In Defense of a Folk Model: The "Skipper Effect" in the Icelandic Cod Fishery

The Icelandic folk model of fishing success emphasizes the importance of the skipper. The validity of this folk model has recently been hotly debated in the social science literature. In this study an attempt is made to estimate the role of the skipper in fishing success. First, we document by a national survey the composition of the folk model of fishing success held by the Icelandic public. Second, drawing on extensive interview data we outline the model of fishing success proposed by skippers themselves. Third, we test this folk science of the skipper by means of visual and statistical analysis against a social science model that emphasizes the role of material factors. The results show that fishing success is not determined by technological and material factors, leaving plenty of room for human factors, such as the skills and knowledge of the skipper. These results are consistent with folk notions of the skipper effect, but contradictory to earlier results of social science. Finally, the results are discussed in a theoretical context with reference to resource management and the nature of folk models.     

Subsistence productivity and hunting effort in native South America

The question of why people work more or less at various activities is an old one in anthropology and recently has surfaced in studies of native South American societies. Growing out of debates about protein scarcity, arguments have arisen over the reasons why people spend time on hunting and fishing. Some authors suggest that labor allocation and other societal features can be explained with reference to absolute minimum requirements for specific nutrients (e.g., protein). This study presents data from four native Central Brazilian societies on the time spent at various subsistence tasks and the productivity of those tasks. The evidence suggests that decisions to allocate labor to hunting and fishing are influenced more by the overall possibilities for production in an area than by the availability of animal proteins alone. Satisfaction of calorie requirements appears to take precedence over satisfaction of protein requirements. In those societies in which gardening is highly productive, people can spend more time on hunting and fishing and improve the overall quality of their diet.     

A Framework for Australian Studies: Some Reflections on Community,Class and Culture

Community studies as a form of study in complex societies cart be unduly restrictive though this need not be the case. It depends on the criteria employed to select a field location, and on the types of social organization studied within that location. These themes are illustrated by reference to the Australian community studies of Ron Wild and Harry Oxley. Some limitations in their studies are noted only in order to illustrate how their work might have been linked profitably with debates in Australian historiography over issues of class culture, ideology and consciousness. I propose a framework for Australian community studies that would allow anthropologists to explore some of the themes introduced in this discussion.     

How Distinctive is Genetic Information?

There is extensive discussion of the ethical, social, economic and political issues associated with the use of technologies based on DNA techniques. Many of these debates are premised on the assumption that DNA, and the genetic information that may be derived from it, have unique features which raise new social and ethical issues. In this paper it is argued that several of the features associated with DNA which are sometimes regarded as unique are shared with other biological materials. Others owe more to the cultural image of DNA and some of the metaphors used to discuss it in biology and in wider debates than to the biological properties of DNA. The paper discusses the concepts of genetic material and genetic information and the social construction of DNA in relation to forensic DNA databases, paternity testing and genetic testing for disease. The paper concludes by suggesting that there are seven areas where issues related to DNA and genetic information are at least relatively distinct.     

Life history and development--a framework for understanding developmental plasticity in lower termites

Termites (Isoptera) are the phylogenetically oldest social insects, but in scientific research they have always stood in the shadow of the social Hymenoptera. Both groups of social insects evolved complex societies independently and hence, their different ancestry provided them with different life-history preadaptations for social evolution. Termites, the 'social cockroaches', have a hemimetabolous mode of development and both sexes are diploid, while the social Hymenoptera belong to the holometabolous insects and have a haplodiploid mode of sex determination. Despite this apparent disparity it is interesting to ask whether termites and social Hymenoptera share common principles in their individual and social ontogenies and how these are related to the evolution of their respective social life histories. Such a comparison has, however, been much hampered by the developmental complexity of the termite caste system, as well as by an idiosyncratic terminology, which makes it difficult for non-termitologists to access the literature.
Here, we provide a conceptual guide to termite terminology based on the highly flexible caste system of the "lower termites". We summarise what is known about ultimate causes and underlying proximate mechanisms in the evolution and maintenance of termite sociality, and we try to embed the results and their discussion into general evolutionary theory and developmental biology. Finally, we speculate about fundamental factors that might have facilitated the unique evolution of complex societies in a diploid hemimetabolous insect taxon. This review also aims at a better integration of termites into general discussions on evolutionary and developmental biology, and it shows that the ecology of termites and their astounding phenotypic plasticity have a large yet still little explored potential to provide insights into elementary evo-devo questions.     

Cooperation,collective action,and the archeology of large‐scale societies

Archeologists investigating the emergence of large‐scale societies in the past have renewed interest in examining the dynamics of cooperation as a means of understanding societal change and organizational variability within human groups over time. Unlike earlier approaches to these issues, which used models designated voluntaristic or managerial, contemporary research articulates more explicitly with frameworks for cooperation and collective action used in other fields, thereby facilitating empirical testing through better definition of the costs, benefits, and social mechanisms associated with success or failure in coordinated group action. Current scholarship is nevertheless bifurcated along lines of epistemology and scale, which is understandable but problematic for forging a broader, more transdisciplinary field of cooperation studies. Here, we point to some areas of potential overlap by reviewing archeological research that places the dynamics of social cooperation and competition in the foreground of the emergence of large‐scale societies, which we define as those having larger populations, greater concentrations of political power, and higher degrees of social inequality. We focus on key issues involving the communal‐resource management of subsistence and other economic goods, as well as the revenue flows that undergird political institutions. Drawing on archeological cases from across the globe, with greater detail from our area of expertise in Mesoamerica, we offer suggestions for strengthening analytical methods and generating more transdisciplinary research programs that address human societies across scalar and temporal spectra.     

Evolution of monogamous marriage by maximization of inclusive fitness

The majority of human societies allow polygynous marriage, and the prevalence of this practice is readily understood in evolutionary terms. Why some societies prescribe monogamous marriage is however not clear: current evolutionary explanations—that social monogamy increases within‐group co‐operation, giving societies an advantage in competition with other groups—conflict with the historical and ethnographic evidence. We show that, within the framework of inclusive fitness theory, monogamous marriage can be viewed as the outcome of the strategic behaviour of males and females in the allocation of resources to the next generation. Where resources are transferred across generations, social monogamy can be advantageous if partitioning of resources among the offspring of multiple wives causes a depletion of their fitness value, and/or if females grant husbands higher fidelity in exchange for exclusive investment of resources in their offspring. This may explain why monogamous marriage prevailed among the historical societies of Eurasia: here, intensive agriculture led to scarcity of land, with depletion in the value of estates through partitioning among multiple heirs. Norms promoting high paternity were common among ancient societies in the region, and may have further facilitated the establishment of social monogamy. In line with the historical and ethnographic evidence, this suggests that monogamous marriage emerged in Eurasia following the adoption of intensive agriculture, as ownership of land became critical to productive and reproductive success.     

Hunting, social status and biological fitness

Hunting performance may be one of the most important routes to high prestige or social status among men in hunter-gatherer societies. Higher social status based on hunting performance has been linked to higher biological fitness outcomes almost everywhere this relationship has been investigated. This paper explores the proximate pathways underlying the positive correlation between hunting success and fitness, and discusses these in light of recent debates concerning the role of men in hunter-gatherer societies. Meat obtained from hunting directly provisions families and is also distributed to other group members, who may directly or indirectly pay back good hunters with meat, other food, services or favors. The display of hunting abilities may also increase men's fitness through extra-marital reproductive gains. We discuss prior results and provide a novel additional example using data collected among Tsimane horticultural-foragers of Bolivia. Despite the impression that most of the benefits that accrue to good hunters are in the form of extra-marital mating opportunities, we argue instead that most benefits may be gained within rather than outside marital unions.     

Policing and punishment across the domains of social evolution

Several decades of research in humans, other vertebrates, and social insects have offered fascinating insights into the dynamics of punishment (and its subset, policing), but authors have only rarely addressed whether there are fundamental joint principles underlying the maintenance of these behaviors. Here we present a punisher/bystander approach rooted in inclusive fitness logic to predict which individuals should take on punishing roles in animal societies. We apply our scheme to societies of eusocial Hymenoptera and nonhuman vertebrate social breeders, and we outline potential extensions for understanding conflict regulation among cells in metazoan bodies and unrelated individuals in human societies. We highlight that: 1) no social unit is expected to express punishment behavior unless it collects positive inclusive fitness benefits that surpass alternative benefits of bystanding; 2) punishment with public good benefits can be maintained through either direct fitness benefits (coercion) or indirect fitness benefits (correction) or both; 3) differences across social systems in the distributions of power, relatedness, and reproductive options drive variation in the extent to which individuals actively punish; and 4) inclusive fitness logic captures many punishment‐relevant evolutionary and ecological variables in a single framework that appears to apply across very different types of social arrangements. Synthesis Researchers have long observed that individuals in animal societies punish (and by extension, police) each other, but they have rarely investigated whether general principles underlie this behavior across social arrangements. In this paper, we present a punisher/bystander approach rooted in inclusive fitness logic to predict which individuals should take on punisher roles in animal societies. We apply the approach to eusocial insects and cooperatively breeding vertebrates and outline extensions towards the control of cancer cell lineages and punishment in human groups. We highlight how variation in specific social variables may drive differences in punishing/policing across the social domains.     

Prestige and reproductive success in man

The relationship between prestige and reproductive success is explored in ten human societies. Formally, the aim is to test the hypothesis that prestige and reproductive success are positively correlated in all populations. It is concluded that in societies at or slightly above the subsistence level prestige and reproductive success are congruent, but that with the accumulation of surplus wealth sources of prestige which have no relevance for reproductive success begin to appear, their development being facilitated by the law of diminishing returns as applied to parents' nonbiological investment in offspring, a point being reached where further investment can have no beneficial effect on reproductive success. As a result sociocultural success and reproductive success may separate. In some societies, where prestige depends upon the possession of real estate, population control is embraced by wealthy families in order to keep their estates intact, thus increasing the effectiveness of the law of diminishing returns by reducing the “fixed resources” (i.e., number of offspring) available for investment. In these conditions, which may spread to the less wealthy, sociocultural success often takes precedence over reproductive success.     

Modernity and ethnic affiliation in Israeli schools: A dependence approach*

In this article, we argue that there is an important, but as yet unidentified, process involved in the maintenance and reconstruction of ethnic identity. We call this process ‘ethnic reorganization’. We argue that this process is useful for understanding the ethnic survival of indigenous peoples in colonized societies, as well as for illuminating the processes of ethnic renascence among both indigenous and immigrant groups. We find it especially useful in accounting for both the persistence and the transformation of American Indian ethnicity in the United States. Ethnic reorganization occurs when an ethnic minority undergoes a reorganization of its social structure, redefinition of ethnic group boundaries, or some other change in response to pressures or demands imposed by the dominant culture. From this viewpoint, ethnic reorganization is a mechanism that facilitates ethnic group survival, albeit in a modified form. We specify several types of ethnic reorganization. These include: social reorganization, economic reorganization, political reorganization, and cultural reorganization. We argue that ethnic reorganization represents a central mechanism of ethnic change. We present evidence of these forms of ethnic reorganization among many different American Indian societies faced with demographic and cultural extinction.     

Group Structure,Nest Size and Reproductive Success in the Cooperatively Breeding Cichlid Julidochromis ornatus: A Correlation Study

The effect of group size on reproductive success has long been studied in cooperatively breeding species, as it might provide an adaptive explanation for group‐living in social species. Numerous studies have shown positive effects of subordinates on reproductive success (‘helper effect’), but these studies have also revealed the importance of controlling statistically, or experimentally, for the effect of other factors that might affect reproductive success. Here, we first examine the relationships between group size, body size of group members and nest size in the cooperatively breeding cichlid Julidochromis ornatus, in which unrelated helpers frequently participate in reproduction and their breeding nests inside rock crevices may be crucial for reproduction and survival of all group members. Then, we subsequently investigate the relationship between group size and reproductive success, while controlling for these factors. The results showed that group size was significantly related to body size of group members rather than nest size; and larger breeders had larger helpers. It was found that group size significantly increased group reproductive output. More importantly, reproductive success of male breeders did not depend on the presence of mature helpers, whereas female reproductive success increased when two males assisted her and tended to decrease when two females bred cooperatively. We conclude that breeding groups of J. ornatus have size hierarchical societies that relate to group size, and group composition of genetically unrelated and co‐breeding members affects their reproductive success.     

Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia

Supernatural belief presents an explanatory challenge to evolutionary theorists—it is both costly and prevalent. One influential functional explanation claims that the imagined threat of supernatural punishment can suppress selfishness and enhance cooperation. Specifically, morally concerned supreme deities or ‘moralizing high gods'' have been argued to reduce free-riding in large social groups, enabling believers to build the kind of complex societies that define modern humanity. Previous cross-cultural studies claiming to support the MHG hypothesis rely on correlational analyses only and do not correct for the statistical non-independence of sampled cultures. Here we use a Bayesian phylogenetic approach with a sample of 96 Austronesian cultures to test the MHG hypothesis as well as an alternative supernatural punishment hypothesis that allows punishment by a broad range of moralizing agents. We find evidence that broad supernatural punishment drives political complexity, whereas MHGs follow political complexity. We suggest that the concept of MHGs diffused as part of a suite of traits arising from cultural exchange between complex societies. Our results show the power of phylogenetic methods to address long-standing debates about the origins and functions of religion in human society.     

Mating system and population structure of the primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia revolutionalis: a model system for the evolution of complex societies

Mating systems are important determinants of genetic structure in cooperative groups, and their effects can influence profoundly the interactions of group members. The primitively eusocial wasp, Ropalidia revolutionalis, has an interesting genetic and social structure that makes it an excellent model system for examining the evolution of more complex societies. In particular, its colonies sometimes have multiple queens, a key characteristic of more advanced wasp societies. In this study, we have characterized the mating system of the social wasp Ropalidia revolutionalis to understand better its colony genetic structure. R. revolutionalis females nearly always mate singly and they are unrelated to their mates. However, different females in the same colony do mate with males, on average, who are related as cousins. Single mating will help to maintain high relatedness, which should be important for continued cooperation in multiple queen societies, but it creates potential conflicts in single queen colonies over the production of males as well as over the timing of male production. We have also characterized the population structure of R. revolutionalis from Townsville, in tropical north Queensland, to Brisbane in the subtropics. Even at such a large scale, the population is remarkably unstructured with an average F(ST) of 0.0546. There is weak isolation by distance, and evidence for subtle differentiation between a southern region with no dry season, which extends as far north as Rockhampton, and a northern region with a severe to moderate dry season. This may reflect historical effects of extreme aridity on the population structure.     

Protecting or Pilfering? Neoliberal Conservationist Marine Protected Areas in the Experience of Coastal Granada,the Philippines

In recent years conservationist NGOs, policy makers, and scientists in the tropics have expressed a fascination with marine protected areas for simultaneously achieving conservation goals and economic development. Despite their popularity, MPAs often encounter serious implementation challenges due to, at least to some extent, our limited understanding of MPA processes as influenced by neoliberal ideology and practice. By resituating MPAs in debates of neoliberal conservation, this study aims to examine social and economic changes that MPAs bring about in fishing communities. Taking a fishing village in the Philippines as a case study, it shows technocratic solution seeking led to further marginalization of small-scale fishers through unequal distribution of benefits and burdens. Here it is argued that MPAs are prone to exclusionist processes of redefining the value and legitimate users of marine resources, which further limits the opportunities for small-scale fishers to participate meaningfully in resource governance.     

A Survey of Non-Classical Polyandry

We have identified a sample of 53 societies outside of the classical Himalayan and Marquesean area that permit polyandrous unions. Our goal is to broadly describe the demographic, social, marital, and economic characteristics of these societies and to evaluate some hypotheses of the causes of polyandry. We demonstrate that although polyandry is rare it is not as rare as commonly believed, is found worldwide, and is most common in egalitarian societies. We also argue that polyandry likely existed during early human history and should be examined from an evolutionary perspective. Our analysis reveals that it may be a predictable response to a high operational sex ratio favoring males and may also be a response to high rates of male mortality and, possibly, male absenteeism. Other factors may contribute, but our within-polyandry sample limits analysis.     

The definition of eusociality

We describe more precise definitions for the term "eusociality"and other social systems. Our criterion for eusociality is thepresence of castes, which are groups of individuals that becomeirreversibly behaviorally distinct at some point prior to reproductivematurity. Eusocial societies are characterized by two traits:(1) helping by individuals of the less-reproductive caste, and(2) either behavioral totipotency of only the more reproductivecaste (facultative eusociality) or totipotency of neither caste(obligate eusociality). We define "cooperative breeding" asalloparental care without castes. Cooperatively breeding societiesmay comprise two types, semisocial (distribution of lifetimereproductive success bimodal), and quasisocial (distributionof lifetime reproductive success unimodal), but this hypothesisrequires empirical analysis. Our definitions conceptually unifystudies of arthropod and vertebrate sociality.     

Refusing to Sing: Gender,Kinship and Patriliny in Macedonia

The issue of whether formal kinship structures and sentiments reflect the reality of social relations was of particular concern to specialists at the height of the kinship debates in the 1960s and 1970s, as it continues to be in some contemporary studies. So too, the classifications ‘patrilineal’ or ‘matrilineal’ have clearly been shown to be problematic given that there are multiple levels of discourse and relational and ideational realities in any given society. For many contemporary kinship specialists in fact no simple correlation can be made between type of descent system and actual social relations, especially relations between men and women. However, some anthropologists continue to argue that patrilineal kinship systems are somehow indicative of control or domination by men or, put inversely, of women's lack of power and authority. It is argued in this paper that even where the formal kinship structures and ideological discourses are dominated by agnation as appears to be the case in south Slav societies generally, and Macedonian in particular, this is not automatically mirrored in gender relations between men and women. In short, there is a long leap from patriliny to patriarchy.     

Rethinking Internal Migrations in Lao PDR: The Resettlement Process under Micro-Analysis

Current debates about the resettlement issue in Laos point to the need to pay closer attention to the migrants' representations and practices. In this article, three biographies of recent settlers in Thongnamy (Bolikhamxay Province) are analysed to highlight some concrete mechanisms at work in this context of socio-economic change. People rely on a diversity of resources to make ends meet, with varying success. Kinship and social capital are vital resources, and land is a major concern for all. The migrants' agency (a dimension missing in more quantitative surveys) must, however, be framed against a local ‘arena’, which is itself entangled in the broader, national setting, as revealed by a discussion of the ethnic issue and the land allocation policy. Ultimately, this paper offers insights into the progressive social differentiation that takes place in a new, heavily populated and multi-ethnic village where access to land is now at stake.     

Learning,productivity, and noise: an experimental study of cultural transmission on the Bolivian Altiplano

The theory of cultural transmission distinguishes between biased and unbiased social learning. Biases simply mean that social learning is not completely random. The distinction is critical because biases produce effects at the aggregate level that then feed back to influence individual behavior. This study presents an economic experiment designed specifically to see if players use social information in a biased way. The experiment was conducted among a group of subsistence pastoralists in southern Bolivia. Treatments were designed to test for two widely discussed forms of biased social learning: a tendency to imitate success and a tendency to follow the majority. The analysis, based primarily on fitting specific evolutionary models to the data using maximum likelihood, found neither a clear tendency to imitate success nor conformity. Players instead seemed to rely largely on private feedback about their own personal histories of choices and payoffs. Nonetheless, improved performance in one treatment provides evidence for some important but currently unspecified social effect. Given existing experimental work on cultural transmission from other societies, the current study suggests that social learning is potentially conditional and culturally specific.