EPHE Core Schedule of Lectures and Assignments

ECL 298-008 (40087)

Time: TR 12:10-1:30
Room: Storer 2342

Introduction

Jan 5 – The unification of the social sciences (Richerson) – Read: Gintis Unity BBS

Economic Approaches to Human Behavior (Sanchirico/Springborn/Lin)

Jan 7 – Theory of consumer/firm, overview of economics and fields (Sanchirico)

Jan 12 – Public Goods and Externalities (Sanchirico/Lin)

Jan 14 – Dynamic Resource Models (Lin)

Jan 19 – Decision-making under uncertainty (Springborn)

Cultural Evolution (Richerson/McElreath)

Jan 21 – The nature of culture (Richerson)

Jan 26 – Modeling cultural evolution (Richerson/McElreath)

Jan 28 – Analyzing cultural evolution (Richerson/McElreath)

People and Conservation (Darwent/Borgerhoff Mulder)

Feb 2 – Many roads to conservation (Borgerhoff Mulder)

Feb 4 – (Darwent)

Feb 9 – TBD

Feb 11 – TBD

Cultural Ecology/Political Ecology (Orlove/Winterhalder)

Feb 16

Feb 18

Feb 23

Feb 25

Environmental Policy and Politics (Lubell)

Mar 2 – Policy Tools

Mar 4 – Overview of US Environmental Laws

Mar 9 – Theories of the Policy Process

Mar 11 – Frontiers in Policy Research

Adrian Bell’s page

I am a 6th (and final) year student in the Graduate Group in Ecology at UC Davis. My advisors are Pete Richerson and Richard McElreath. Below is my list of contributions. You can see my full profile by following the link below.

Please take this link to my webpage

Publications

Bell, Adrian V., Peter J. Richerson, and Richard McElreath. 2009. “Culture Rather than Genes Provides Greater Scope for the Evolution of Large-Scale Human Prosociality” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(42):17671-17674.

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Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz, Adrian Bell, et al.. “Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and the Dynamics of Inequality in Small-Scale Societies” Science 326 (2009) 682-688.

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Bell, Adrian V. 2010. “Why Cultural and Genetic Group Selection are Unequal Partners in the Evolution of Human Behavior”Communicative and Integrative Biology 3(2): 159-161.

Lybbert, Travis, and Adrian V. Bell. 2010. “Stochastic Benefit Streams, Learning and Technology Diffusion: Why Drought Tolerance is not the new Bt” in press at AgBioForum 13(1): 13-24. With commentary in Nature Biotechnology 28: 553-554 (2010).

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Download COMMENTARY

Mary K. Shenk, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Jan Beise, Gregory Clark, William Irons, Donna Leonetti, Bobbi S. Low, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz, Adrian Bell, and Patrizio Piraino. 2010. “Intergenerational Wealth Transmission among Agriculturalists: Foundations of Agrarian Inequality.” Current Anthropology 51(1): 65-83

Smith, E.A, Hill, K., Marlowe, F., Nolin, D. Wiessner, P, Gurven, M. Bowles, S., Borgerhoff Mulder, M., Hertz, T., and Bell, A. 2010. Wealth Transmission and Inequality Among Hunter-Gatherers. Current Anthropology 51(1): 19-34

Gurven, M., Borgerhoff Mulder, M., Hooper, P.L., Kaplan, H., Quinlan, R., Sear, R., Schniter, E., von Rueden, C., Bowles, S., Hertz, T., and A. Bell (2010) Domestication alone does not lead to inequality: Intergenerational wealth transmission among horticulturalists. Current Anthropology 51(1): 49-64

Borgerhoff Mulder, M., Fazzio, I., Irons, W., McElreath, R., Bowles, S., Bell, A., Hertz, T and L. Hazzah (2010). Pastoralism and Wealth Inequality: Revisiting an Old Question. Current Anthropology 51(1): 35-48.

Bell, Adrian V., Russell B. Rader, Steven L. Peck, & Andrew Sih. “The positive effects of negative interactions: can avoidance of competitors or predators increase resource sampling by prey?” Theoretical Population Biology 76 (2009) 52-58.

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McElreath, R., A. Bell, C. Efferson, M. Lubell, P. Richerson, and T. Waring. 2008. Beyond existence and aiming outside the laboratory: Estimating frequency-dependent and payoff-biased social learning strategies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363:3515-3528.

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Bell, A. V., and P. J. Richerson. 2008. Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson, Genes, Mind, and Culture: 25th Anniversary Edition. Journal of Bioeconomics 10(3), p.307

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Bell, Adrian V., & Mark Belk. “Diet of the leatherside chub, Snyderichthys copei, in the fall” The Western North American Naturalist 64(3), 2004, pp. 413-416

Interests

I am intensely fascinated by biological and cultural evolution, the fundamental difference between the two, and the implications for the interaction of the two systems.  I study how ecological and biophysical factors exert selective forces on human institutions, and how the study of cultural evolution might aid in the search for sustainable (and durable) institutions.

PhD Research

I am currently analyzing and writing my dissertation in Human Ecology at U.C. Davis.  My research  tests the influence of ethnic/caste diversity and hierarchy on a traditional cooperative irrigation system in southern India.  A sizable literature demonstrates that ethnic diversity negatively effects public goods provision in realms such as public schooling, policing, and environmental management.  This literature might overlook the importance of inter-ethnic relationships in determining cooperative regimes within societies.  I use a range of methods, from  traditional ethnography, to surveys, to quantitative experimental games to measure human behavior.

Recent Research

I study the interaction between cultural processes and environmental conditions in Southern India. Because cooperation is a key component of sustainable resource management, I measured social norms of fairness and sharing in a small group of day laborers in Tamil Nadu to measure the strength of three social preferences: self-interest, equality, and social efficiency. The results suggest that people have preferences for how to distribute wealth that go beyond classical economic utility maximization, and include concern for how others are treated. Future research of this type will be used to measure cooperation between social groups as a component of successful sustainable environmental management. This work also will contribute empirical evidence to ongoing discussions about the nature of human social preferences.

Web Pages

Family Site
Personal Site

Resumé

Resume in PDF

Previous Research

Water use and water quality in Bardiya National Park – Nepal

Spatially explicit ecological simulation of the Everglades – SFWMD

Social learning and environmental fluctuation – UC Davis

Social norms of sharing in day laborer population – Kodaikanal, India

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Francisco J. Gil-White. 2001. Are Ethnic Groups Biological “Species” to the Human Brain? Current Anthropology 42:515.
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First, a review article (and letters responding to it):

Étienne Danchin et al. 2004. Public Information: From Nosy Neighbors to Cultural Evolution. Science 305:487.
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Download PDF of letters and response

Second, a specific case study of putative socially-transmitted tool use in dolphins.

Krützen et al. 2005. Cultural transmission of tool use in bottlenose dolphins. PNAS 102:8939.
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Just one reading for this week. It’s long enough itself, and it has some commentary you should read, too.

Scott Atran, Douglas Medin, Norbert Ross, Elizabeth Lynch, Valentina Vapnarsky, Edilberto Ucan Ek’, John Coley, Christopher Timura, and Michael Baran. 2002. Folkecology, Cultural Epidemiology, and the Spirit of the Commons (with Commentary). Current Anthropology 43:421-450.
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