Ethnography from an Evolutionary Point of View

Religion has been a subject of study for centuries, with scholars approaching this topic from a plethora of perspectives. Applying an evolutionary perspective to the study of religion represents a relatively new approach, and yet the last few decades have seen an impressive collection of hypotheses developed and empirical findings gathered from this perspective. Given the multiple facets and overall complexity of religion, these theoretical and empirical contributions are disparate and even isolated from one another. Some researchers have focused on the cognitive systems and mechanisms that produce religious thoughts and behaviors, others on examining possible adaptive (or maladaptive) functions that religion may serve, and still others on the evolutionary history of specific organized religions and the interaction between evolved psychological mechanisms and the development of specific religious beliefs and behaviors. The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Religion offers a comprehensive and compelling review of research in religious beliefs and practices from an evolutionary perspective on human psychology. The chapters explore a number of subtopics within one of three themes: (1) the psychological mechanisms of religion, (2) evolutionary perspectives on the functionality of religion, and (3) evolutionary perspectives on religion and group living. This handbook unites the theoretical and empirical work of leading scholars in evolutionary psychology, religious studies, cognitive science, anthropology, biology, and philosophy to produce an extensive and authoritative review of this literature, summarizing existing work and serving as a guide to the problems that remain to be solved and the debates that remain to be resolved.

More than a century ago, one of the most famous essays ever written in American economics appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Economics: “Why is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science?” There, Thorstein Veblen claimed that economics was too dominated by a mechanistic view to address the problems of economic life. Since the world and the economy had come to be viewed from an evolutionary perspective after Charles Darwin, it was rather straightforward to argue that the increasingly abstract mathematical character of economics was non-evolutionary. However, Veblen had studied with a first-rate intellect, Charles Sanders Peirce, attending his elementary logic class. If Peirce had written about the future of economics in 1898, it would have been very different than Veblen’s essay. Peirce could have written that economics should become an evolutionary mathematical science and that much of classical and neoclassical economics could be interpreted from an evolutionary perspective.

Pair-Bonded Relationships and Romantic Alternatives

Three Scenarios for Literary Darwinism Joseph Carroll (bio) Introduction: The Once and Future Discipline Thirty years ago, the idea of creating a specifically evolutionary theory of literature would scarcely have seemed imaginable and would certainly not have seemed within the range of practical possibility. Nonetheless, over the past fifteen years, "literary Darwinists" have been making rapid progress in integrating literary study with the evolutionary human sciences. What is the likely future trajectory of this movement? We can probe this question by comparing three alternative scenarios: one in which literary Darwinism remains outside the mainstream of literary study; one in which literary Darwinism is incorporated as just another of many different "approaches" to literature; and a third in which the evolutionary human sciences transform and subsume all literary study. For the first two scenarios, we can easily enough extrapolate from past and current beliefs and practices, but we also have to factor in the continuing development of the evolutionary human sciences outside of literary study. That would have an impact on the way life would be lived within the isolated enclave of literary study. It is one thing to be a small village in a world consisting only of small villages. It is another thing to be a small village surrounded by a world empire in confident possession of the practices and beliefs through which it has achieved unification and mastery. For the third scenario, we have to envision how literary study would develop within an evolutionary perspective that encompasses all the human sciences. Scenario 1: And Never the Twain Shall Meet Three decades into the new postmodern hegemony, we are now also at least a decade into "the crisis in the humanities." The subversive metaphysical and political fervor that fuelled the poststructuralist revolution has long since subsided into tired routine. The question that generated the poststructuralist revolution, "What next?" is being asked again, and [End Page 53] with increasing desperation. In a recent essay on the parlous state of the humanities, Louis Menand professes himself willing to consider almost any possible option, only just not one particular option: "consilience," that is, integrating literary study with the evolutionary human sciences. That option, he declares, would be "a bargain with the devil."1 In the first scenario—a continuation of the status quo—a large majority of literary scholars continue to share Menand's aversion to any connection with the evolutionary human sciences. The literary Darwinists stand wholly separate from the mainstream literary establishment, massively ignored, unable even to get panels accepted at the annual conferences of the Modern Language Association, assiduously though silently expunged from citation lists and from surveys of critical theory, not merely neglected but actively and aggressively shunned. In this scheme of things, the literary Darwinists write essays critical of mainstream practices but have no productive interaction with the mainstream. The first monograph in literary Darwinism appeared in 1995.2 The number of books and articles published since 2007 and now in press—a three-year span—far exceeds the number published altogether in the twelve years from 1995 through 2006. In a steady-state scenario, this exponential growth could not continue. Otherwise, within just a few years, literary Darwinism would have come to dominate literary study, violating the premise of the scenario. So, we have to assume that the rate of growth in literary Darwinism not only levels off but actually declines—and all this while poststructuralist literary study is losing heart, on the one side, and the evolutionary human sciences are making giant strides on the other. Unlikely, but so goes the scenario. Within this scenario, we need say only that the literary Darwinists would continue to do the kind of work they have been doing all along. What the Darwinists have been doing all along is using evolutionary psychology to examine the motivations of characters in novels, plays, and (less frequently) poems, concentrating chiefly on the sexual aspects of reproductive success but taking in also family dynamics, social dynamics, and survival issues such as acquiring resources and avoiding predators. 3 For instance, in his critique of The Iliad and The Odyssey Jonathan Gottschall analyzes the interplay between socioeconomic organization and reproductive psychology. In his commentary...

Association football (soccer) is the world's most popular sport. Transculturally, fans invest significant resources following their teams, suggesting underlying psychological universals with evolutionary origins. Although evolutionary science can help illuminate the ultimate causes of human behaviour, there have been limited modern evolutionary perspectives on football fandom. In this paper, we consider evolutionary perspectives on football fandom from a behavioural neuroscientific standpoint. We discuss how the appeal of football may arise through the low-scoring and highly variable outcomes of games; we relate this to the neuroscience of reward prediction errors and motivation. We highlight recent research on the psychobiological responses to ritual, including endorphin release, which may reduce anxiety and facilitate group bonding. We discuss the prosocial and anxiety-sublimating effects of the matchday ritual and argue that football may be a special case whereby ritual behaviour does have a small effect on the outcome of interest. We discuss the psychology of ingroup and outgroup effects of fandom and argue that, although resource scarcity can sometimes lead to aggression, that larger inter-group effects can be positive. We comment on the socioemotional developmental aspects of football fandom, and note how group identification may lead to displays of sacrifice. We finish with a discussion of whether, in the era of social prescribing, football could be seen as a psychiatrist's tool. We conclude with suggestions on how the positive aspects of football can be emphasised through evolutionary perspectives, and how future research on football fandom may inform evolutionary understanding of humans writ large.

Using a sample of 407 families living in rural areas of North Central Iowa, this study examines religious transmission between same-sex and cross-sex parent-child groups. The analyses focus on the mechanisms through which adolescents' perceptions of parental acceptance moderate the transmission of religious beliefs and practices. Results show that both fathers and mothers played important roles in transmitting religious beliefs and practices to their sons and daughters. Mothers' influence was stronger than fathers' when the adolescents perceived the parent as accepting. This effect was especially strong for sons. During the past two decades, evidence has accumulated showing that religion is significant in adolescent development. The family is the primary agent of religious socialization (Hyde, 1990), and virtually all research has identified parents as the most important source of religious influence (Aldous, 1983; Ozorak, 1989). The research literature indicates that intergenerational transmission of religious beliefs and practices occurs through modeling of parents' behaviors and beliefs (Cornwall, 1988; Dudley & Dudley, 1986; Willits & Crider, 1989) and reinforcing supportive parent-child relationships (Hunsberger, 1983; Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1990). RELIGIOUS TRANSMISSION Social learning theory holds that much of what a child learns is based on day-to-day observation of attitudes and behavior performed by significant others who serve as role models. In their research on imitation and modeling processes, Bandura and his associates (Bandura & Kupers, 1964; Bandura & McDonald, 1963; Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961) identified parental models central to the development of children's personalities. Regular association and interaction with parents repeatedly give children opportunities to observe and imitate their parents in many day-to-day activities. Such observational learning may lead children to share their parents' values, attitudes, and behaviors. Grusec and Kuczynski (1997) argued that parents are the most crucial influence on children's acquisition of values because of their unique position in the lives of their children. Childrearing puts parents in the strongest position to develop positive relationships with their children and to monitor and understand their children. Religiosity or religiousness refers to the importance of religion in a person's life. It has multiple dimensions, including beliefs and practices (Glock & Stark, 1965; Weigert & Thomas, 1969), which represent attitudes and behaviors in social learning theory. In his framework for intergenerational learning, Cornwall (1988) explained that religiosity is a behavior that a person learns from those around him or her. Because parents' religious beliefs and practices are learned in the home, continuity in religiousness is expected between parents and children. Research consistently has shown that parental religiosity is an important predictor of adolescent religious beliefs and practices. For example, parental church attendance is strongly associated with adolescent church attendance and religious beliefs (Cox, 1967; Suziedelis & Potvin, 1981), and parents' religious practices are positively related to all aspects of religiousness in early and middle adolescence (Ozorak, 1989). Parker and Gaier (1980) reported that parents' participation in religious activities accounted for more than 60% of the variance in the religious beliefs and practices of their high school children. In accordance with Turner's (1964) idea of parents' dominant role in transmitting religious values and attitudes, de Vaus (1983) found that parents played a more important role than peers in adolescent development of religious values and beliefs. In a study of agreement with religious values between fathers and mothers and youth, Dudley and Dudley (1986) found that youths' religious values resembled their parents' religious values. …

Evolutionary psychology suggests that a woman's sexual attractiveness is based on cues of health and reproductive potential. In recent years, research has focused on the ratio of the width of the waist to the width of the hips (the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). A low WHR (i.e. a curvaceous body) is believed to correspond to the optimal fat distribution for high fertility, and so this shape should be highly attractive. In this paper we present evidence that weight scaled for height (the body mass index (BMI)) is the primary determinant of sexual attractiveness rather than WHR. BMI is also strongly linked to health and reproductive potential. Furthermore, we show how covariation of apparent BMI and WHR in previous studies led to the overestimation of the importance of WHR in the perception of female attractiveness. Finally, we show how visual cues, such as the perimeter-area ratio (PAR), can provide an accurate and reliable index of an individual's BMI and could be used by an observer to differentiate between potential partners.

Driving a car, handwriting, and riding a bicycle are examples of the many human actions that have been established as instrumental through two fundamental behavioral selection mechanisms: the goal-directed system and the habitual system. There are segregated loops connecting brain region coding and involved in each of these behavioral domains. The brain regions involved in both kinds of behavior have been highly conserved from an evolutionary point of view. Habitual behavior has been retained across evolution and, in the case of certain adaptive responses, almost without alteration among species. This chapter reviews classical and recent studies that highlight the main mechanisms and brain networks supporting goal-directed and habitual behaviors across species, with a focus on evolutionary perspectives on important biological hierarchies. Finally, it raises the possibility that dopaminergic dysfunction in certain brain diseases (such as addiction and Parkinson’s disease) is associated with a pathological involvement of these critical behavioral control systems.

Evolutionary personality psychology: Reconciling human nature and individual differences

This article explores the integration of 360-video, framed as ethnographic materials, in RE. 360-videos of religious practices are easily available and make it possible for learners to observe and explore religious practice in virtual reality to support learning. The paper analyses written responses from student teachers (N: 17). The students were invited to compare a textbook representation and their own imagination of pilgrimage to Mecca with their observations of religious practice in 360-videos taken by pilgrims on site. The analysis identifies three areas of learning: religious practice, textbook representation and reflexivity. The findings reveal how the integration of 360-videos can help students discover the nuances of religious practice at an individual level, internal diversity, the limits of textbook representations and reflexively examine their own assumptions.

Purpose: Western Education and Christian religion foundations and developments in Africa in general and Cameroon in Particular were laid and developed on African traditional education and religious practices and beliefs. Unfortunately, African traditional education, religious belief system and practices were brandished by colonial masters and Missionaries who introduced western education and Christian religious practices as fetish, uncivilized and paganic. All these allegations were from the stranger’s perspectives. Regrettably, those who engaged into the study of western education and practices of western religion were forced to upgrade foreign education and religious practices and beliefs over against African education and religious beliefs and practices. All these led to a false identity, religious practices, educational norms and values development on those who practice the western system of education and religious development. Consequently, some of the cherished Cameroonian cultural practices, religious beliefs and traditional education are fast dying out. It is for this reasons that this paper sought to address and revisit cultural beliefs and religious practices of some tribes of the Anglophone Cameroon. The purpose of this paper is to present some of the cultural practices that are educative, promote cherish values and norms and demonstrate the strength of the Bakweri, Manyu and Ugare cultural practices and belief for today’s children of the Anglophone Cameroon who have embraced western education and western religion over against our valued education and informative cultures and religion.
 Materials and Methods: The methodology is qualitative with the use of ethnography as design. Data were collected interviews, primary and secondary sources. and interviews.
 Findings: From the content analysis, the conclusion arrived at is that because the Bakweri Manyu and Ugere traditional education and cultural practices and beliefs are unique, other religions and educations should learn from the richness of these indigenous practices.
 Implications to Theory, Practice and Policy: Though western education is good, Christianity, western education and cultural traditional beliefs and practices should work hand in glove for a better society. Before the coming of Christianity, the cultural beliefs and practices of the Bakweri, Manyu and Ugere had long existed. The people were aware of the existence of the Supreme Being and Christian religion should not consider them as fetish and paganic. The study suggests a model of educating the young generation on the traditional education and cultural practices of the Bakeri, Manyu and Ugere people. The home is the center whereby, cultural values should disseminated to the churches, schools and community.

The paper aims to demonstrate how the techniques of disciplinary power in prenatal care affect pregnant women. I will illustrate my argument using the results of ethnographic research conducted at the Division of Risk Pregnancy at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in a hospital in Central Slovakia. The analysis of ethnographic material indicates that although pregnant women are objectified and disciplined in prenatal care, they consider and evaluate the practices of the medical staff. Prenatal care interferes with other social roles which pregnant women play in their life. I interpret the ethnographic material in terms of the concept of disciplinary power developed by Michel Foucault, and in the terms of the theory of moral emotions by Jonathan Haidt. I argue that risk assessment is a part of the techniques of disciplinary power, and that the explicit ascription of feelings of the uncertainty, fear, guilt, and shame to a certain kind of behaviour in pregnancy helps to identify norms that regulate biological reproduction.

This doctoral thesis 1 investigates the research and development (R&D) practices in a transnational company (TNC), with the geography of the knowledge economy as an underlying theme. From this point of departure, the main research question that is discussed in the thesis is: How is research and development practice carried out in a transnational company under international expansion? In order to investigate this, the work builds on a qualitative case study of R&D practice in the Norwegian based TNC Hydro, a global supplier of aluminum. The empirical material is mainly derived from in depth interviews with researchers and research management within the company. Furthermore, the work in this thesis is a continuation of economic geography research related to an earlier interdisciplinary NTNU research project named Comparative Aluminum Research Program (CARP).In addition to a book chapter written in Norwegian and three articles written in English (part two), the thesis contains an introductory part (part one) that summarizes the work and puts it into an overall perspective. The analysis in this thesis builds on a number of theoretical debates and concepts, as the articles approaches the main research questions from different angles and is based on cases in the main case study. Most prominent is the theoretical discussions related to proximity, Communities of Practice, path dependence, networks and culture. Moreover, the thesis contributes to the recent debate on the evolutionary economic geography as a subdisciplinary perspective. The thesis illustrates how the transnational company facilitates a transnational R&D work environment by specific work practices and distinct organizational tools. This is the theme for the Norwegian book chapter Norwegian research and development serving foreign processing (Norsk forskning og utvikling i tjeneste for foredlingen i utlandet Stensheim og Karlsen 2008) 2 . The chapter is empirically based in a study of the internationally dispersed organization of Hydro’s extrusion division. Article number one, R&D practices and communities in the TNC – proximities and distances (Stensheim 2011)3, discusses the concept of proximity in relation to knowledge transfer. It illustrates how the transnational company compensates for the lack of geographical proximity by taking advantage of other forms of proximity based on relational aspects in the facilitation of R&D practices. However, the article supports earlier research in arguing for the importance of geographical proximity when it comes to knowledge transfer. By the analysis in this study, I also introduce a parallel notion to the proximity concept in relation to this, the notion of distances. This theoretical tool brings us closer to understand reasons behind challenges of transnational R&D practices. Related, the article states that the concept of Communities of Practice is an inappropriate tool of knowledge management in the transnational R&D work environment. The article states that the distances to a high degree are related to the TNCs geographical heterogeneity, however, it also inspired to investigate further how the endogenous organizational routines and practices influenced economic behaviour in the TNC. This theme, more specifically how R&D in the TNC is influenced by both a variety of 1 The geographical contexts and by different organizational contexts, is an underlying theme in the last two articles4. Article number two, Negotiating paths of TNC culture in the wake of a major cross-border acquisition, takes up to discussion the culture of the TNC. The institutional turn of economic geography has placed culture on the agenda as one of the aspects explaining geographical heterogeneity in economic activities. Despite this, culture is to a little degree unit of analysis in the published literature. The empirical point of departure of the article is a major cross-border acquisition made by Hydro in 2002. On this basis the article discusses how the TNC culture is influenced by a dynamic between influences from territorial institutions and organizations’ own routines and practices. Consequently, the article addresses a recent debate in economic geography discussing respectively the relational and the evolutionary as dominating current economic geography perspectives, implicitly considering the dichotomization between an evolutionary economic geography perspective and institutional approaches in economic geography in general. The mentioned acquisition also forms the basis for the empirical investigation in the third article, Geographies of TNC R&D networks. In this article, however, path dependence in networks is the main theme. This analysis shows that the acquisition is of little significance in the development of R&D networks, largely due to relational path dependence and the international nature of R&D in TNCs per se. Also this article demonstrates the connection between the relational economic geography and the evolutionary. Based on the conclusions drawn from the analysis of the articles, the thesis emphasizes drawing on an institutional approach that comprises both a relational and an evolutionary perspective on R&D practices in the TNC.

Etude des deux formes de communication utilisee par les humains : le langage et la communication non verbale ; cette derniere forme etant utilisee par les primates pour communiquer. Commentaires, reponse de l'auteur.

I THE LEGACY OF HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM AND MERLEAUPONTY'S TURN TO EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY Even as posthumanists seek to dismantle the legacy of human exceptionalism, a queasy reluctance among philosophers prevents full acknowledgement of our kinship with the rest of animalia. Heidegger's declaration that animals are 'poor in world' and his description of an abyss yawning between humans and all other animals established the best known and most influential position in this regard. (1) Even though Derrida challenged what he saw as Heidegger's dogmatic humanism and violent commentary on animals, (2) he could not acknowledge the biological continuism which evolutionary science, genomics, and microbiology make obvious. (3) Matthew Calarco takes 'Derrida's insistence on maintaining the human-animal distinction to be one of the most dogmatic and puzzling moments in all of his writings' (4) and wonders 'why he would use this language of ruptures and abysses when the largest bodies of empirical knowledge we have concerning human beings and animals strongly contest such language'. (5) Similar to Derrida, Giorgio Agamben decries what he calls 'the anthropological machine' but never moves beyond it. He urges us to work on the divisions of animal from human and suggests that 'even the most luminous sphere of our relations with the divine depends, in some way, on that darker one which separates us from the animal'. (6) Only Cary Wolfe, Matthew Calarco, Donna Haraway, and Kelly Oliver among prominent recent animal theorists are moving away from abyssal distinctions between humans and other animals, Haraway the most decisively. (7) Yet more than fifty years ago, Maurice Merleau-Ponty had already gone far beyond Heidegger to seriously explore the philosophical consequences of evolutionary biology and ethology--the scientific studies of actual animals--and to anticipate the radical breakthroughs of the past several decades in studies of animal sentience, tool use, communication, and culture. Merleau-Ponty laid the theoretical groundwork for an understanding of human animality that is congruent with evolutionary biology and ethology. (8) In this essay I will briefly describe Heidegger's resistance to thinking of humans as animals within an evolutionary perspective, in order to demonstrate how Merleau-Ponty took a radically different direction through a thoughtful engagement with evolutionary science and ethology that affirms both biological continuity and the distinctive qualities of our species. At stake in these debates is the question of whether cultural theory can accept the legitimacy of modern science as an access to knowledge about the natural world, or whether we are trapped in a solipsistic bubble. Calarco thinks that persistent anthropocentrism is one of the chief blind spots in contemporary Continental philosophy, claiming that it is always 'one version or another of the human that falsely occupies the space of the universal and that functions to exclude what is considered nonhuman (which, of course, includes the immense majority of human beings themselves, along with all else deemed to be nonhuman) from ethical and political consideration'. (9) And as Derrida argued in his Geschlecht essays and also in The Animal That Therefore I Am, a central problem remains the failure of theorists to seriously pay attention to the life sciences, particularly the experimental studies of other animals. (10) He himself never got around to doing this, and neither have most participants in recent critical animal studies debates indebted to Derrida's work. (11) What makes Merleau-Ponty's philosophy unique and radical in this regard is his lifelong engagement with the sciences of his own era, including Gestalt psychology and cognitive neuroscience for his work on embodiment in The Phenomenology of Perception, and in his later writings, quantum mechanics, evolutionary biology, embryology, and ethology. Close examination of empirical animal research in his late Nature lectures led to the beginnings of an understanding of a 'strange kinship' between humans and animals over evolutionary time, and the human-animality intertwining that defines our species' distinctive way of participating in the Brute being of the world's flesh. …