5 - Future Research Directions

Summary

The Centrality of Sex in Anthropology and Evolution

This book began by noting a chasm between anthropological demographers and human evolutionary ecologists encompassing both theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of human demography. Both approaches have much to offer, yet each has a purposeful ignorance and outright disdain of the other that threatens to harden into dogmatic stances of limited analytical value. In an attempt to open lines of discussion between these two fields, in preceding chapters I delineated areas of common ground not recognized by each field and used a framework of lifetime reproductive interests, originally developed in sociobiology (Alexander 1974), which I expanded to include cultural motivations. The revised model broke the concept of reproductive interests into two compartments: life effort pertains to evolutionary biology's life history theory, and social interactions are relevant to cultural goals. I then proposed that these could be fruitfully examined by use of the concept of demographic strategies, which has a long history in both anthropological demography and human evolutionary ecology. From these starting points, this text covered a lot of ground, presenting both cross-cultural research and case studies ranging from contemporary East and West Africa, North America, and China to historic Europe. Instead of ending with a review, I offer a short perspective on future research directions, concluding with a discussion of what anthropological demographers, human evolutionary ecologists, and demographers can learn from each field's strengths.