Cooperation & collective action: archaeological perspectives

✍ Scribed by Carballo, David M

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 319
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

"[Cooperation research] is one of the busiest and most exciting areas of transdisciplinary science right now, linking evolution, ecology and social science. . . this is the first major work or collection to address linkages between archaeology and cooperation research."—Michael E. Smith, Arizona State University

Past archaeological literature on cooperation theory has emphasized competition's role in cultural evolution. As a result, bottom-up possibilities for group cooperation have been under theorized in favor of models stressing top-down leadership, while evidence from a range of disciplines has demonstrated humans to effectively sustain cooperative undertakings through a number of social norms and institutions. Cooperation and Collective Action is the first volume to focus on the use of archaeological evidence to understand cooperation and collective action.

Disentangling the motivations and institutions that foster group cooperation among competitive...