Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective (Evolutionary Foundations of Human Behavior Series)

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.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Aldine Transaction

The Cannibal Within offers an evolutionary account of the propensity of human beings, in extreme circumstances to eat other human beings, despite the strong Western taboo against such practices. What sets this volume apart from the large body of literature on cannibalism, both popular and anthropological, is the underlying premise: cannibalism as an alternative to starvation is tacitly condoned by the same biological morality that would condemn cannibalism of other sorts in non-threatening situations. Deep as the taboos may be, the survival instinct runs even deeper. The title of the book reflects the author's belief that cannibalism is not a pathology that erupts in psychotic individuals, but is a universal adaptive strategy that is evolutionarily sound. The cannibal is within all of us, and cannibals are within all cultures, should the circumstances demand cannibalism's appearance and usage. Petrinovich's work is rich in historical detail, and rises to a level of theoretical sophistication in addressing a subject too often dealt with in sensationalist terms. The major instances in which survival cannibalism has occurred convinced the author that there is a consistent pattern and a uniform regularity of order in which different kinds of individuals are consumed. In considering who eats whom, when, and under what circumstances, this regularity appears, and it is consistent with what would be expected on the basis of evolutionary or Darwinian theory. In short, he concludes that starvation cannibalism is not a manifestation of the chaotic, psychotic behavior of individuals who are driven to madness, but reveals underlying characteristics of evolved human beings. Lewis Petrinovich is professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology of the University of California, Riverside and is currently a resident of Berkeley, California.

The Cannibal within (Evolutionary Foundations of Human Behavior Series)

Petrinovich, Lewis

Integrated Ego Psychology (Modern Applications of Social Work)

Ego psychology is the aspect of psychoanalytic theory concerned with how people adapt to the demands and possibilities of their worlds in accordance with their inner requirements. All substantial theories of personality refer to adaptation, but there are several features special to ego psychology. It offers by far the most elaborate picture of the adaptive apparatus and of the varied devices humans have for negotiating among their drives and their life situations. More than any other theory of psychology, it emphasizes the complicated transactions that go on in people's minds, of which many are outside conscious awareness. Norman A. Polansky argues that we must be disciplined enough to commit ourselves to one consistent line of theory if we are to harness reasoning to go beyond what we can directly observe. Few who are, or aspire to be, caseworkers, therapists or counselors come to this book innocent of all the ideas contained herein. Much will seem familiar from previous training and from experiences with people. Moreover, many Freudian terms have been adopted into the working vocabularies of all educated people. Words like instinctual drive, defense mechanism, anxiety, guilt, conflict, unconscious, and the like, are used all the time in estimating each other. One task of Integrated Ego Psychology is defining such terms with precise meanings, as well as showing the logical connections among them. Psychoanalytic theory has envolved for about a century, and some "grand simplicities" have finally emerged. This book, for practitioners, indicates the need for a theory to guide work if we are to help people effectively. The theory must be elaborate enough to cover a very wide range of human activity and it must meet certain other standards as well.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Norman A. Polansky

Psychology & Counseling

Childhood Socialization

In Constructing Social Problems, the authors propose that social problems be conceived as the claimsmaking activities of individuals or groups regarding social conditions they consider unjust, immoral, or harmful and that should be addressed. This perspective, as the authors have formulated it, conceives of social problems as a process of interaction that produces social problems as social facts in society. The authors further propose that this process and the social facts it produces are the data to be researched for the sociology of social problems. This volume will be of interest to those concerned with the discipline of sociology, especially its current theoretical development and growth.

Constructing Social Problems

Malcolm Spector

Comparable Worth: Social Institutions and Social Change (Social Institutions and Social Change Series)

This volume provides a detailed description of the situation of women in employment in the early 1990s and considers how sociological and economic theories of labor markets illuminate the gap in pay between the sexes.

Business & Money

England, Paula

Economics

Disturbing the Nest assesses the future of the family as an institution through an historical and comparative analysis of the nature, causes, and social implications of family change in advanced western societies such as the United States, New Zealand, and Switzerland by focusing on the one society in which family decline is found to be the greatest, Sweden. The founding of the modern Swedish welfare state was based in large part on the belief that it was necessary for the state to intervene in society in order to improve the situation of the family. Of great concern was the low birthrate, which was seen as a threat to the very survival of Swedes as a national population group. The Social Democrats pioneered welfare measures that aimed to strengthen the family, to alleviate its worst trials and tribulations, and to make possible harmonious living. With the Social Democrats remaining in power continuously until 1976, a period of almost forty-five years, Sweden went on to implement governmental "family policies" that are among the most comprehensive (and expensive) in the world. In view of this major policy goal of family improvement, the actual situation of the Swedish family today presents a genuine irony; some have claimed that Swedish welfare state policies have had consequences that are the opposite of those originally intended. Comparing contemporary Swedish family patterns with those of other advanced nations, one finds a very high family dissolution rate, probably the highest in the Western world, and a high percentage of single-parent, female headed families. Even marriage seems to have fallen increasingly out of favor, with Sweden having the lowest marriage rate and latest age of first marriage, and the highest rate of children born out-of-wedlock. The early pronatalist aspirations of the Swedish government have been spectacularly unsuccessful, as Sweden continues to have one of the world's lowest birthrates and smallest average family sizes.

Disturbing the Nest (Social Institutions and Social Change)

Popenoe, David

Parenting & Relationships

Paying for Medicare: The Politics of Reform (Social Institutions and Social Change Series)

** Paying for Medicare received the American Risk and Insurance Association's Elizur Wright Award for itsoutstanding contribution to risk management and insurance literature. The Prospective Payment System and the Medicare Fee Schedule, two of the most effectively sustained and successful efforts at policy innovation in history continue to shape decisions about Medicare and cost containment efforts. Smith shows how particular policy alternatives were developed; why chosen or rejected; and how provider interests and American political institutions have shaped their design and implementation.

David G. Smith

Frogs in the Bed

On July 30, 1965, President Johnson flew to Independence, Missouri to sign the Medicare bill. The new statute included two related insurance programs to finance substantial portions of the hospital and physician expenses incurred by Americans over the age of sixty-five. Public attempts to improve American health standards have typically precipitated bitter debate, even as the issue has shifted from the professional and legal status of physicians to the availability of hospital care and public health programs. In The Politics of Medicare, Marmor helps the reader understand Medicare's origins, and he interprets the history of the program and explores what happened to Medicare politically as it turned from a legislative act in the mid-1960s to a major program of American government in the three decades since. This is a vibrant study of an important piece of legislation that asks and answers several questions: How could the American political system yield a policy that simultaneously appeased anti-governmental biases and used the federal government to provide a major entitlement? How was the American Medical Association legally overcome yet placated enough to participate in the program? And how did the Medicare law emerge so enlarged from earlier proposals that themselves had caused so much controversy?

The Politics of Medicare (Social Institutions and Social Change Series)

Theodore R. Marmor

In this volume, Dr. Rawlins traces and investigates the varieties, tensions, and functions of friendship for males and females throughout the life course. Using both conceptual and illustrative chapters, the book portrays the degrees of involvement, choice, risk, ambivalence, and ambiguity within friendships, and explores the emotional texture of interactions among friends. A concluding section examines the prospects for friendship in the course of our post-modern blurring of public and private domains and discursive sites.

Friendship Matters: Communication, Dialectics, and the Life Course (Communication and Social Order)

Rawlins, William

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