The Pleistocene Social Contract

Loc Latouche Simard, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Sterelny's latest book, written in precise yet accessible prose, can be read with profit by a large public, from the undergraduate student to the scholar. As usual with this author, the pages of The Pleistocene Social Contract are filled with imaginative and well informed solutions to hard problems regarding archeological, biological, and behavioral traces of cooperation throughout human history.

Haggeo Cadenas, The Quarterly Review of Biology I fully recommend The Pleistocene Social Contract. Readers... will gain insights into the auhtor's method of explaining via positive feedback loops, his challenge to traditional theories, and his conclusions drawn from subtle conceptual distinctions.

M. J. O'Brien, CHOICE Sterelny, who works at the intersection of philosophy and natural science, has produced another excellent book on hominin evolution ... The book is clearly written, which means it will appeal to a broad audience, and the references are excellent. This reviewer gives Sterelny's book the highest endorsement.

Kim Sterelny is an Australian philosopher, by birth, training, and inclination, who has worked mainly in Australia and New Zealand, with occasional visiting posts in North America and the UK. He has always worked on the intersection of philosophy and the natural science. In the last two decades, he has focused primarily on the life sciences, and increasingly on hominin evolution.

Contents Preface I. Building Cumulative Culture 1.1 Methodological Preliminaries 1.2 Culture and Cooperation 1.3 The Prehistory of an Unusual Ape 1.4 The Growing Footprint of Cultural Learning 1.5 Cumulative Cultural Learning. 1.6 Adapted Minds and Environments 1.7 Overview II. The Pleistocene Social Contract 2.1 Free-riders and Bullies 2.2 Curbing Dominance Hierarchies 2.3 An Economy of Reciprocation 2.4 Making Reciprocation Work: Gossip 2.5 Making Reciprocation Work: Norms 2.6 Making Reciprocation Work: Ritual 2.7 Stabilising Cooperation III. Cooperation in a Larger World 3.1 Cooperation between Bands 3.2 The Origins of an Open Society 3.3 Cooperation, Culture and Conflict 3.4 Individual Selection, Group Selection and Cultural Group Selection IV. Cooperation in Hierarchical Communities 4.1 The Puzzle of Farming 4.2 Cooperation in an Unequal World. 4.3 Religion, Ritual and Ideology. 4.4 Conflict, Hierarchy and Inequality Epilogue: Why Only Us?