Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T22:04:28.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Culture: The missing piece in theories of weak and strong reciprocity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2012

Dwight Read
Dwight Read
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095. [email protected]://www.anthro.ucla.edu/people/faculty?lid=886
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Guala does not go far enough in his critique of the assumption that human decisions about sharing made in the context of experimental game conditions accurately reflect decision-making under real conditions. Sharing of hunted animals is constrained by cultural rules and is not “spontaneous cooperation” as assumed in models of weak and strong reciprocity. Missing in these models is the cultural basis of sharing that makes it a group property rather than an individual one.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , February 2012 , pp. 35 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Balikci, A. (1970) The Netsilik Eskimo. Doubleday.Google Scholar
Goodale, J. (1971) Tiwi wives: A study of the women of Melville Island, North Australia. University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Leaf, M. & Read, D. (in press) Human thought and social organization: Anthropology on a new plane. Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Marshall, L. (1976) The !Kung of Nyae Nyae. Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mauss, M. (1924/1990) The gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies, trans. Halls, W. D.. Norton Press.Google Scholar
Read, D. (2001) What is kinship? In: The cultural analysis of kinship: The legacy of David Schneider and its implications for anthropological relativism, ed. Feinberg, R. & Ottenheimer, M., pp. 78–117. University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Read, D. (2007) Kinship theory: A paradigm shift. Ethnology 46:329–64.Google Scholar
Read, D. (2008) An interaction model for resource implement complexity based on risk and number of annual moves. American Antiquity 73:599–625.Google Scholar
Read, D. (2010a) Agent-based and multi-agent simulations: Coming of age or in search of an identity? Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory 16:329–47.Google Scholar
Read, D. (2010b) From experiential-based to relational-based forms of social organization: A major transition in the evolution of Homo sapiens. In: Social brain, distributed mind, ed. Dunbar, R., Gamble, C. & Gowlett, J., pp. 199–230. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Read, D. (2012) How culture makes us human: Primate kinship evolution and the formation of human societies. Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M. (1972/1974) Stone Age economics. Aldine Transaction/Routledge. (Routledge edition, 1974, cited in Guala T.A.).Google Scholar
Torrence, R. (1989) Re-tooling: Towards a behavioral theory of stone tools, In: Time, energy and stone tools, ed. Torrence, R., pp. 57–66. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wiessner, P. (1977) Hxaro, a regional system of reciprocity for reducing risk among the !Kung San. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Wiessner, P. (1982) Risk, reciprocity and social influences on !Kung San economies. In: Politics and history in band societies, ed. Leacock, H. R. & Lee, R. B., pp. 61–84. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wiessner, P. (2009) Experimental games and games of life among the Ju/'hoan Bushmen. Current Anthropology 50(1):133–38. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20479691.CrossRefGoogle Scholar