Published in 1998, Understanding Human Society is a valuable contribution to the field of Social Science.

In this edited open access book leading scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds wrestle with social science integration opportunities and challenges. This book explores the growing concern of how best to achieve effective integration of the social science disciplines as a means for furthering natural resource social science and environmental problem solving. The chapters provide an overview of the history, vision, advances, examples and methods that could lead to integration. The quest for integration among the social sciences is not new. Some argue that the social sciences have lagged in their advancements and contributions to society due to their inability to address integration related issues. Integration merits debate for a number of reasons. First, natural resource issues are complex and are affected by multiple proximate driving social factors. Single disciplinary studies focused at one level are unlikely to provide explanations that represent this complexity and are limited in their ability to inform policy recommendations. Complex problems are best explored across disciplines that examine social-ecological phenomenon from different scales. Second, multi-disciplinary initiatives such as those with physical and biological scientists are necessary to understand the scope of the social sciences. Too frequently there is a belief that one social scientist on a multi-disciplinary team provides adequate social science representation. Third, more complete models of human behavior will be achieved through a synthesis of diverse social science perspectives.

The Origins of Human Society traces the development of human culture from its origins over 2 million years ago to the emergence of literate civilization. In addition to a global coverage of prehistoric life, the book pays specific attention to the origins and dispersal of anatomically-modern humans, the development of symbolic expression, the transition from mobile foraging bands to sedentary households, early agriculture and its consequences, the emergence of social differentiation and hereditary ranking, and the prehistoric roots of ancient states and empires. The Blackwell History of the World Series The goal of this ambitious series is to provide an accessible source of knowledge about the entire human past, for every curious person in every part of the world. It will comprise some two dozen volumes, of which some provide synoptic views of the history of particular regions while others consider the world as a whole during a particular period of time. The volumes are narrative in form, giving balanced attention to social and cultural history (in the broadest sense) as well as to institutional development and political change. Each provides a systematic account of a very large subject, but they are also both imaginative and interpretative. The Series is intended to be accessible to the widest possible readership, and the accessibility of its volumes is matched by the style of presentation and production.

Animals and Human Society provides a solid, scientific, research-based background to advance understanding of how animals impact humans. Animals have had profound effects on people from the earliest times, ranging from zoonotic diseases, to the global impact of livestock, poultry and fish production, to the influences of human-associated animals on the environment (on extinctions, air and water pollution, greenhouse gases, etc.), to the importance of animals in human evolution and hunter -gatherer communities.As a resource for both science and non-science, Animals and Human Society can be used as a text for courses in Animals and Human Society or Animal Science, or as supplemental material for Introduction to Animal Science. It offers foundational background to those who may have little background in animal agriculture and have focused interest on companion animals and horses. The work introduces livestock production (including poultry and aquaculture) but also includes coverage of companion and lab animals. In addition, animal behavior and animal perception are covered.Animals and Human Society is likewise an excellent resource for researchers, academics, or students newly entering a related field or coming from another discipline and needing foundational information, as well as interested laypersons looking to augment their knowledge on the many impacts of animals in human society. - Features research-based and pedagogically sound content, with learning goals and textboxes to provide key information - Challenges readers to consider issues based on facts rather than polemics - Poses ethical questions and raises overall societal impacts - Balances traditional animal science with companion animals, animal biology, zoonotic diseases, animal products, environmental impacts and all aspects of human/animal interaction

Published in 1998, Understanding Human Society is a valuable contribution to the field of Social Science.

Nearly everyone would agree that humans and their societies evolved by natural selection, that humans are biologically a single species but societies vary greatly, and neither genetic inheritance nor cultural inheritance alone can fully explain humans and their social systems. While there is a literature that addresses dual inheritance theory or the coevolution of culture and genetics, almost all of it is written from a perspective that accepts the neo-Darwinian evolutionary framework but does not give proper weight to social and cultural theory as it has been developed by cultural anthropologists. At the same time, cultural anthropologists have ignored the question of dual inheritance altogether, leaving the theorizing of how it works almost exclusively in the hands of those with a strong biological viewpoint. In this book anthropologist and psychoanalyst Robert Paul attempts to reconcile evolutionary and cultural approaches in anthropology through a comparative ethnographic exploration of how humans receive behavioral instructions from two separate channelsthe genetic code carried in the DNA and the symbolic systems that constitute culture. He develops a dual inheritance model that aims to do justice to both the genetic and cultural channels of inheritance. Paul elaborates his model of the relationship between genes and cultural symbols and then shows how it can make sense of both the similarities and variations found in human social life as captured in the now very extensive ethnographic record. He argues that cultural systems evolve to manage intra-group competition that would ensue from the genetic program pursuing its interests. The book uses thick descriptions and heavy interpretations from the ethnographic record to demonstrate how different societies tackle this challenge. The book fills a niche, connecting the dual-inheritance literature and symbolic cultural anthropology, using insights from the former to detect patterns in the latter. This is a rare and well-researched project, and should receive a broad readership among biological and cultural anthropologists, and students of human nature more broadly."

This textbook provides a full overview of human-animal studies. It focuses on the conceptual construction of animals in American culture and the way in which it reinforces and perpetuates hierarchical human relationships rooted in racism, sexism, and class privilege.