Review of N. Henrich and J. Henrich, Why Humans Cooperate: a Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14(3): 695-696 (2008).

Why do humans co-operate? Social anthropologists do not usually ask this kind of question: we take co-operation for granted. But if anthropology is the study of what it means to be human, we should not be satisfied with this. From a Darwinian perspective, the evolution of co-operation in the human species is notoriously difficult to explain. In no other species do we find large-scale, systematic co-operation between individuals who may be biologically unrelated or even unknown to one another. Most of what is taken to be standard Darwinian theory would rule this out on theoretical grounds.

Natalie and Joseph Henrich have collaborated to provide an excellent up-to-date overview of current debates addressing what they describe as ‘one of the great puzzles in the human sciences’ (p. 3). A strength of the book is its close interweaving of Joseph’s theoretical modelling and analysis with the results of his partner Natalie’s eighteen-month ethnographic fieldwork among the Chaldeans in Detroit– a mostly middle- and upper-class community of first-, second-, and third-generation Catholic immigrants from Iraq.

To explain co-operation among the Chaldeans, the authors elaborate on an idea first proposed by Darwin. In The descent of man (1871), Darwin wrote that his theory of natural selection would be hard-pressed to explain the evolution of a human instinct for sacrificing one’s life for the common good. So might social admiration for heroism take over where instinct failed, thereby inspiring men to perform noble deeds by following celebrated examples? Is competition between ‘tribes’– the fitness of each enhanced by the heroism of its membersthe best way to explain man’s lofty ‘intellectual and moral faculties’? Darwin was prepared to consider the possibility.

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Henrich, Natalie & Joseph Henrich. Why humans cooperate: a cultural and evolutionary explanation. xi, 267 pp., figs, bibliogr. Oxford: Univ. Press, 2007.£45.00 (cloth), £19.99 (paper)