Full Description
Evolution, biology, and society is a catch-all phrase encompassing any scholarly work that utilizes evolutionary theory and/or biological or behavioral genetic methods in the study of the human social group, and The Oxford Handbook of Evolution, Biology, and Society contains an much needed overview of research in the area by sociologists and other social scientists. The examined topics cover a wide variety of issues, including the origins of social solidarity; religious beliefs; sex differences; gender inequality; determinants of human happiness; the nature of social stratification and inequality and its effects; identity, status, and other group processes; race, ethnicity, and race discrimination; fertility and family processes; crime and deviance; and cultural and social change.
The scholars whose work is presented in this volume come from a variety of disciplines in addition to sociology, including psychology, political science, and criminology. Yet, as the essays in this volume demonstrate, the potential of theory and methods from biology for illuminating social phenomena is clear, and sociologists stand to gain from learning more about them and using them in their own work. The theory focuses on evolution by natural selection, the primary paradigm of the biological sciences, while the methods include the statistical analyses sociologists are familiar with, as well as other methods that they may not be familiar with, such as behavioral genetic methods, methods for including genetic factors in statistical analyses, gene-wide association studies, candidate gene studies, and methods for testing levels of hormones and other biochemicals in blood and saliva and including these factors in analyses.
This work will be of interest to any sociologist with an interest in exploring the interaction of biological and sociological processes. As an introduction to the field it is useful for teaching upper-level or graduate students in sociology or a related social science.
Contents
Part I: Introduction
1. Introduction: Evolution, Biology, and Society
Rosemary L. Hopcroft
2. Divergence and Possible Consilience between Evolutionary Biology and Sociology
Richard Machalek
3. Sociology's Contentious Courtship with Biology: A Ballad
Douglas A. Marshall
4. Edward Westermarck: The First Sociobiologist
Stephen K. Sanderson
Part II: Social Psychological Approaches
5. Discovering Human Nature through Cross-Species Analysis
Jonathan H. Turner
6. The Neurology of Religion: An Explanation from Evolutionary Sociology
Alexandra Maryanski and Jonathan H. Turner
7. Reward Allowances and Contrast Effects in Social Evolution: A Challenge to Zygmunt Bauman's Liquid Modernity
Michael Hammond
8. Sex Differences in the Human Brain
David D. Franks
9. The Savanna Theory of Happiness
Satoshi Kanazawa and Norman P. Li
10. How Evolutionary Psychology Can Contribute to Group Process Research
Joseph M. Whitmeyer
Part III: Biosociological Approaches
11. The Genetics of Human Behavior: A Hopeless Opus?
Colter Mitchell
12. DNA is Not Destiny
Rose McDermott and Peter K. Hatemi
13. On the Genetic and Genomic Basis of Aggression, Violence, and Antisocial Behavior
Kevin M. Beaver, Eric J. Connolly, Joseph L. Nedelec, and Joseph A. Schwartz
14. Genetics and Politics: A Review for the Social Scientist
Adam Lockyer and Peter K. Hatemi
15. Genes and Status Achievement
François Nielsen
16. Peer Networks, Psychobiology of Stress Response, and Adolescent Development
Olga Kornienko and Douglas A. Granger
17. Stress and Stress Hormones
Jeff Davis and Kristen Damron
18. Social Epigenetics of Human Behavior
Daniel E. Adkins, Kelli M. Rasmussen, and Anna R. Docherty
19. Physiology of Face-to-face Competition
Allan Mazur
Part IV: Evolutionary Approaches
20. Evolutionary Behavioral Science: Core Principles, Common Misconceptions, and a Troubling Tendency
Timothy Crippen
21. Evolutionary Family Sociology
Anna Rotkirch
22. Evolution and Human Reproduction
Martin Fieder and Susanne Huber
23. Evolution, Societal Sexism, and Universal Average Sex Differences in Cognition and Behavior
Lee Ellis
24. Evolutionary Theory and Criminology
Anthony Walsh and Cody Jorgensen
25. The Biosocial Study of Ethnicity
Frank Salter
26. Human Sociosexual Dominance Theory
Kristin Liv Rauch and Rosemary L. Hopcroft
Part V: Sociocultural Evolution
27. From Paganism to World Transcendence: Religious Attachment Theory and the Evolution of the World Religions
Stephen K. Sanderson
28. The Evolutionary Approach to History: Sociocultural Phylogenetics
Marion Blute and Fiona Jordan
Part VI: Conclusion
29. Why Sociology Should Incorporate Biology
Rosemary L. Hopcroft
