INTRODUCTION

It would have been impossible to avoid introducing the concept of adaptation in the preceding parts of this book, given its central explanatory role. Nonetheless, I have reserved a more specific treatment until some of the major anthropological approaches to the ecological problematic have been presented. In this way it is possible to clarify certain discussions in the literature which might otherwise appear unnecessarily complicated, polemical and abstract. As might be expected from the structure of that discourse already examined, the limits of the debate are set by, on the one hand, those who adhere to a strict Darwinian model and express amazement at its neglect in contemporary anthropological theory and, on the other, those who insist that definitions of adaptation must be framed with specific reference to the human condition. It is hardly surprising that empirical case material suggests that the appropriate theory lies somewhere in between; not in the form of some woolly minded compromise, but as a subtle conceptual articulation.

It is possible to identify four distinct types of adaptation among biological organisms:

1. 1 phylogenetic, in which a genotype (the genetic constitution of an individual) adapts trans-generationally through natural selection;

2. […]