The Evolution of Human Co-operation
eBook - PDF

The Evolution of Human Co-operation

Ritual and Social Complexity in Stateless Societies

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

The Evolution of Human Co-operation

Ritual and Social Complexity in Stateless Societies

About this book

How do people living in small groups without money, markets, police and rigid social classes develop norms of economic and social cooperation that are sustainable over time? This book addresses this fundamental question and explains the origin, structure and spread of stateless societies. Using insights from game theory, ethnography and archaeology, Stanish shows how ritual - broadly defined - is the key. Ritual practices encode elaborate rules of behavior and are ingenious mechanisms of organizing society in the absence of coercive states. As well as asking why and how people choose to co-operate, Stanish also provides the theoretical framework to understand this collective action problem. He goes on to highlight the evolution of cooperation with ethnographic and archaeological data from around of the world. Merging evolutionary game theory concepts with cultural evolutionary theory, this book will appeal to those seeking a transdisciplinary approach to one of the greatest problems in human evolution.

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Yes, you can access The Evolution of Human Co-operation by Charles Stanish in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Cultural & Social Anthropology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half title
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. List of Figures
  8. Preface
  9. 1 The Evolution of Human Co-operation
  10. 2 Economic Anthropology of Stateless Societies: The Rise and Fall of Homo economicus
  11. 3 Conditional Co-operators: The Evolutionary Game Theory Revolution
  12. 4 The Role of Coercion in Social Theory
  13. 5 The Ritualized Economy: How People in Stateless Societies Co-operate
  14. 6 An Anthropological Game Theory Model for the Evolution of Ritualized Economies
  15. 7 The Evolution of Ritualized Economies: The Archaeological Evidence
  16. 8 Epilogue: “No Beans, No Jesus”
  17. Notes
  18. References
  19. Index