Abstract

Gossip is a universal feature of all human societies but has not been systematically investigated in all of them: ethnographies that have focused on gossip largely concern semidispersed groups at the margins of modern European and North American societies. The anthropological study of gossip can be divided into four historical phases: pre‐1960s work, which tended to discuss gossip only in passing; a debate in the 1960s between proponents of social–functionalist and social‐process approaches to gossip; the period from the 1970s to the 1990s, when ethnographers either advocated one of these two theoretical positions or tried to synthesize them; and recent work based on the recognition that gossip is universal. Current theoretical innovations include regional surveys of similarities and differences in patterns of gossip and the resurgence of a neofunctionalist model based on evolutionary science, in which gossip has adaptive value in promoting group cooperation.

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