Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Demography

by Roth, Eric Abella

• ISBN13: 9780511207952
• ISBN10: 0511207956
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2004-08-16
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Two distinctive approaches to the study of human demography exist within anthropology today: anthropological demography and human evolutionary ecology. The first stresses the role of culture in determining population parameters, while the second posits that demographic rates reflect adaptive behaviors that are the products of natural selection. Both sub-disciplines have achieved notable successes, but each has ignored and been actively disdainful of the other. This text attempts a rapprochement of anthropological demography and human evolutionary ecology through recognition of common research topics and the construction of a broad theoretical framework incorporating both cultural and biological motivation. Both these approaches are utilized to search for demographic strategies in varied cultural and temporal contexts ranging from African pastoralists through North American post-industrial societies. As such this book is relevant to cultural and biological anthropologists, demographers, sociologists, and historians.

Table of Contents

Anthropological Demography and Human Ecological Behavioural Ecology

Two solitudes

Why bother?

Anthropological demography: culture, not biology

Human evolutionary ecology: biology, not culture

Discussion: cultural and biological reductionism

Reconciling Anthropological Demography and Human Evolutionary Ecology

Common ground

Demographic strategies

Reproductive interests: social interactions, life effort and demographic strategies: a Rendille example

Sepaade as male mating effort

Rendille primogeniture as a parenting strategy

Summary: demographic strategies as links between culture and biology

Mating Effort and Demographic Strategies

Mating effort as demographic strategies

Cross-cultural mating strategies: polygyny and bridewealth, monogamy and dowry

Bridewealth and the matter of choice

Demographic and cultural change: values and morals

The end of the sepaade tradition: behavioral tracking and moral change

Demographic Strategies as Parenting Effort

Parenting effort and the theory of allocation

The Trivers-Willard model and parenting strategies

Parity-specific parental strategies: the case of primogeniture

Local resource competition model

Infanticide and child abandonment: accentuating the negative

Adoption in modern China: stressing the positive

Summary: culture and biology in parental effort

Future Research Directions

The central place of sex in anthropology and evolution

Male sexuality, education and high risk behavior

Final ground: demographic transitions

References Cited

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