INTRODUCTION

Abstract

Altruism has long been a fundamental question motivating evolutionary approaches to behavior. Altruistic behavior is ultimately costly to the actor yet beneficial to the recipient and as such is not expected to be favored by natural selection. Its apparent commonness has led evolutionary thinkers into a wide variety of interesting areas of research, many of which are represented in this volume. Resource sharing ranks among the most basic of potentially altruistic acts. Notably absent among most other primates, humans have honed sharing to a fine art in behaviors as apparently simple as meat distributions from prey carcasses to elaborate feast making and gift giving (Mauss, 1924). Issues related to food sharing are at the center of much of the current research being done in HBE. In this volume, Frank Marlowe, Michael Gurven et al., and Bram Tucker each examine aspects of this problem.

Citation

Alvard, M. (2004), "INTRODUCTION", Alvard, M. (Ed.) Socioeconomic Aspects of Human Behavioral Ecology (Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol. 23), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0190-1281(04)23019-0