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126Cultural Niche Construction: An IntroductionBiological Theory 6 (3): 191-202. 2011.Niche construction is the process whereby organisms, through their activities and choices, modify their own and each other’s niches. By transforming natural-selection pressures, niche construction generates feedback in evolution at various different levels. Niche-constructing species play important ecological roles by creating habitats and resources used by other species and thereby affecting the flow of energy and matter through ecosystems—a process often referred to as “ecosystem engineering.”…Read more
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82Niche Construction and the Toolkits of Hunter–Gatherers and Food ProducersBiological Theory 6 (3): 251-259. 2011.In the study reported here we examined the impact of population size and two proxies of risk of resource failure on the diversity and complexity of the food-getting toolkits of hunter–gatherers and small-scale food producers. We tested three hypotheses: the risk hypothesis, the population-size hypothesis, and a hypothesis derived from niche construction theory. Our analyses indicated that the toolkits of hunter–gatherers are more affected by risk than are the toolkits of food producers. They als…Read more
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58Mapping collective behavior in the big-data eraBehavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (1): 63-76. 2014.The behavioral sciences have flourished by studying how traditional and/or rational behavior has been governed throughout most of human history by relatively well-informed individual and social learning. In the online age, however, social phenomena can occur with unprecedented scale and unpredictability, and individuals have access to social connections never before possible. Similarly, behavioral scientists now have access to “big data” sets – those from Twitter and Facebook, for example – that…Read more
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41More on maps, terrains, and behaviorsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (1): 105-119. 2014.The behavioral sciences have flourished by studying how traditional and/or rational behavior has been governed throughout most of human history by relatively well-informed individual and social learning. In the online age, however, social phenomena can occur with unprecedented scale and unpredictability, and individuals have access to social connections never before possible. Similarly, behavioral scientists now have access to “big data” sets – those from Twitter and Facebook, for example – that…Read more
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29Quality versus mere popularity: a conceptual map for understanding human behaviorMind and Society 10 (2): 181-191. 2011.We propose using a bi-axial map as a heuristic for categorizing different dynamics involved in the relationship between quality and popularity. The east–west axis represents the degree to which an agent’s decision is influenced by those of other agents. This ranges from the extreme western edge, where an agent learns individually (no outside influence), to the extreme eastern edge, where an agent is influenced by a large number of other agents. The vertical axis represents how easy or difficult …Read more
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24Niche construction is an important component of a science of intentional changeBehavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (4): 432-433. 2014.
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13Doing Murga, Undoing Gender: Feminist Carnival in ArgentinaGender and Society 34 (3): 413-436. 2020.Murga porteña, the satirical street theatre tradition associated with Carnival in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is historically a strongly patriarchal institution. Prominent roles such as reciting poetry, singing, and playing percussion instruments have been reserved exclusively for men. As the feminist movement in Argentina has grown in visibility and importance in recent years, feminist murga participants disrupted these patriarchal patterns. Women murga performers have begun to use murga as a spac…Read more
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10A long view of cumulative technological cultureBehavioral and Brain Sciences 43. 2020.We agree that the emergence of cumulative technological culture was tied to nonsocial cognitive skills, namely, technical-reasoning skills, which allowed humans to constantly acquire and improve information. Our concern is with a reading of the history of cumulative technological culture that is based largely on modern experiments in simulated settings and less on phenomena crucial to the long-term dynamics of cultural evolution.
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10Applying Evolutionary Archaeology: A Systematic ApproachSpringer Verlag. 2000.This book is an in-depth treatment of Darwinian evolutionism and its applicability to the investigation of the archaeological record. The authors explain the unique position that this kind of evolutionism holds in science and how it bears on any attempt to explain change over time in the organic world, demonstrate commonalities between archaeology and paleobiology, and explain the principles, methods, and techniques - the systematics - inherent in the approach.
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10The Worlds of American Intellectual History (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 2016.The essays in this book demonstrate the breadth and vitality of American intellectual history. Their core theme is the diversity of both American intellectual life and of the frameworks that we must use to make sense of that diversity. The Worlds of American Intellectual History has at its heart studies of American thinkers. Yet it follows these thinkers and their ideas as they have crossed national, institutional, and intellectual boundaries. The volume explores ways in which American ideas hav…Read more