Publication Date:
2011-09-28
Description:
Relying on data collected among the pastoralist Turkana of Kenya, Mathew and Boyd (1) claimed that, in prestate societies, cooperation in warfare is enforced by costly third-party punishment. Such behavior would be functional and would have been selected by cultural group selection.Functionalism has a long history in anthropology. Cultural phenomena such as gift-giving, sacrifice, or social sanctions have been explained in terms of function for the group. Recent analyses, however, have shown that such phenomena are typically outcomes of complex sums of individual behaviors. Gift-giving is actually delayed reciprocity; apparent sacrifice, cases of tolerated theft; and social sanctions, self-interested retaliations...
Keywords:
Letters
Print ISSN:
0027-8424
Electronic ISSN:
1091-6490
Topics:
Biology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
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