Style, Vol. 49, No. 4, 2015. Copyright © 2015 he Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
abstract: The evolution of human sociality is a ield in ferment, with writers struggling
to isolate elementary causal forces and organize them systematically. The elements of a
usable model for evolved human sociality have become available only within the past few
years. Those elements are scattered throughout the books here under review and a small
set of articles. None of the books or articles fully exempliies the whole model. After laying
out the model, I use it to evaluate the books, describing how each contributes to it, and
measuring each against it. The central idea in a usable model of human sociality is that the
identity of the social group is integral to individual identity. In addition to that one central
idea, a minimum of seven concepts is necessary to construct a model of sociality that
includes the complex forms of organization in post-agricultural societies: (1) dominance,
(2) egalitarianism or reverse dominance, (3) leadership, (4) internalized norms, (5) strong
reciprocity or third-party enforcement of norms, (6) legal institutions, and (7) legitimacy in
the exercise of power. These seven concepts can be reduced to four components: power,
values, individuals, and groups. This model of evolved human sociality moves beyond the
inconclusive debate between proponents of inclusive itness and proponents of group
selection. It also ofers a distinct alternative to the identity politics that currently pervade
literary and cultural study.
books Under review
Boehm, Christopher. Moral Origins: he Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame.
New York: Basic Books, 2012. Print.
Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its
Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2011. Print.
Fukuyama, Francis. he Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French
Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Print.
———. Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globaliza-
tion of Democracy. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Print.
Haidt, Jonathan. he Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and
Religion. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012. Print.
Evolutionary Social heory
he Current State of Knowledge
Joseph Carroll
University of MissoUri, st. LoUis