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The Evolution Of Human Cooperation And Community Development
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Book Synopsis The Evolution of Human Cooperation and Community Development by : August John Hoffman
Download or read book The Evolution of Human Cooperation and Community Development written by August John Hoffman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-02-12 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communities today face unprecedented racial tension, conflict, and turmoil. Social unrest, political rhetoric, authoritarian rulers, and economic disparities contribute to unprecedented levels of community violence and extremism. The Evolution of Human Cooperation and Community Development: A Greener Approach to Understanding the Dynamics of Conflict proposes a more comprehensive and community-oriented approach to address conflict through the development of community resources and ecologically sustainable green space programs, such as community gardening programs. The authors draw on empirical research to identify how resources may be utilized to promote increased positive intergroup contact and provide greater collaboration among community residents. This book provides the essential interpersonal mechanisms to achieve a more resilient, empowered, and peaceful community.
Book Synopsis The Evolution of Cooperation by : Robert Axelrod
Download or read book The Evolution of Cooperation written by Robert Axelrod and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-04-29 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A famed political scientist's classic argument for a more cooperative world We assume that, in a world ruled by natural selection, selfishness pays. So why cooperate? In The Evolution of Cooperation, political scientist Robert Axelrod seeks to answer this question. In 1980, he organized the famed Computer Prisoners Dilemma Tournament, which sought to find the optimal strategy for survival in a particular game. Over and over, the simplest strategy, a cooperative program called Tit for Tat, shut out the competition. In other words, cooperation, not unfettered competition, turns out to be our best chance for survival. A vital book for leaders and decision makers, The Evolution of Cooperation reveals how cooperative principles help us think better about everything from military strategy, to political elections, to family dynamics.
Book Synopsis Social Dilemmas by : Paul A. M. Van Lange
Download or read book Social Dilemmas written by Paul A. M. Van Lange and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a psychological overview of research on human cooperation, while discussing evolutionary and cultural perspectives, along with applications in the management, environment, national security, and health.
Book Synopsis Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation by : Peter Hammerstein
Download or read book Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation written by Peter Hammerstein and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents
Book Synopsis A Cooperative Species by : Samuel Bowles
Download or read book A Cooperative Species written by Samuel Bowles and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-21 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do humans, uniquely among animals, cooperate in large numbers to advance projects for the common good? Contrary to the conventional wisdom in biology and economics, this generous and civic-minded behavior is widespread and cannot be explained simply by far-sighted self-interest or a desire to help close genealogical kin. In A Cooperative Species, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis--pioneers in the new experimental and evolutionary science of human behavior--show that the central issue is not why selfish people act generously, but instead how genetic and cultural evolution has produced a species in which substantial numbers make sacrifices to uphold ethical norms and to help even total strangers. The authors describe how, for thousands of generations, cooperation with fellow group members has been essential to survival. Groups that created institutions to protect the civic-minded from exploitation by the selfish flourished and prevailed in conflicts with less cooperative groups. Key to this process was the evolution of social emotions such as shame and guilt, and our capacity to internalize social norms so that acting ethically became a personal goal rather than simply a prudent way to avoid punishment. Using experimental, archaeological, genetic, and ethnographic data to calibrate models of the coevolution of genes and culture as well as prehistoric warfare and other forms of group competition, A Cooperative Species provides a compelling and novel account of how humans came to be moral and cooperative.
Book Synopsis The Fractal Self by : John L. Culliney
Download or read book The Fractal Self written by John L. Culliney and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2017-07-31 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our universe, science reveals, began in utter simplicity, then evolved into burgeoning complexity. Starting with subatomic particles, dissimilar entities formed associations—binding, bonding, growing, branching, catalyzing, cooperating—as “self” joined “other” following universal laws with names such as gravity, chemical attraction, and natural selection. Ultimately life arose in a world of dynamic organic chemistry, and complexity exploded with wondrous new potential. Fast forward to human evolution, and a tension that had existed for billions of years now played out in an unprecedented arena of conscious calculation and cultural diversity. Cooperation interleaving with competition; intimacy oscillating with integrity—we dwell in a world where yin meets yang in human affairs on many levels. In The Fractal Self, John Culliney and David Jones uncover surprising intersections between science and philosophy. Connecting evidence from evolutionary science with early insights of Daoist and Buddhist thinkers, among others, they maintain that sagely behavior, envisioned in these ancient traditions, represents a pinnacle of human achievement emerging out of our evolutionary heritage. They identify an archetype, “the fractal self,” a person in any walk of life who cultivates a cooperative spirit. A fractal self is a sage in training, who joins others in common cause, leads from within, and achieves personal satisfaction in coordinating smooth performance of the group, team, or institution in which he or she is embedded. Fractal selves commonly operate with dedication and compassionate practice in the service of human society or in conserving our planet. But the competitive side of human nature is susceptible to greed and aggression. Self-aggrandizement, dictatorial power, and ego-driven enforcement of will are the goals of those following a self-serving path—individuals the authors identify as antisages. Terrorist leaders are an especially murderous breed, but aggrandizers can be found throughout business, religion, educational institutions, and governments. Humanity has reached an existential tipping point: will the horizon already in view expand with cooperative progress toward godlike emergent opportunities or contract in the thrall of corrupt oligarchs and tribal animosities? We have brought ourselves to a chaotic edge between immense promise and existential danger and are even now making our greatest choice.
Download or read book Team Human written by Douglas Rushkoff and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A provocative, exciting, and important rallying cry to reassert our human spirit of community and teamwork.”—Walter Isaacson Team Human is a manifesto—a fiery distillation of preeminent digital theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s most urgent thoughts on civilization and human nature. In one hundred lean and incisive statements, he argues that we are essentially social creatures, and that we achieve our greatest aspirations when we work together—not as individuals. Yet today society is threatened by a vast antihuman infrastructure that undermines our ability to connect. Money, once a means of exchange, is now a means of exploitation; education, conceived as way to elevate the working class, has become another assembly line; and the internet has only further divided us into increasingly atomized and radicalized groups. Team Human delivers a call to arms. If we are to resist and survive these destructive forces, we must recognize that being human is a team sport. In Rushkoff’s own words: “Being social may be the whole point.” Harnessing wide-ranging research on human evolution, biology, and psychology, Rushkoff shows that when we work together we realize greater happiness, productivity, and peace. If we can find the others who understand this fundamental truth and reassert our humanity—together—we can make the world a better place to be human.
Book Synopsis Origins of Altruism and Cooperation by : Robert W. Sussman
Download or read book Origins of Altruism and Cooperation written by Robert W. Sussman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the evolution and nature of cooperation and altruism in social-living animals, focusing especially on non-human primates and on humans. Although cooperation and altruism are often thought of as ways to attenuate competition and aggression within groups, or are related to the action of “selfish genes”, there is increasing evidence that these behaviors are the result of biological mechanisms that have developed through natural selection in group-living species. This evidence leads to the conclusion that cooperative and altruistic behavior are not just by-products of competition but are rather the glue that underlies the ability for primates and humans to live in groups. The anthropological, primatological, paleontological, behavioral, neurobiological, and psychological evidence provided in this book gives a more optimistic view of human nature than the more popular, conventional view of humans being naturally and basically aggressive and warlike. Although competition and aggression are recognized as an important part of the non-human primate and human behavioral repertoire, the evidence from these fields indicates that cooperation and altruism may represent the more typical, “normal”, and healthy behavioral pattern. The book is intended both for the general reader and also for students at a variety of levels (graduate and undergraduate): it aims to provide a compact, accessible, and up-to-date account of the current scholarly advances and debates in this field of study, and it is designed to be used in teaching and in discussion groups. The book derived from a conference sponsored by N.S.F., the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Washington University Committee for Ethics and Human Values, and the Anthropedia Foundation for the study of well-being.
Book Synopsis The Pleistocene Social Contract by : Kim Sterelny
Download or read book The Pleistocene Social Contract written by Kim Sterelny and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "No human now gathers for himself or herself the essential resources for life: food, shelter, clothing, and the like. Humans are obligate co-operator, and this has been true for tens of thousands of years; probably much longer. In this regard, humans are very unusual. Cooperation outside the family is rare: though it can be very profitable, it is also very risky, as cooperation makes an agent vulnerable to incompetence and cheating. This book presents a new picture of the emergence of cooperation in our lineage, developing through four fairly distinct phases from a baseline that was probably fairly similar to living great apes, who cooperate, but in fairly minimal ways. As adults, they rarely depend on others when the outcome really matters. This book suggests that cooperation began to be more important for humans through an initial phase of cooperative foraging generating immediate returns from collective action in small mobile bands. This established in our lineage about 1.8 million years ago, perhaps earlier. Over the rest of the Pleistocene, cooperation became more extended in its social scale, with forms of cooperation between bands gradually establishing, and in spatial and temporal scale too, with various forms of reciprocation becoming important. The final phase was the emergence of cooperation in large scale, hierarchical societies in the Holocene, beginning about 12,000 years ago. This picture is nested in a reading of the archaeological and ethnographic record, and twinned to an account of the gradual elaboration of cultural learning in our lineage, making cooperation both more profitable and more stable"--
Book Synopsis Global Cooperation and the Human Factor in International Relations by : Dirk Messner
Download or read book Global Cooperation and the Human Factor in International Relations written by Dirk Messner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-14 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to pave the way for a new interdisciplinary approach to global cooperation research. It does so by bringing in disciplines whose insights about human behaviour might provide a crucial yet hitherto neglected foundation for understanding how and under which conditions global cooperation can succeed. As the first profoundly interdisciplinary book dealing with global cooperation, it provides the state of the art on human cooperation in selected disciplines (evolutionary anthropology and biology, decision-sciences, social psychology, complex system sciences), written by leading experts. The book argues that scholars in the field of global governance should know and could learn from what other disciplines tell us about the capabilities and limits of humans to cooperate. This new knowledge will generate food for thought and cause creative disturbances, allowing us a different interpretation of the obstacles to cooperation observed in world politics today. It also offers first accounts of interdisciplinary global cooperation research, for instance by exploring the possibilities and consequences of global we-identities, by describing the basic cooperation mechanism that are valid across disciplines, or by bringing an evolutionary perspective to diplomacy. This book will be of great interest to scholars and postgraduates in International Relations, Global Governance and International Development.
Book Synopsis The Evolution of Social Behaviour by : Michael Taborsky
Download or read book The Evolution of Social Behaviour written by Michael Taborsky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can the stunning diversity of social systems and behaviours seen in nature be explained? Drawing on social evolution theory, experimental evidence and studies conducted in the field, this book outlines the fundamental principles of social evolution underlying this phenomenal richness.To succeed in the competition for resources, organisms may either 'race' to be quicker than others, 'fight' for privileged access, or 'share' their efforts and gains. The authors show how the ecology and intrinsic attributes of organisms select for each of these strategies, and how a handful of straightforward concepts explain the evolution of successful decision rules in behavioural interactions, whether among members of the same or different species. With a broad focus ranging from microorganisms to humans, this is the first book to provide students and researchers with a comprehensive account of the evolution of sociality by natural selection.
Book Synopsis The Pleistocene Social Contract by : Kim Sterelny
Download or read book The Pleistocene Social Contract written by Kim Sterelny and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kim Sterelny here builds on his original account of the evolutionary development and interaction of human culture and cooperation, which he first presented in The Evolved Apprentice (2012). Sterelny sees human evolution not as hinging on a single key innovation, but as emerging from a positive feedback loop caused by smaller divergences from other great apes, including bipedal locomotion, better causal and social reasoning, reproductive cooperation, and changes in diet and foraging style. He advances this argument in The Pleistocene Social Contract with four key claims about cooperation, culture, and their interaction in human evolution. First, he proposes a new model of the evolution of human cooperation. He suggests human cooperation began from a baseline that was probably similar to that of great apes, advancing about 1.8 million years ago to an initial phase of cooperative forging, in small mobile bands. Second, he then presents a novel account of the change in evolutionary dynamics of cooperation: from cooperation profits based on collective action and mutualism, to profits based on direct and indirect reciprocation over the course of the Pleistocene. Third, he addresses the question of normative regulation, or moral norms, for band-scale cooperation, and connects it to the stabilization of indirect reciprocation as a central aspect of forager cooperation. Fourth, he develops an account of the emergence of inequality that links inequality to intermediate levels of conflict and cooperation: a final phase of cooperation in largescale, hierarchical societies in the Holocene, beginning about 12,000 years ago. The Pleistocene Social Contract combines philosophy of biology with a reading of the archaeological and ethnographic record to present a new model of the evolution of human cooperation, cultural learning, and inequality.
Book Synopsis Cooperation and Its Evolution by : Kim Sterelny
Download or read book Cooperation and Its Evolution written by Kim Sterelny and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-02-22 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays from a range of disciplinary perspectives show the central role that cooperation plays in structuring our world. This collection reports on the latest research on an increasingly pivotal issue for evolutionary biology: cooperation. The chapters are written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and utilize research tools that range from empirical survey to conceptual modeling, reflecting the rich diversity of work in the field. They explore a wide taxonomic range, concentrating on bacteria, social insects, and, especially, humans. Part I ("Agents and Environments") investigates the connections of social cooperation in social organizations to the conditions that make cooperation profitable and stable, focusing on the interactions of agent, population, and environment. Part II ("Agents and Mechanisms") focuses on how proximate mechanisms emerge and operate in the evolutionary process and how they shape evolutionary trajectories. Throughout the book, certain themes emerge that demonstrate the ubiquity of questions regarding cooperation in evolutionary biology: the generation and division of the profits of cooperation; transitions in individuality; levels of selection, from gene to organism; and the "human cooperation explosion" that makes our own social behavior particularly puzzling from an evolutionary perspective.
Book Synopsis The Social Instinct by : Nichola Raihani
Download or read book The Social Instinct written by Nichola Raihani and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Enriching" —Publisher's Weekly "Excellent and illuminating"—Wall Street Journal In the tradition of Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, Nichola Raihani's The Social Instinct is a profound and engaging look at the hidden relationships underpinning human evolution, and why cooperation is key to our future survival. Cooperation is the means by which life arose in the first place. It’s how life progressed through scale and complexity, from free-floating strands of genetic material to nation states. But given what we know about evolution, cooperation is also something of a puzzle. How does cooperation begin, when on a Darwinian level, all the genes in the body care about is being passed on to the next generation? Why do meerkats care for one another’s offspring? Why do babbler birds in the Kalahari form colonies in which only a single pair breeds? And how come some reef-dwelling fish punish each other for harming fish from another species? A biologist by training, Raihani looks at where and how collaborative behavior emerges throughout the animal kingdom, and what problems it solves. She reveals that the species that exhibit cooperative behaviour most similar to our own tend not to be other apes; they are birds, insects, and fish, occupying far more distant branches of the evolutionary tree. By understanding the problems they face, and how they cooperate to solve them, we can glimpse how human cooperation first evolved. And we can also understand what it is about the way we cooperate that makes us so distinctive–and so successful.
Book Synopsis Why We Cooperate by : Michael Tomasello
Download or read book Why We Cooperate written by Michael Tomasello and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-08-28 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through experiments with kids and chimpanzees, this cutting-edge theory in developmental psychology reveals how cooperation is a distinctly human combination of innate and learned behavior. “[A] fascinating approach to the question of what makes us human.” —Publishers Weekly Drop something in front of a 2-year-old, and she’s likely to pick it up for you. This is not a learned behavior, psychologist Michael Tomasello argues. Through observations of young children in experiments he designed, Tomasello shows that children are naturally—and uniquely—cooperative. For example, apes put through similar experiments demonstrate the ability to work together and share, but choose not to. As children grow, their almost reflexive desire to help—without expectation of reward—becomes shaped by culture. They become more aware of being a member of a group. Groups convey mutual expectations, and thus may either encourage or discourage altruism and collaboration. Either way, cooperation emerges as a distinctly human combination of innate and learned behavior. In Why We Cooperate, Tomasello’s studies of young children and great apes help identify the underlying psychological processes that very likely supported humans’ earliest forms of complex collaboration and, ultimately, our unique forms of cultural organization, from the evolution of tolerance and trust to the creation of such group-level structures as cultural norms and institutions. Scholars Carol Dweck, Joan Silk, Brian Skyrms, and Elizabeth Spelke respond to Tomasello’s findings and explore the implications.
Book Synopsis The Neighborhood Project by : David Sloan Wilson
Download or read book The Neighborhood Project written by David Sloan Wilson and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2011-08-24 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After decades studying creatures great and small, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson had an epiphany: Darwin's theory won't fully prove itself until it improves the quality of human life in a practical sense. And what better place to begin than his hometown of Binghamton, New York? Making a difference in his own city would provide a model for cities everywhere, which have become the habitat for over half of the people on earth. Inspired to become an agent of change, Wilson descended on Binghamton with a scientist's eye and looked at its toughest questions, such as how to empower neighborhoods and how best to teach our children. He combined the latest research methods from experimental economics with studies of holiday decorations and garage sales. Drawing upon examples from nature as diverse as water striders, wasps, and crows, Wilson's scientific odyssey took him around the world, from a cave in southern Africa that preserved the dawn of human culture to the Vatican in Rome. Along the way, he spoke with dozens of fellow scientists, whose stories he relates along with his own. Wilson's remarkable findings help us to understand how we must become wise managers of evolutionary processes to accomplish positive change at all scales, from effective therapies for individuals, to empowering neighborhoods, to regulating the worldwide economy. With an ambitious scope that spans biology, sociology, religion, and economics, The Neighborhood Project is a memoir, a practical handbook for improving the quality of life, and an exploration of the big questions long pondered by religious sages, philosophers, and storytellers. Approaching the same questions from an evolutionary perspective shows, as never before, how places define us.
Book Synopsis How Humans Cooperate by : Richard E. Blanton
Download or read book How Humans Cooperate written by Richard E. Blanton and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In How Humans Cooperate, Richard E. Blanton and Lane F. Fargher take a new approach to investigating human cooperation, developed from the vantage point of an "anthropological imagination." Drawing on the discipline’s broad and holistic understanding of humans in biological, social, and cultural dimensions and across a wide range of temporal and cultural variation, the authors unite psychological and institutional approaches by demonstrating the interplay of institution building and cognitive abilities of the human brain. Blanton and Fargher develop an approach that is strongly empirical, historically deep, and more synthetic than other research designs, using findings from fields as diverse as neurobiology, primatology, ethnography, history, art history, and archaeology. While much current research on collective action pertains to local-scale cooperation, How Humans Cooperate puts existing theories to the test at larger scales in markets, states, and cities throughout the Old and New Worlds. This innovative book extends collective action theory beyond Western history and into a broadly cross-cultural dimension, places cooperation in the context of large and complex human societies, and demonstrates the interplay of collective action and aspects of human cognitive ability. By extending the scope and content of collective action theory, the authors find a fruitful new path to understanding human cooperation.
