Handbook on Evolution and Society, a thrilling announcement:
The full title is Handbook on Evolution and Society, Toward an Evolutionary Social Science edited by Jonathan H. Turner, Richard Machalek and Alexandra Maryanski, Paradigm Publishers, Boulder 2015. Yes, it’s available through Amazon. It’s a textbook, and they are only in print a few years before they are updated. And the printing quality is excellent. All of which goes to say it isn’t cheap, but after it has gone through a few school terms I imagine it will get cheaper.
I’ve only had it over the weekend and am about a third of the way through, but I thought I’d go ahead and mention it now rather than let my limited work ethic control the world. The excitement is chapter nineteen, “Marry in or Die Out” pages 350 through 382.
The author is Professor Robin Fox, who wrote Kinship and Marriage many years ago. That book promptly became and still remains a standard text in anthropology. As it turns out, every society has rules about just whom you can and whom you cannot marry. Of course that seems to be in a bit of a flux right now, but the primary interest is in traditional societies. Of course once you have the rules learned there is an impact on language, on how wealth is transferred between generations, about social order. It is like having a baseline from which you survey a mountain.
So to begin with this is written by a known master of presenting complex material in a clear fashion. Now Fox adds a new perspective – the editor calls it “surprising” – to the same subject. I am panting to read the chapter. As I have been going along, chapter after chapter, I have been thinking about most if not all the authors, “You’re perspective is going to change, I think, when you read the rest of the book.”
So this is a high water mark. What could the future hold?
There have been 329 visitors over the past month and 63 people have looked at “Babies Triumph over Evil” on YouTube. Be the first on your block for that as well as for the textbook.