Hierarchy in the Forest
eBook - PDF

Hierarchy in the Forest

The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Hierarchy in the Forest

The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior

About this book

Are humans by nature hierarchical or egalitarian? Hierarchy in the Forest addresses this question by examining the evolutionary origins of social and political behavior. Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist whose fieldwork has focused on the political arrangements of human and nonhuman primate groups, postulates that egalitarianism is in effect a hierarchy in which the weak combine forces to dominate the strong.

The political flexibility of our species is formidable: we can be quite egalitarian, we can be quite despotic. Hierarchy in the Forest traces the roots of these contradictory traits in chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, and early human societies. Boehm looks at the loose group structures of hunter-gatherers, then at tribal segmentation, and finally at present-day governments to see how these conflicting tendencies are reflected.

Hierarchy in the Forest claims new territory for biological anthropology and evolutionary biology by extending the domain of these sciences into a crucial aspect of human political and social behavior. This book will be a key document in the study of the evolutionary basis of genuine altruism.

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Yes, you can access Hierarchy in the Forest by Christopher Boehm,Christopher BOEHM in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Biological Sciences & Biology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. 1. The Question of Egalitarian Society
  3. 2. Hierarchy and Equality
  4. 3. Putting Down Aggressors
  5. 4. Equality and Its Causes
  6. 5. A Wider View of Egalitarianism
  7. 6. The Hominoid Political Spectrum
  8. 7. Ancestral Politics
  9. 8. The Evolution of Egalitarian Society
  10. 9. Paleolithic Politics and Natural Selection
  11. 10. Ambivalence and Compromise in Human Nature
  12. References
  13. Index