Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior

Evolutionary Anthropology - Tập 12 Số 6 - Trang 264-274 - 2003
Richard Sosis1, Candace S. Alcorta2
1Richard Sosis is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut. His current research interests include the evolution of cooperation, utopian societies, and the behavioral ecology of religion. He has conducted fieldwork on Ifaluk Atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia and is currently pursuing various projects in Israel aimed at understanding the benefits and costs associated with religious behavior.
2Candace Alcorta received her BA and MA from New York University and is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut. Her research interests include the behavioral ecology of religion and the neuropsychology of religion and stress. She is currently conducting dissertation research on the interrelationship between adolescent religious participation, stress, and depression.

Tóm tắt

AbstractAnthropologists have repeatedly noted that there has been little theoretical progress in the anthropology of religion over the past fifty years.1–7By the 1960s, Geertz2had pronounced the field dead. Recently, however, evolutionary researchers have turned their attention toward understanding the selective pressures that have shaped the human capacity for religious thoughts and behaviors, and appear to be resurrecting this long‐dormant but important area of research.8–19This work, which focuses on ultimate evolutionary explanations, is being complemented by advances in neuropsychology and a growing interest among neuroscientists in how ritual, trance, meditation, and other altered states affect brain functioning and development.20–26This latter research is providing critical insights into the evolution of the proximate mechanisms responsible for religious behavior. Here we review these literatures and examine both the proximate mechanisms and ultimate evolutionary processes essential for developing a comprehensive evolutionary explanation of religion.

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Evolutionary Anthropology

Tập 12 Số 6

264-274

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