Ethnicity, Hunter-Gatherers, and the "Other"

Ethnicity, Hunter-Gatherers, and the Author: Susan Kent
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 1935623451
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
As the world continues to shrink owing to globalization, the need to understand the diversity of culturally distinct societies and their interactions with neighboring groups becomes greater than ever. Susan Kent has invited an international team of experts to present their insights into how one type of society, African hunter-gatherers, has managed to survive long past the first contact between foragers, farmers, and pastoralists. The contributors explore many issues, including culture change, trade, tribute, inter-group relations, autonomy, dependence, and differential contact histories and rates of change. They consider why the association of hunter-gatherers with non-hunter-gatherers has sometimes led to trade between autonomous societies and in other cases has led to assimilation. Ethnicity, Hunter-Gatherers, and the "Other" illuminates both past and present foraging societies by presenting new data and reinterpreting previously collected data within the framework of inter-group interactions.

Ethnicity, Hunter-Gatherers, and the "Other"

Ethnicity, Hunter-Gatherers, and the Author: Susan Kent
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 1935623451
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
As the world continues to shrink owing to globalization, the need to understand the diversity of culturally distinct societies and their interactions with neighboring groups becomes greater than ever. Susan Kent has invited an international team of experts to present their insights into how one type of society, African hunter-gatherers, has managed to survive long past the first contact between foragers, farmers, and pastoralists. The contributors explore many issues, including culture change, trade, tribute, inter-group relations, autonomy, dependence, and differential contact histories and rates of change. They consider why the association of hunter-gatherers with non-hunter-gatherers has sometimes led to trade between autonomous societies and in other cases has led to assimilation. Ethnicity, Hunter-Gatherers, and the "Other" illuminates both past and present foraging societies by presenting new data and reinterpreting previously collected data within the framework of inter-group interactions.

Hunter-Gatherers

Hunter-Gatherers PDF Author: Catherine Panter-Brick
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521776721
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
This 2001 volume is an interdisciplinary text on hunter-gatherer populations world-wide.

The Diversity of Hunter Gatherer Pasts

The Diversity of Hunter Gatherer Pasts PDF Author: Bill Finlayson
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1785705911
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This thought provoking collection of new research papers explores the extent of variation amongst hunting and gathering peoples past and present and the considerable analytical challenges presented by this diversity. This problem is especially important in archaeology, where increasing empirical evidence illustrates ways of life that are not easily encompassed within the range of variation recognized in the contemporary world of surviving hunter-gatherers. Put simply, how do past hunter-gatherers fit into our understandings of hunter-gatherers? Furthermore, given the inevitable archaeological reliance on analogy, it is important to ask whether conceptions of hunter-gatherers based on contemporary societies restrict our comprehension of past diversity and of how this changes over the long term. Discussion of hunter-gatherers shows them to be varied and flexible, but modeling of contemporary hunter-gatherers has not only reduced them into essential categories, but has also portrayed them as static and without history. It is often said that the study of hunter-gatherers can provide insight into past forms of social organization and behavior; unfortunately too often it has limited our understandings of these societies. In contrast, contributors here explore past hunter-gather diversity over time and space to provide critical perspectives on general models of ‘hunter-gatherers’ and attempt to provide new perspectives on hunter-gatherer societies from the greater diversity present in the past.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers PDF Author: Vicki Cummings
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191025275
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1361

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Book Description
For more than a century, the study of hunting and gathering societies has been central to the development of both archaeology and anthropology as academic disciplines, and has also generated widespread public interest and debate. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers provides a comprehensive review of hunter-gatherer studies to date, including critical engagements with older debates, new theoretical perspectives, and renewed obligations for greater engagement between researchers and indigenous communities. Chapters provide in-depth archaeological, historical, and anthropological case-studies, and examine far-reaching questions about human social relations, attitudes to technology, ecology, and management of resources and the environment, as well as issues of diet, health, and gender relations - all central topics in hunter-gatherer research, but also themes that have great relevance for modern global society and its future challenges. The Handbook also provides a strategic vision for how the integration of new methods, approaches, and study regions can ensure that future research into the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers will continue to deliver penetrating insights into the factors that underlie all human diversity.

Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing

Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing PDF Author: Thomas Widlok
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 131736970X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This book examines the economy of sharing in a variety of social and political contexts around the world, with consideration given to the role of sharing in relation to social order and social change, political power, group formation, individual networks and concepts of personhood. Widlok advocates a refreshingly broad comparative approach to our understanding of sharing, with a rich range of material from hunter-gatherer ethnography alongside debates and empirical illustrations from globalized society, helping students to avoid Western economic bias in their thinking. Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing also demonstrates that sharing is distinct from gift-giving, exchange and reciprocity, which have become dominant themes in economic anthropology, and suggests that a new focus on sharing will have significant repercussions for anthropological theory. Breaking new ground in this key topic, this volume provides students with a coherent and accessible overview of the economy of sharing from an anthropological perspective.

Experimenting with Social Norms

Experimenting with Social Norms PDF Author: Jean Ensminger
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610448405
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
Questions about the origins of human cooperation have long puzzled and divided scientists. Social norms that foster fair-minded behavior, altruism and collective action undergird the foundations of large-scale human societies, but we know little about how these norms develop or spread, or why the intensity and breadth of human cooperation varies among different populations. What is the connection between social norms that encourage fair dealing and economic growth? How are these social norms related to the emergence of centralized institutions? Informed by a pioneering set of cross-cultural data, Experimenting with Social Norms advances our understanding of the evolution of human cooperation and the expansion of complex societies. Editors Jean Ensminger and Joseph Henrich present evidence from an exciting collaboration between anthropologists and economists. Using experimental economics games, researchers examined levels of fairness, cooperation, and norms for punishing those who violate expectations of equality across a diverse swath of societies, from hunter-gatherers in Tanzania to a small town in rural Missouri. These experiments tested individuals’ willingness to conduct mutually beneficial transactions with strangers that reap rewards only at the expense of taking a risk on the cooperation of others. The results show a robust relationship between exposure to market economies and social norms that benefit the group over narrow economic self-interest. Levels of fairness and generosity are generally higher among individuals in communities with more integrated markets. Religion also plays a powerful role. Individuals practicing either Islam or Christianity exhibited a stronger sense of fairness, possibly because religions with high moralizing deities, equipped with ample powers to reward and punish, encourage greater prosociality. The size of the settlement also had an impact. People in larger communities were more willing to punish unfairness compared to those in smaller societies. Taken together, the volume supports the hypothesis that social norms evolved over thousands of years to allow strangers in more complex and large settlements to coexist, trade and prosper. Innovative and ambitious, Experimenting with Social Norms synthesizes an unprecedented analysis of social behavior from an immense range of human societies. The fifteen case studies analyzed in this volume, which include field experiments in Africa, South America, New Guinea, Siberia and the United States, are available for free download on the Foundation’s website:www.russellsage.org.

War, Peace, and Human Nature

War, Peace, and Human Nature PDF Author: Douglas P. Fry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199859000
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 583

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Book Description
Have humans always waged war? Is warring an ancient evolutionary adaptation or a relatively recent behavior--and what does that tell us about human nature? In War, Peace, and Human Nature, editor Douglas P. Fry brings together leading experts in such fields as evolutionary biology, archaeology, anthropology, and primatology to answer fundamental questions about peace, conflict, and human nature in an evolutionary context. The chapters in this book demonstrate that humans clearly have the capacity to make war, but since war is absent in some cultures, it cannot be viewed as a human universal. And counter to frequent presumption the actual archaeological record reveals the recent emergence of war. It does not typify the ancestral type of human society, the nomadic forager band, and contrary to widespread assumptions, there is little support for the idea that war is ancient or an evolved adaptation. Views of human nature as inherently warlike stem not from the facts but from cultural views embedded in Western thinking. Drawing upon evolutionary and ecological models; the archaeological record of the origins of war; nomadic forager societies past and present; the value and limitations of primate analogies; and the evolution of agonism, including restraint; the chapters in this interdisciplinary volume refute many popular generalizations and effectively bring scientific objectivity to the culturally and historically controversial subjects of war, peace, and human nature.

Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers

Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers PDF Author: Hideaki Terashima
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 4431559973
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
This is the first book to examine social learning and innovation in hunter–gatherers from around the world. More is known about social learning in chimpanzees and nonhuman primates than is known about social learning in hunter–gatherers, a way of life that characterized most of human history. The book describes diverse patterns of learning and teaching behaviors in contemporary hunter–gatherers from the perspectives of cultural anthropology, ecological anthropology, biological anthropology, and developmental psychology. The book addresses several theoretical issues including the learning hypothesis which suggests that the fate of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals in the last glacial period might have been due to the differences in learning ability. It has been unequivocally claimed that social learning is intrinsically important for human beings; however, the characteristics of human learning remain under a dense fog despite innumerable studies with children from urban–industrial cultures. Controversy continues on problems such as: do hunter–gatherers teach? If so, what types of teaching occur, who does it, how often, under what contexts, and so on. The book explores the most basic and intrinsic aspects of social learning as well as the foundation of innovative activities in everyday activities of contemporary hunter–gatherer people across the earth. The book examines how hunter-gatherer core values, such as gender and age egalitarianism and extensive sharing of food and childcare are transmitted and acquired by children. Chapters are grouped into five sections: 1) theoretical perspectives of learning in hunter–gatherers, 2) modes and processes of social learning in hunter–gatherers, 3) innovation and cumulative culture, 4) play and other cultural contexts of social learning and innovation, 5) biological contexts of learning and innovation. Ideas and concepts based on the data gathered through an intensive fieldwork by the authors will give much insight into the mechanisms and meanings of learning and education in modern humans.

Anthropology and the Bushman

Anthropology and the Bushman PDF Author: Alan Barnard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000190110
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
The Bushman' is a perennial but changing image. The transformation of that image is important. It symbolizes the perception of Bushman or San society, of the ideas and values of ethnographers who have worked with Bushman peoples, and those of other anthropologists who use this work. Anthropology and the Bushman covers early travellers and settlers, classic nineteenth and twentieth-century ethnographers, North American and Japanese ecological traditions, the approaches of African ethnographers, and recent work on advocacy and social development. It reveals the impact of Bushman studies on anthropology and on the public. The book highlights how Bushman or San ethnography has contributed to anthropological controversy, for example in the debates on the degree of incorporation of San society within the wider political economy, and on the validity of the case for 'indigenous rights' as a special kind of human rights. Examining the changing image of the Bushman, Barnard provides a new contribution to an established anthropology debate.

Origins of Altruism and Cooperation

Origins of Altruism and Cooperation PDF Author: Robert W. Sussman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 144199520X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
This book is about the evolution and nature of cooperation and altruism in social-living animals, focusing especially on non-human primates and on humans. Although cooperation and altruism are often thought of as ways to attenuate competition and aggression within groups, or are related to the action of “selfish genes”, there is increasing evidence that these behaviors are the result of biological mechanisms that have developed through natural selection in group-living species. This evidence leads to the conclusion that cooperative and altruistic behavior are not just by-products of competition but are rather the glue that underlies the ability for primates and humans to live in groups. The anthropological, primatological, paleontological, behavioral, neurobiological, and psychological evidence provided in this book gives a more optimistic view of human nature than the more popular, conventional view of humans being naturally and basically aggressive and warlike. Although competition and aggression are recognized as an important part of the non-human primate and human behavioral repertoire, the evidence from these fields indicates that cooperation and altruism may represent the more typical, “normal”, and healthy behavioral pattern. The book is intended both for the general reader and also for students at a variety of levels (graduate and undergraduate): it aims to provide a compact, accessible, and up-to-date account of the current scholarly advances and debates in this field of study, and it is designed to be used in teaching and in discussion groups. The book derived from a conference sponsored by N.S.F., the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Washington University Committee for Ethics and Human Values, and the Anthropedia Foundation for the study of well-being.