Cultural Kin Systems, And The Evolution Of Human Sociality w/ Dwight Read

Hello, everybody! Today, I bring you an interview with Dr. Dwight Read. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). His research interests include mathematical anthropology, the structural logic of kinship terminologies, theory of social organization, cultural evolution, and archaeological classification. He’s the author of books like Artifact Classification: A Conceptual and Methodological Approach, Human Thought and Social Organization: Anthropology on a New Plane, and How Culture Makes Us Human: Primate Social Evolution and the Formation of Human Societies.

In this episode, we discuss the evolutionary bases of human sociality. We talk about how sociality evolved from Old World monkeys to chimpanzees and to humans. We refer to the role of biological kin selection, and the biological traits that provided a basis for the cultural evolution of kin systems. We discuss the social function of kin systems, their limits, and group identities beyond kin.

https://youtu.be/M2et8hKeUkE

Link to podcast version (Anchor): http://bit.ly/31cI9Kq