. Lyle, Eric Alden SmithAbstract:The application of Evolutionary theory to human behavior has elicited a variety of critiques, some of which charge that this approach expresses or encourages conservative or reactionary political agendas. In a survey of graduate students in psychology, Tybur, Miller, and Gangestad (Human Nature, 18, 313–328, 2007) found that the political attitudes of those who use an Evolutionary approach did not differ from those of other psychology grad students. Here, we present results from a directed online survey of a broad sample of graduate students in Anthropology that assays political views. We found that Evolutionary Anthropology graduate students were very liberal in their political beliefs, overwhelmingly voted for a liberal U.S. presidential candidate in the 2008 election, and identified with liberal political parties; in this, they were almost indistinguishable from non-Evolutionary Anthropology students. Our results contradict the view that Evolutionary anthropologists hold conservative or reactionary political views. We discuss some possible reasons for the persistence of this view in terms of the sociology of science.
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The evolution of culture: New perspectives and evidence
Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues News and Reviews, 2003Co-Authors: Charles H. Janson, Eric Alden SmithAbstract:This and the next issue of Evolutionary Anthropology are devoted to presenting the most recent advances in our understanding of the evolution of culture in non-human primates and humans. This effort was stimulated in part by the recent explosion of comparative evidence for extensive communicative and material culture in two great apes, chimpanzees1 and orangutans.2 Before this evidence accumulated, it was easy for anthropologists to maintain that examples of non-human primate culture were little more impressive than those put forward for many other non-human species, and thus they could leave intact the seemingly huge gap between animal and human culture. The overall purpose of this special pair of issues of Evolutionary Anthropology is to ask how and why culture has changed over Evolutionary time from non-primates to non-human primates to early hominins to modern humans.
Gebhard Geiger - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Evolutionary Anthropology and the non-cognitive foundation of moral validity
Biology & Philosophy, 1993Co-Authors: Gebhard GeigerAbstract:This paper makes an attempt at the conceptual foundation of descriptive ethical theories in terms of Evolutionary Anthropology. It suggests, first, that what human social actors tend to accept to be morally valid and legitimate ultimately rests upon empirical authority relations and, second, that this acceptance follows an evolved pattern of hierarchical behaviour control in the social animal species. The analysis starts with a brief review of Thomas Hobbes' moral philosophy, with special emphasis on Hobbes' “authoritarian” view of moral validity and of the common political origins and ultimate basis of legitimacy of moral and legal systems. Hobbes' philosophical conceptions are then put into the context of Max Weber's influential empirical theory of legitimacy, especially charismatic revelation and authority as the ultimate source of all moral, legal and religious obligations. Weber's concept of charismatic authority is given a biobehavioural interpretation in terms of ritualised status signals indicating an individual's superior physical and emotional dispositions to control the social actions of others. Various conclusions are drawn concerning the concept of moral validity and its possible Evolutionary interpretations.