Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior PDF Download

Author: Eric Alden Smith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351521314
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 574

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Book Description
""à required reading for anyone interested in the economy, ecology, and demography of human societies."" --American Journal of Human Biology ""This excellent book can serve both as a text¼book and as a scholarly reference."" --American Scientist

Author: Douglas J. Kennett
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520932455
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
This innovative volume is the first collective effort by archaeologists and ethnographers to use concepts and models from human behavioral ecology to explore one of the most consequential transitions in human history: the origins of agriculture. Carefully balancing theory and detailed empirical study, and drawing from a series of ethnographic and archaeological case studies from eleven locations—including North and South America, Mesoamerica, Europe, the Near East, Africa, and the Pacific—the contributors to this volume examine the transition from hunting and gathering to farming and herding using a broad set of analytical models and concepts. These include diet breadth, central place foraging, ideal free distribution, discounting, risk sensitivity, population ecology, and costly signaling. An introductory chapter both charts the basics of the theory and notes areas of rapid advance in our understanding of how human subsistence systems evolve. Two concluding chapters by senior archaeologists reflect on the potential for human behavioral ecology to explain domestication and the transition from foraging to farming.

Author: John W. Bennett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351514474
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
Human interaction with the natural environment has a dual character. By turning increasing quantities of natural substances into physical resources, human beings might be said to have freed themselves from the constraints of low-technology survival pressures. However, the process has generated a new dependence on nature in the form of complex "socionatural systems," as Bennett calls them, in which human society and behavior are so interlocked with the management of the environment that small changes in the systems can lead to disaster. Bennett's essays cover a wide range: from the philosophy of environmentalism to the ecology of economic development; from the human impact on semi-arid lands to the ecology of Japanese forest management. This expanded paperback edition includes a new chapter on the role of anthropology in economic development.Bennett's essays exhibit an underlying pessimism: if human behavior toward the physical environment is the distinctive cause of environmental abuse, then reform of current management practices offers only temporary relief; that is, conservationism, like democracy, must be continually reaffirmed. Clearly presented and free of jargon, Human Ecology as Human Behavior will be of interest to anthropologists, economists, and environmentalists.

Author: David Westneat
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195331931
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 661

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Book Description
Evolutionary Behavioral Ecology presents a comprehensive treatment of theevolutionary and ecological processes shaping behavior across a wide array of organisms and a diverse set of behaviors and is suitable as a graduate-level text and as a sourcebook for professional scientists.

Author: Napoleon Chagnon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351329189
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
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.

Author: M. Alvard
Publisher: JAI Press Incorporated
ISBN: 9780762310821
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Demonstrates the behavioral ecology's maturation as a subfield of anthropology. These papers also show how behavioral ecology conceptually integrates the core of biological anthropology with the other subdisciplines by providing a common framework for investigating and understanding basic economic questions.

Author: Paula Sheppard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783036520384
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
The editors present a collection of articles illustrating how evolutionary and ecological theory can inform research on the wide variation of human families seen globally. The book promotes human behavioral ecology as a theoretically-driven approach that provides a foundation upon which to make predictions about marriage, mating, and raising children.

Author: Kevin N. Laland
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199586969
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
This book asks whether evolution can help us to understand human behaviour and explores diverse evolutionary methods and arguments. It provides a short, readable introduction to the science behind the works of Dawkins, Dennett, Wilson and Pinker. It is widely used in undergraduate courses around the world.

Author: Leslie Real
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226705972
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
The first book-length exploration of behavioral mechanisms in evolutionary ecology, this ambitious volume illuminates long-standing questions about cause-and-effect relations between an animal's behavior and its environment. By focusing on biological mechanisms—the sum of an animal's cognitive, neural, developmental, and hormonal processes—leading researchers demonstrate how the integrated study of animal physiology, cognitive processes, and social interaction can yield an enriched understanding of behavior. With studies of species ranging from insects to primates, the contributors examine how various animals identify and use environmental resources and deal with ecological constraints, as well as the roles of learning, communication, and cognitive aspects of social interaction in behavioral evolution. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate how the study of internal mechanistic foundations of behavior in relation to their ecological and evolutionary contexts and outcomes provides valuable insight into such behaviors as predation, mating, and dispersal. Behavioral Mechanisms in Evolutionary Ecology shows how a mechanistic approach unites various levels of biological organization to provide a broader understanding of the biological bases of behavioral evolution.

Author: Etienne Danchin
Publisher: American Chemical Society
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 920

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Book Description
Behavioural Ecology gives a fresh, contemporary account of the evolutionary and ecological processes that underpin animal behaviour. Contributions from subject experts and meticulous editing yield a text with all the qualities of a multi-author book, but without the potential drawbacks.