Filtering by Subject: Social and Cultural Anthropology
Published: 2023-02-16
Subjects: Evolution, Life Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
A common bias in cultural transmission is success bias, where more successful individuals are more likely to be copied. Because success may be difficult to estimate, individuals may indirectly estimate success by using prestige as a proxy for success. Here, we model prestige bias as a combination of indirect success bias and influence bias, the latter meaning that the choice of a role-model [...]
Published: 2022-06-05
Subjects: Anthropology, Archaeological Anthropology, Asian Studies, Comparative Politics, Economic History, Economics, Geography, Growth and Development, Human Geography, International and Area Studies, International Relations, Models and Methods, Nature and Society Relations, Other Anthropology, Other Economics, Other Political Science, Political Economy, Political Science, Regional Economics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
We propose and test empirically a theory describing the endogenous formation and persistence of mega-states, using China as an example. We suggest that the relative timing of the emergence of agricultural societies, and their distance from each other, set off a race between their autochthonous state-building projects, which determines their extent and persistence. Using a novel dataset describing [...]
Published: 2022-06-03
Subjects: Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
While some species have affiliative and even cooperative interactions between individuals of different social groups, humans are alone in having durable, positive-sum, interdependent relationships across unrelated social groups. Our capacity to have harmonious relationships that cross group boundaries is an important aspect of our species’ success, allowing for the exchange of ideas, materials, [...]
Published: 2021-03-14
Subjects: Anthropology, Archaeological Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Biological Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Many researchers assume that until 10-12,000 years ago, humans lived in small, mobile, relatively egalitarian bands composed mostly of kin. This “nomadic-egalitarian model” informs evolutionary explanations of behavior and our understanding of how contemporary societies differ from those of our evolutionary past. Here, we synthesize research challenging this model and propose an alternative, the [...]