Class presentation on ethnicity within the sociobiological / human evolutionary ecology context in anthropology. An overview from a single class in HEE.

1. Ethnicity, Ethnocentrism, and
Human Adaptation
Celia Emmelhainz
ANTH 630: Human Evolutionary Ecology
Presentation at Texas A&M, December 1 2008

2. Cultural Adaptation
Division and conflict
between groups by
ethnicity can be seen as:
-Adaptive
-Neutral
-Tolerable
-Maladaptive
(Edgerton 1992)

3. Ethnicity
Viewed as Primordial:
- Endogamy and Shared Descent
(Hammond and Axelrod 2006)
- Social Construct/Mental Shortcut
(Gil-White 1999, 2001)
Viewed as Socially Constructed:
- Group Boundaries
(Barth 1969)
- Rational Choice
(Economics)

4. Markers of
Ethnicity:
Language
Religion
Customs
Physicality
Dress
Accent

5. Francisco Gil-White and the
Ultimatum game
- Bulgan Sum, Hovd, Mongolia
- Few outward markers
- Kazakhs and Torguuds
- More paid to out-group
members
(Gil-White 2003, 2004)

6. Adaptation and Ethnicity
(Theories in Human
Evolutionary Ecology)
— Living Kinds Theory
— Genetic Similarity Theory
— Domain-Specific Mechanisms
— Social Identity Mechanisms
— Rational Choice Theory
(MacDonald 2001)

7. Maladaptation
and ethnicity
• Lost opportunities
(trade, mating,
cooperation)
• Discrimination
• Xenophobia
• War
• Genocide

8. “ethnocentrism: the feeling that one’s group
has a mode of living, values, and patterns of
adaptation that are superior to those of other
groups.”
Columbia Encyclopedia 2000:12933
cited in Gil-White 2005

9. Ethnocentrism
- Reinforces group norms and increases in-group conformity
- Increases discrimination against outsiders
- Increases cooperation within-group and decreases it between groups
- Increases tendency to think of outsiders as sub-human
- Decreases costly interactions (Gil-White 2005)
- Increases conflicts and misunderstandings

10. Conclusion
“if humans are to succeed
in adapting to one another
and to the environments in
which they live, they must
devise social and cultural
mechanisms to control
certain aspects of their
biological nature.”
(Edgerton 1992:61)

11. Pictures used in a fair-use educational context:
1. http://www.angryasianman.com/images/angry/mongol01.jpg
2 . http://www.ngsprints.co.uk/popup_image.php?pID=107962
3. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nozomiiqel/109908487
4. http://www.flickr.com/photos/25932866@N06
5. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/mongolia.html
6. http://www.flickr.com/photos/clydebentley/2564349451
7. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dunechaser/490888951
8. http://www.flickr.com/photos/46329566@N00/2821552374/
9. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerrold/237932650
10. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeff-bauche/2230265837
11. http://www.flickr.com/photos/integralfocus/71969816
12. http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithpatterson/9790094668

12. For more information see also:
Brown 2003
Edgerton 1992
Gil-White 1999
Gil-White 2003
Hammond and Axelrod 2006
Henrich and Boyd 1998
Jahoda 2002
MacDonald 2001
McElreath et al 2003
Ruston 2005
Soltis et al 1995