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Nurture Kinship
The concept of nurture kinship in the anthropological study of human social relationships (kinship) highlights the extent to which such relationships are brought into being through the performance of various acts of nurture between individuals. Additionally the concept highlights ethnographic findings that, in a wide swath of human societies, people understand, conceptualize and symbolize their relationships predominantly in terms of giving, receiving and sharing nurture. The concept stands in contrast to the earlier anthropological concepts of human kinship relations being fundamentally based on "blood ties", some other form of shared substance, or a proxy for these (as in fictive kinship), and the accompanying notion that people universally understand their social relationships predominantly in these terms. The nurture kinship perspective on the ontology of social ties, and how people conceptualize them, has become stronger in the wake of David M. Schneider's influential ''Crit ...
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Kinship
In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that the study of kinship is the study of what humans do with these basic facts of lifemating, gestation, parenthood, socialization, siblingship etc. Human society is unique, he argues, in that we are "working with the same raw material as exists in the animal world, but ecan conceptualize and categorize it to serve social ends." These social ends include the socialization of children and the formation of basic economic, political and religious groups. Kinship can refer both to the patterns of social relationships themselves, or it can refer to the study of the patterns of social relationships in one or more human cultures (i.e. kinship studies). Over its history, anthropology has developed a number of related concepts and terms in the study ...
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Guayana Region
The Guayana Region is an administrative region of eastern Venezuela. History In the 1970s, after the process of forming the Political-Administrative Regions through CORDIPLAN in the government of Rafael Caldera, the Region of Guyana was formed. It was originally composed of Bolívar State and Delta Amacuro State (at that time it had the status of a Federal Territory). The Amazon state (called ''Territorio Federal Amazonas'') was the only one that made up the so-called ''Southern Region''. The following decade, after a legal reform, the latter state was integrated into this region. Geography The region has a population of 1,383,297 inhabitants and a territory of , slightly over half the area of the whole country. During the colonial period until the early 18th century, it was known as Spanish Guiana. It borders the independent nations of Guyana (formerly British Guiana) and Brazil. Geologically it is part of the Guiana Shield, and is also known as the Venezuelan Guay ...
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Inclusive Fitness
In evolutionary biology, inclusive fitness is one of two metrics of evolutionary success as defined by W. D. Hamilton in 1964: * Personal fitness is the number of offspring that an individual begets (regardless of who rescues/rears/supports them) * Inclusive fitness is the number of offspring equivalents that an individual rears, rescues or otherwise supports through its behaviour (regardless of who begets them) An individual's own child, who carries one half of the individual's genes, is defined as one offspring equivalent. A sibling's child, who will carry one-quarter of the individual's genes, is 1/2 offspring equivalent. Similarly, a cousin's child, who has 1/16 of the individual's genes, is 1/8 offspring equivalent. From the gene's point of view, evolutionary success ultimately depends on leaving behind the maximum number of copies of itself in the population. Prior to Hamilton's work, it was generally assumed that genes only achieved this through the number of viable off ...
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Fictive Kinship
Fictive kinship is a term used by anthropologists and ethnographers to describe forms of kinship or social ties that are based on neither consanguineal (blood ties) nor affinal ("by marriage") ties. It contrasts with ''true kinship'' ties. To the extent that consanguineal and affinal kinship ties might be considered ''real'' or ''true'' kinship, the term ''fictive kinship'' has in the past been used to refer to those kinship ties that are ''fictional'', in the sense of ''not-real''. Invoking the concept as a cross-culturally valid anthropological category therefore rests on the presumption that the inverse category of "(true) kinship" built around consanguinity and affinity is similarly cross-culturally valid. Use of the term was common until the mid-to-late twentieth century, when anthropology effectively deconstructed and revised many of the concepts and categories around the study of kinship and social ties. In particular, anthropologists established that a consanguinity ba ...
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Attachment Theory
Attachment theory is a psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory concerning relationships between humans. The most important tenet is that young children need to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for normal social and emotional development. The theory was formulated by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby. Within attachment theory, infant behaviour associated with attachment is primarily the seeking of proximity to an attachment figure in stressful situations. Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with them, and who remain as consistent caregivers for some months during the period from about six months to two years of age. During the latter part of this period, children begin to use attachment figures (familiar people) as a secure base to explore from and return to. Parental responses lead to the development of patterns of attachment; these, in turn, lead to internal working models w ...
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Sex At Dawn
''Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality'' is a 2010 book about the evolution of human mating systems by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. In opposition to what the authors see as the "standard narrative" of human sexual evolution, they contend that having multiple sexual partners was common and accepted in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. The authors contend that mobile, self-contained groups of hunter-gatherers were the norm for humans before agriculture led to high population density. Before agriculture, according to the authors, sex was relatively promiscuous and paternity was not a concern. This dynamic is similar to the mating system of bonobos. According to the book, sexual interactions strengthened the bond of trust in the groups. Far from causing jealousy, social equilibrium and reciprocal obligation were strengthened by playful sexual interactions. The book generated a great deal of publicity in the popular press where it was met with g ...
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Herbert Gintis
Herbert Gintis (February 11, 1940 – January 5, 2023) was an American economist, behavioral scientist, and educator known for his theoretical contributions to sociobiology, especially altruism, cooperation, epistemic game theory, gene-culture coevolution, efficiency wages, strong reciprocity, and human capital theory. Throughout his career, he worked extensively with economist Samuel Bowles. Their landmark book, ''Schooling in Capitalist America'', had multiple editions in five languages since it was first published in 1976. Their book, ''A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and its Evolution'' was published by Princeton University Press in 2011. Life and career Gintis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where his father had a retail furniture business. He grew up there and later in Bala Cynwyd (just outside Philadelphia). Gintis completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania in three years, one of which was spent at the University of Paris, and ...
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Social Behavior
Social behavior is behavior among two or more organisms within the same species, and encompasses any behavior in which one member affects the other. This is due to an interaction among those members. Social behavior can be seen as similar to an exchange of goods, with the expectation that when you give, you will receive the same. This behavior can be affected by both the qualities of the individual and the environmental (situational) factors. Therefore, social behavior arises as a result of an interaction between the two—the organism and its environment. This means that, in regards to humans, social behavior can be determined by both the individual characteristics of the person, and the situation they are in. A major aspect of social behavior is communication, which is the basis for survival and reproduction. Social behavior is said to be determined by two different processes, that can either work together or oppose one another. The dual-systems model of reflective and impulsi ...
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Reductionism
Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of other simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical position that interprets a complex system as the sum of its parts. Definitions '' The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'' suggests that reductionism is "one of the most used and abused terms in the philosophical lexicon" and suggests a three-part division: # Ontological reductionism: a belief that the whole of reality consists of a minimal number of parts. # Methodological reductionism: the scientific attempt to provide an explanation in terms of ever-smaller entities. # Theory reductionism: the suggestion that a newer theory does not replace or absorb an older one, but reduces it to more basic terms. Theory reduction itself is divisible into three parts: translation, derivation, and explanation. Reductionism can be applied to any phenomenon ...
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Darwinian Anthropology
Darwinian anthropology describes an approach to anthropological analysis which employs various theories from Darwinian evolutionary biology. Whilst there are a number of areas of research that can come under this broad description (Marks, 2004) some specific research projects have been closely associated with the label. A prominent example is the project that developed in the mid 1970s with the goal of applying sociobiological perspectives to explain patterns of human social relationships, particularly kinship patterns across human cultures. This kinship-focused Darwinian anthropology was a significant intellectual forebear of evolutionary psychology, and both draw on biological theories of the evolution of social behavior (in particular inclusive fitness theory) upon which the field of sociobiology was founded. Overview In 1974 the biologist Richard D. Alexander published an article ''The Evolution of Social Behavior'' which drew upon W.D.Hamilton's work on inclusive fitness an ...
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Kin Selection
Kin selection is the evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even when at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Kin altruism can look like altruistic behaviour whose evolution is driven by kin selection. Kin selection is an instance of inclusive fitness, which combines the number of offspring produced with the number an individual can ensure the production of by supporting others, such as siblings. Charles Darwin discussed the concept of kin selection in his 1859 book, ''On the Origin of Species'', where he reflected on the puzzle of sterile social insects, such as honey bees, which leave reproduction to their mothers, arguing that a selection benefit to related organisms (the same "stock") would allow the evolution of a trait that confers the benefit but destroys an individual at the same time. R.A. Fisher in 1930 and J.B.S. Haldane in 1932 set out the mathematics of kin selection, with Haldane famously jokin ...
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Inclusive Fitness
In evolutionary biology, inclusive fitness is one of two metrics of evolutionary success as defined by W. D. Hamilton in 1964: * Personal fitness is the number of offspring that an individual begets (regardless of who rescues/rears/supports them) * Inclusive fitness is the number of offspring equivalents that an individual rears, rescues or otherwise supports through its behaviour (regardless of who begets them) An individual's own child, who carries one half of the individual's genes, is defined as one offspring equivalent. A sibling's child, who will carry one-quarter of the individual's genes, is 1/2 offspring equivalent. Similarly, a cousin's child, who has 1/16 of the individual's genes, is 1/8 offspring equivalent. From the gene's point of view, evolutionary success ultimately depends on leaving behind the maximum number of copies of itself in the population. Prior to Hamilton's work, it was generally assumed that genes only achieved this through the number of viable off ...
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