Interethnic Interaction, Strategic Bargaining Power, and the Dynamics of Cultural Norms : A Field Study in an Amazonian Population.

ABSTRACT: Ethnic groups are universal and unique to human societies. Such groups sometimes have norms of behavior that are adaptively linked to their social and ecological circumstances, and ethnic boundaries may function to protect that variation from erosion by interethnic interaction. However, such interaction is often frequent and voluntary, suggesting that individuals may be able to strategically reduce its costs, allowing adaptive cultural variation to persist in spite of interaction with out-groups with different norms. We examine five mechanisms influencing the dynamics of ethnically distinct cultural norms, each focused on strategic individual-level choices in interethnic interaction: bargaining, interaction-frequency-biased norm adoption, assortment on norms, success-biased interethnic soc

SUBMITTER: Bunce JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5662675 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature