In this volume, which developed out of a Wenner-Gren Conference held in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in 1992, the editors and chapter authors advocate a politicaleconomic approach to human biology. They suggest that this approach is a more powerful model for understanding human biological variation than an adaptability approach, and also argue that it has the added advantage of potentially acting to reintegrate biological and cultural anthropology. The political-economic approach emphasizes inequalities in access to resources and how these can be explained in terms of global and historical factors. The authors of almost all of the chapters in the book thus urge human biologists to move beyond simple measurements such as socioeconomic status to more fully characterize the circumstances in which humans find themselves in terms of social processes and power relationships. As advocated by the authors in this book, the political-economic approach also urges political action on our part and involves consideration of the scientist as a product of a specific set of social circumstances.
The volume contains 19 chapters, divided into four sections. The first four chapters provide a historical and theoretical overview. After the first chapter, in which the editors lay out the basics of the politicaleconomic perspective, Thomas discusses the biology of poverty. He argues that a political-economic model, incorporating the factors that result in differential access to resources and how this differential access constrains adaptive ability, can lead to better understanding of the biology of poverty. Roseberry advocates examining social categories not as static entities, but as social fields of web-like connections. This idea may be useful to biological anthropologists as they try to provide richer descriptions of the